It's a Goofy Thing but I Just Gotta Say...

Let me clear a couple things up. You have heard Donnie's side of the story and it was entertaining. Here are a couple of the points that I am making...

1) "I had misspoken, and there were probably only like 2 houses sold in Detroit in December so it was Time Magazine manipulating the statistics. Therefore, things are just fine in Detroit, and the market will sort it all out."

a.)Time Magazine didn’t manipulate any statistics. You. Did. When you left a $70,000 word out--"sold". b.) the market already is "sorting it all out."

2)My intention was never to debate the issues of the role of motivation in sports or "how bad things had really gotten in Detroit". Quite frankly, I think we both agree on those to issues.

I think MSU probably did play a little more inspired b/c a) they were the crowd favorite (for obvious reason) and b) -- like you said-- a lot of the players were playing for a town (in one case hometown) that may be extinct in the near future. Any motivation is good motivation regardless of how meaningless it may be to someone else.

I also agree with you that Detroit has gone down the toilet in the past couple years. This can be proven simply by looking at the unemployment rate over the past 2-3 years (or 6 months). Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing -- and/or who caused this -- are topics for other discussions (and I assume we would disagree on these).

That leads us to my actual intentions (not what you perceived my intentions to be).The reason for my phone call yesterday and my true intention was to point out that YOU manipulated information to make your side of the story sound more attractive. Whether this was intentional or malicious is not important, you presented information that was wrong and I wanted to correct you. (And I thought I could do that without you getting your panties in wad)

Article Donnie incorrectly quoted.

Median home prices, depending on who you talk to, are hard to gauge because you don’t know what it could sell for until you sell it. That being said website like HousingTracker.net and Yahoo RealEstate have nothing to gain from distorting views.

HousingTracker.net median home price as of 10/21/08 (5 months ago) -- $79,000 (20% down from 10/21/07). So, lets assume it went down another 20% in the past 5 months--$63,000

--or may be even 40% (meaning in the past 17 months it lost 51% of its value)-- $47,000

Yahoo RealEstate median home price as of 4/6/2009-- $30,000

Price Donnie said houses cost in Detroit-- "below $8,000" (lets say $7,500-- although he was "quoting"--incorrectly-- the Time article that has prices as $5,737)

Difference--
Housing Tracker.net (-20% estimate) _ -$55,500 or -88.10% off
Housing Tracker.net (-40% estimate) _ -$39,500 or -85.04% off

Yahoo RealEstate_ -$22,500 or -75% off.

At best you were 75% off.

3) If you haven't heard too much about the current "economic situation" then you haven't been watching CNN, NBC, ABC, FoxNews, CBS, Fox, read a newspaper, listened to the radio, turned on a computer, or gone outside. The fact that Detroit is not doing as well as other cities should come as absolutely no surprise to you. And, yes, there might be some hard times in the neighborhood but I wish everyday could be this good.

Take it away Travis!!