In Detroit tonight, the Red Wings spent the better part of an evening honoring former team captain Steve Yzerman by retiring his #19 forever.
In Yzerman's 22 years in a Red Wings uniform, the team made the playoffs 20 times, a record of success that tells you all you need to know about the results that organization has produced in recent memory.
Meanwhile, across town at the offices of the Detroit Lions, that team has decided to retain Matt Millen as team president for yet another season. In six seasons in Detroit, Millen's team's have a combined record of 24-72.
At first, the announcement seemed oddly timed, as if the Lions felt that on such a momentous night, nobody would notice. But when I thought about it, I decided that there's a perfect asymetry here.
Because just as Yzerman's tenure perfectly epitomizes everything that's right about the Red Wings, it's just as obvious that Millen's tenture perfectly embodies everything that's wrong about the Detroit Lions.
It was Benjamin Franklin who said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It's almost as if he had grown up in Detroit instead of Philadelphia.
The Lions are just praying for the first overall pick next year in the draft. Keeping Millen is quite possibly the stupidest move by an organization in the past year