Detroit-- --If I'm Detroit (and though I'm fairly large and I'm falling down in a lot of places, that's not very likely) I've got to be wondering at this point.
Most of the other rust-belt urban areas have rebounded in one way or another, but Motown's luck refuses to change. The auto industry is in the tank. The downtown area, despite a massive cleanup effort for the Super Bowl, still has that look of despair that cities such as Baltimore and Cleveland have long since turned into a wry smile.
None of this is news, of course, but I bring it up in the aftermath of yesterday's announcement that the Senior Players Championship is moving to the Baltimore Country Club. The event used to be known as the Ford Senior Players Championship, but the Ford Motor Co. is reassessing its priorities and also is dropping its sponsorship of the big PGA event at Doral in Miami after this year.
What's next ... the Super Bowl jumping to Soldier Field this weekend?
Everyone knows that Detroit is a little down in the dumps, but the Super Bowl -- the biggest in a series of major sporting events that have landed here or will over the next few years -- was supposed to help change all that. I'm not so sure.
This town has worked very hard to put on its best face this week, but it has reached the point where it can't even depend on its forbidding winter climate to help spruce things up.
The Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau planned ahead for the likelihood of harsh winter weather by turning a 14-block area of downtown into Detroit Winter Blast, a temporary winter theme festival that is scheduled to open today and feature dog-sledding and various other snow-related activities.
So what happens? The weather turned unseasonably warm this week, leaving organizers to consider canceling some of those activities. They've had snow machines working overtime to salvage the event, but who would have imagined that a major part of the civic Super Bowl celebration in Detroit might be spoiled by good weather?
Don't look now, but the Super Bowl might be the best argument yet for the Kyoto treaty .
The Motor City, already sagging because of the U.S. auto industry's poor position in the global economy, suddenly finds itself the victim of global warming, too. The fact that the Super Bowl media center is located at the global headquarters of General Motors is just an ironic bonus.
