Forget what I said Wednesday. I proposed that we protect ourselves against the sting of another Lions’ loss on Thanksgiving by getting some of Michigan’s best teams in on the Thanksgiving Day act. But Michigan’s teams revolted against the idea on Thursday.

To recap:

•  The Lions didn’t respond well to the negative motivation from the Mitten. They fell behind 35-3 before I’d even started in the hors d’oeuvres, and the 47-10 final score was the Lions’ worst margin ever on Thanksgiving. Never in Barry Sanders’ career did the Lions open holes like the ones that the Titans’ Chris Johnson and LenDale White were cruising through at full speed. It’s a shame that I started the Mitten after Matt Millen was already fired, depriving me of so much great material, but can I at least point out how shocking it is — how actually impressive it is, in an evil mastermind kind of way, though unfortunately I don’t really think Millen is an evil mastermind — that after all these years of fielding bad Lions teams, Millen produced his crown jewel of terribility this season? Box.
• Michigan State didn’t fare much better. The Spartans were routed by unranked Maryland in a game of runs at the Old Spice Classic: first the Terps went up big, then the Spartans came back to take the lead early in the second half, then Maryland went on a long, dominant run to finish the game and won 80-62. Goran Suton didn’t play, and Raymar Morgan only played 14 minutes because he got in early foul trouble — a bad habit which I expected him to break during the offseason, and which spells bad news if it continues. MSU made only 12 of its 27 free throws, and the biggest offenders were good shooters like Kalin Lucas (0-3) and Chris Allen (1-3). Most troubling was that the Spartan’s help-and-rotate defensive scheme was seriously out of sync, allowing a series of easy baskets for Maryland that reminded me of Chris Johnson bursting into the secondary over and over against the Lions. So instead of a showdown with #10 Gonzaga tonight, MSU gets Oklahoma State. Box. 
• As a special Thanksgiving Day bonus, the Pistons, which did not have a game, decided to generate some bad news anyway. Michael Curry scheduled a practice for Thanksgiving morning, ostensibly because the Pistons need more practice time to incorporate Allen Iverson into the team’s gameplan. It seems like a harsh move by Curry to hold a Thanksgiving practice, so it’s not surprising that several players grumbled. But only one player didn’t show up to the practice: Iverson. So now Detroit has an Allen Iverson controversy of its very own. On one hand it feels almost like a rite of passage; on the other it feels like the first big off-court test of the Curry administration. Flip Saunders’ downfall was failing to gain the respect of certain key players, so this seems like a particularly key moment for Curry. 

That’s the bad news, bad enough that the Mitten is scrapping its Official Thanksgiving Day Game. The good news is that today you can eat leftover stuffing and get good deals on electronics. That, and the Wings play tonight.