Cinderella’s coach really did turn back into a pumpkin. Hansel and Gretel got caught, after all. None of the pigs got around to building a joint out of brick.

John Elway’s legend is safe once again. Whoever sculpts those busts for Canton needn’t rush out to procure a head shot of Matthew Stafford at his earliest convenience.

Cloud Nine just touched down. The bandwagon came to a screeching halt. After one game.

If rookie quarterbacks were stock on the New York Exchange, their chart would look like an EKG readout.

On Sunday, Stafford won a game for the Lions. Damaged wing and all. Real storybook stuff. Someone dared to disturb Bobby Layne’s ghost over it.

Four days later, the re-set button got hit, taking his progression back to the hot July days of training camp.

On Sunday, the kid threw five touchdown passes. It usually takes a Lions QB half a season to do that. On Thursday, he had a fetish of throwing to the wrong guys. Four interceptions, and it could have been more. Each one of them was a killer.

The rookie quarterback gives and he takeths away. Within four days, sometimes.

Stafford tried to pen another chapter in the tiny legend he’s trying to author as a first-year signal caller in the NFL.

His tender left shoulder was so bad after Sunday’s game that the idea of him playing on Thanksgiving Day seemed folly.

The days of the short week passed and after each one, the diagnosis was the same: doubtful. Highly.

Backup Daunte Culpepper arrived at Ford Field Thursday morning thinking he was the starter. He had taken all the reps with the first team. Stafford’s left wing was still limp.

But a funny thing happened, though the humor was lost on Culpepper.

Stafford threw some footballs Thursday during warmups, and suddenly things weren’t so bad. The doctors, abiding to the script, agreed that Stafford playing wouldn’t cause any further damage. It was deemed to be a “pain management issue.”

So Stafford is announced as the starter not long before game time, and Culpepper was probably the only person in the stadium who was disappointed with that determination.

But someone forgot to send the script over to the Green Bay Packers for their approval.

After an early hiccup—a fumbled opening kickoff that led to a Stafford-to-Calvin Johnson TD toss—the Packers regained control and jammed Stafford’s next chapter into the paper shredder.

If you played a drinking game where you had to take a shot of booze whenever Troy Aikman said something like, “That’s part of the development of a rookie quarterback,” you’d be reading this with a hangover. But Troy’s right, and he ought to know. Aikman suffered through a 1-15 season with the 1989 Cowboys, in which he went 0-11 as a starter.

I tried my hand at playing soothsayer on Monday’s episode of “The Knee Jerks,” the Blog Talk Radio gabfest I co-host with Big Al Beaton.

Stafford could very well, I said, go back to being the goat as soon as on Thanksgiving Day, because that’s what happens with these young whippersnappers. They waddle then they fall down sometimes.

I’m not right all that often, but I picked a helluva time to be spot on.

The loss on Thursday wasn’t all on the kid, though.

Once again, the Lions’ pass rushers treated the opposing quarterback as if he’d had a garlic sandwich before the game, topped with limburger.

I think I saw Packers QB Aaron Rodgers, prior to rocketing a 68-yard bomb to Donald Driver in the first quarter, have a shave and brush his teeth. Or maybe the rules were that the Lions’ pass rushers had to count to 20-Mississippi, and they got stuck on 11 or 12.

Once again, the Lions were the antidote to what ailed the other team. The Packers have had trouble all season protecting Rodgers, who came into the game being sacked once for every 8.9 pass attempts. That rate was one for every 39 passing attempts on Thursday.

It wasn’t just that the Lions didn’t sack Rodgers; they didn’t even get within shouting distance of him. They made him more comfortable in the pocket than a set of car keys.

The Lions’ secondary needs all the help it can get, and it’s not getting it from the front four. The pass coverage is softer than Charmin, and it’s being made to look even worse because of the complete lack of pressure from the pass rushers.

So it’s not all on Stafford, but there will still be afternoons where he’s no help, as on Thursday, and at Seattle, and against the Rams.

All part of the development of a rookie quarterback, right?

Ha! Now you have to take a shot.

Time to give thanks. I suppose I can muster up the will to do that. It’s only once a year, after all.

So, here goes…

I’m thankful for Army-Navy, even though I never watch it.

I’m thankful for Brandon Inge.

I’m thankful that a football is shaped the way it is, because you never know how it’s going to bounce. Other balls are so predictable that way.

I’m thankful for outdoor stadiums.

I’m thankful for the mute button.

I’m thankful for the Original Six.

I’m thankful for left-handed golfers because they look so cool.

I’m thankful for a well-timed 6-4-3.

I’m thankful for Nick Lidstrom.

I’m thankful for fake kicks, because they’re so rare.

I’m thankful for NFL Films.

I’m thankful for tabletop baseball games, so I can play a summer’s game on a cold winter’s night.

I’m thankful for anyone named Igor, or last names that start with Z.

I’m thankful for players who have the courage to wear number 13.

I’m thankful for Vyacheslav being shortened to Slava.

I’m thankful for the quick slant on a key third down.

I’m thankful for no timeouts remaining for either team in an NBA game.

I’m thankful for sudden death overtime in the Stanley Cup playoffs, even if my heart isn’t.

I’m thankful for Tony Dungy.

I’m thankful for having seen every one of Barry Sanders’ ten seasons.

I’m thankful for my photo with Ernie Harwell, our arms over each other’s shoulder, and showing it to Ernie sometime later and him saying, “Well, who are THOSE two handsome fellas?”

I’m thankful for George Kell and “They’re waaaaaaaving him in!!”

I’m thankful for whoever first thought of pulling the goalie.

I’m thankful for kick returners who run it out from five yards deep in the end zone.

I’m thankful for doglegs right because that’s how I hit them anyway.

I’m thankful for the flag they run up at Wrigley Field after every Cubs’ game: W or L, depending on the result. So quaint, so simple.

I’m thankful for the squeak of sneakers on the basketball floor.

I’m thankful for scoreboard watching in September.

I’m thankful for Canton, Ohio. And Cooperstown, New York.

I’m thankful for Retrosheet.org.

I’m thankful for stand-up triples.

I’m thankful for Dr. J.

I’m thankful for TV showing us the play clock winding down.

I’m thankful for Don Criqui.

I’m thankful for football in the snow and baseball in a light rain.

I’m thankful that the Yankees have the arrogance to omit the names from their jerseys.

I’m thankful that the Red Wings and Tigers have pretty much the same uniforms as they did during the Truman Administration.

I’m thankful for Bruce Martyn and “He shoots, he SCORES!”

I’m thankful for “Hockey Night in Canada,” even though I can’t get it on my dish.

I’m thankful for the Canadian National Anthem.

I’m thankful for seeing-eye singles.

I’m thankful for a basketball block from behind.

I’m thankful for “the ground can’t cause a fumble.”

I’m thankful for tape-to-tape passes.

I’m thankful for Bo and Woody.

I’m thankful for knuckleballers.

I’m thankful for Madison Square Garden, because it’s still one of our finest sports palaces.

I’m thankful for boxing in Yankee Stadium, the Beatles in Olympia, and hockey at Wrigley Field.

I’m thankful for the Red Wings’ New Year’s Eve games. Did you know that Christmas Day at Olympia was a tradition, too, until the players squawked too much?

I’m thankful for a backhand stab at third base and a gun to nip the runner at first.

I’m thankful for good free throw shooters—and bad ones, if they’re on the other team.

I’m thankful for Canadian football, because linebackers wear no. 71 and wide receivers wear no. 37 and quarterbacks wear no. 23.

I’m thankful for the two-point conversion.

I’m thankful for medium deep fly balls with a runner on third base, because you know there’s going to be a whale of a play at home plate.

I’m thankful for Ann Arbor on a crisp fall Saturday, Joe Louis Arena on a warm June evening, and Comerica Park on a chilly April afternoon.

I’m thankful for Mike Babcock.

I’m thankful for the hip check, because no one throws them anymore.

I’m thankful for a well-executed screen pass.

I’m thankful for the circus catch.

I’m thankful for Mays, Mantle, and Snider all in New York at the same time.

I’m thankful for whoever invented slow motion replays.

I’m thankful for a fastball down the middle on 3-and-0.

I’m thankful for the trap play.

I’m thankful for pinstripes.

I’m thankful for basketball coaches who coach sitting down.

I’m thankful for spaghetti. I know it’s not sports but I like it so much.

I’m thankful for a wife who has put up with me, and my games, for 17 years.

I’m thankful that you’ve read this far.

Happy Turkey Day everyone!

First, a semi-major announcement: “The Knee Jerks” will be moving up a couple of hours!

Beginning December 14, you’ll be able to get your jerkosity two hours earlier. The show will debut its new 9:00-11:00 ET time slot, so everyone can get some sleep on Monday nights!

The Michigan Wolverines and MSU Spartans just finished their football seasons, so it was the perfect time to do a post-mortem. Our guests were Andy Reid, sports editor of the Michigan Daily (U’M’s student newspaper) and Bleacher Report’s  Nick Mordowanec, who writes about MSU frequently.

Andy and Nick provided us with solid analysis of U-M and MSU, respectively, along with taking a look ahead at both programs’ futures. Big Al almost totally stopped Andy in his tracks when he asked him whether he thought Rich Rodriguez was the right man for Michigan. I guess you’ll just have to listen to find out what Andy finally said in response!

After talking college football, Al and I turned our attention to the pro game—specifically, the Lions’ improbable 38-37 win over Cleveland, a.k.a. the Coming Out of Matthew Stafford.

Thirty minutes later, we drifted over to the Red Wings and the latest injury—to defenseman Niklas Kronwall, thanks to a dirty, knee-on-knee hit by Montreal’s George Laraque.

The Pistons then made a rare appearance on “The Jerks,” for about five minutes of garbage time!

But that’s OK—the Pistons will be the focus of our show next week!

As always, we closed with a flurry, in the form of our “Jerks of the Week.”

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Upcoming guests/topics:

Nov. 30: Guest(s) TBD (Pistons-related)
Dec. 7: NHL Central roundtable with Bleacher Report writers from Columbus, Chicago, Nashville, and St. Louis
Dec. 14: Gregory Shamus, one of the best sports photographers you’ll ever know (Getty Images, Pittsburgh Penguins, Red Wings, Cleveland Cavaliers, and others); don’t forget—this will be our first 9:00 show!

Some highlights from Monday’s show:

Big Al

On Matthew Stafford: “This was like a Disney film! Like a script! At least it looks like the Lions have found their answer at quarterback and now they can turn their attention to other things.”

On the NHL suspension of Laraque for five games: “You almost want to go to an ‘eye for an eye’ way of punishment. Five games was ridiculous.”

On the Pistons: “(Coach) John Kuester is really hamstrung because he doesn’t have Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince. But there’s no way they’re going to win anywhere close to 50 games.”

Eno

On the Lions: “I don’t think they’ll lay an egg on Thanksgiving. Maybe they can build on Sunday’s win, but they’ve never come off a win like that before.”

On the NHL: “Once again they’ve put themselves in a trick box. The five-game suspension is too low. It should have been 15, 20 games. They’ve set a bad precedent.”

On the Pistons: “I like this rookie Jonas Jerebko. He’s not a true starter, but he’s getting invaluable experience against other teams’ No. 1 units.”

You can listen to the episode by clicking HERE.

It’ll be a cornucopia of football tonight on “The Knee Jerks,” the weekly Blog Talk Radio gabfest I co-host with Big Al Beaton of The Wayne Fontes Experience .

Tonight we’ll give post-mortems on the recently completed U-M and MSU football regular seasons, with help from Andy Reid, sports editor of the Michigan Daily (U’M’s student newspaper) and B/R’s own Nick Mordowanec, who writes about MSU frequently.

Al and I will also give our takes on the Lions’ thrilling, improbable win yesterday against the Browns.

It all starts at 11 PM ET LIVE. The chat room will be open!

Go to www.blogtalkradio.com/thekneejerks and register. It only takes a minute and then you can join us in the chat room.

Someday, they’ll have Ford Field’s capacity up to a quarter million, for as many people who will claim to have been there. The Cleveland Browns will be defending league champions. Matthew Stafford will have been carried onto the field on a stretcher. Brandon Pettigrew will have one-handed the football, his body parallel to the turf.

That will pretty much be the gist of the re-telling of what went on Sunday, several years hence.

The Lions beat the Browns, 38-37 in what was deemed to be their last “winnable” game of the season. And we have six weeks of this stuff to go yet.

Yes, this was a “winnable” game, alright. Just like how your Lotto ticket is winnable. Or Tom DeLay’s chances on “Dancing with the Stars.”

The Lions had 106 seconds and 88 yards to cover, with no timeouts, or else they’d have lost to a Browns team that scored, in one game, nearly half of the total points they’d scored for the entire season to this point.

The Lions don’t win games like that. They don’t even get first downs in situations like that. Remember the final “drive” against the Rams a few weeks ago? Someone forgot to take the transmission out of reverse in that one.

The Lions don’t drive down the field and score game-winning touchdowns. They never have. They’ve been the anti-Elway in that regard.

Someone ought to take this kid Stafford and knock some sense into him. How dare he think that he can pull off such miracles while wearing Honolulu Blue and Silver?

Maybe there IS something to this whole went-to-the-same-high-school-as-Bobby-Layne thing, after all.

Ole Bobby would have been proud. So would Fran Tarkenton.

It wasn’t enough that Stafford zipped and zapped the Lions down the field, gobbling up first downs like Pac-Man. It wasn’t enough that he got the Lions into a manageable situation—the Browns’ 32-yard line—with one shot left in his holster.

It was impossible not to think of Tarkenton when Stafford ran around the Lions’ backfield, faking one throw after the other, as the clock flipped to 0:00. This isn’t the NBA, thank the Lord, where you have to have the sphere in the air before time runs out. The NFL allows play to continue until it’s over with, which in this case took almost as long as Magic Johnson’s talk show run.

Stafford stopped more than once, planted his feet, and made like he was going to throw, but then he would change his mind and dart in the other direction, like the Lions were paying him by the hour.

Then, he could avoid the Browns no longer and heaved the pigskin, just before being firmly planted into the Ford Field turf, his shoulder used as a battering ram against the playing surface.

You know the rest. Hell, the whole state knows it. They know it in Peoria and Butte and Spokane and Amarillo, too. Even the tripe masters in Bristol, CT got the word.

Pass interference. In the end zone. Another lovely NFL thing: the game can’t end on a defensive foul like that.

Here’s where it turns legendary.

Stafford was lying on his back, his left shoulder wrecked, while the Lions celebrated their officiating luck. Center Dom Raiola delivered the news.

“We got PI in the end zone!,” Dom screamed to his prone quarterback.

“He was talking funny,” Raiola said afterward.

Yeah, you tend to do that when you’re lying mortally wounded.

See? There I go, embellishing the legend already.

Somewhere—not sure if up above or down below, knowing Bobby—Layne was smiling as Stafford, aided by a Browns timeout, bolted to his feet, like Cuba Gooding Jr. in “Jerry Maguire,” and ran back onto the field from the sidelines, where he was again lying prone moments earlier.

Stafford waved backup Daunte Culpepper—who had lined up under center before the Brownies took leave of their senses and called timeout—back to the bench. I can only think of a line uttered by Layne as he huddled the Lions prior to the game-winning drive in the waning minutes of the 1953 NFL Championship Game.

“Alright fellas,” Layne told his players, and it’s been confirmed. “Y’all block and Bobby’ll pass ya raght to the champeenship.”

Which is exactly what Bobby did.

So here’s this kid Stafford, with four TD passes already in his hip pocket—if he throws four of anything it’s usually interceptions, but don’t all rookie QBs?—and his shoulder is on fire and there’s one play to go, from the one-yard line.

It’s 1-8 vs. 1-8, for cripe’s sakes. But it’s a football game in the NFL and those things are lousy to lose when victory is so close.

Stafford throws the TD pass, his fifth, to fellow rook Brandon Pettigrew and the kid QB immediately looks to the bench and motions to his lame left shoulder, the arm hanging limp from it. He’s shaking his head. He wasn’t the only one shaking his noggin.

Lions win, 38-37.

That didn’t happen yesterday. It couldn’t have. Next thing you’ll tell me is that Lucy let Charlie Brown kick the football. Jack and Jill made it down the hill OK after all. Dewey really did defeat Truman.

The Lions won a football game in dramatic, race-against-the-clock fashion. With no timeouts. On a break from the officials. With a rookie quarterback. After falling behind by 21 points in the first quarter.

Oh, stop! Enough telling tall tales!

Rudyard Kipling is dead. Aesop is long gone, too. You take that script to Hollywood and they’ll laugh, telling you that it wouldn’t play.

Rookie QB lies on the ground, uttering his dying words, and the sage veteran has to finish the job? Stafford might as well have been crumpled in a bunker, bombs and gunfire erupting all around him.

Then the kid hears “timeout Browns” on the “loudspeaker”—Stafford’s version in the post-game presser—and scrambles to his feet, puts his helmet on, and returns to battle.

They could make it into a war flick, if you get Hollywood to stop laughing at you long enough.

Lions 38, Browns 37.

Layne’s comeback in ‘53 was against the Browns, too, you know.

Just saying.

I’m a little early on this, I admit. I’m jumping the gun, but this time they can’t call me back to the starting blocks.

You heard it here first, then.

When the Tigers gather for spring training in about three months—it can’t get here fast enough, by the way—it will be 2010 and you can say it.

It’ll be 20 years since Cecil Fielder knocked 51 homers out of the confines of American League ballparks on behalf of the Tigers.

Yep—1990. Even the most mathematically challenged can figure out that 2010 minus 20 equals 1990.

Go ahead and use a calculator anyway, if you wish. But you’ll get 20 years since Cecil clubbed his way into the history books.

Fifty dingers might not seem like so much nowadays, but no Tiger had hit that many since Hank Greenberg was thrilling the folks at Briggs Stadium in the 1930s and ’40s. Hank, in fact, almost hit 60—he clobbered 58 in 1938.

But unlike Greenberg, who was a product of the Tigers’ farm, Cecil was an outsider. Actually, he wasn’t acquired so much as imported.

The Tigers left the continent and traveled to the Far East to wrangle Fielder away from a Japanese team, also called the Tigers (Hanshin). Big Daddy, as he was called, had fled the country either because he was attracted to sushi or because he couldn’t stand playing behind Fred McGriff. Or both.

Fielder was a Toronto Blue Jay but McGriff was dug in deep as the Jays’ first baseman. McGriff was about Cecil’s age but he was Big Daddy’s superior, at least in the Blue Jays’ eyes. McGriff swung lefty and maybe that’s what hurt the right-handed hitting Fielder.

Anyhow, Cecil played for Hanshin in 1989 and the Detroit Tigers, in need of a first sacker, remembered what Fielder could do from his days in the AL East. So they sent a team of envoys to Japan and the result was that Fielder signed with them in January 1990.

The Tigers’ first player from Japan and he was an American. Go figure.

Not much was made of the signing, other than the Tigers had filled a hole at first base. How it would turn out was anyone’s guess.

After 14 games, Fielder had three home runs. Not bad; about a 34-homer pace.

Not bad turned into pretty good, and pretty good turned into “This guy’s hotter than wasabi!”

Fielder slammed 10 home runs in his next 15 games, including three in, you guessed it, Toronto.

But it wasn’t just that Fielder hit home runs. It was how he hit them.

He looked like he was swinging a toothpick, which is what all the big dudes make even 40-ounce bats look like. Fielder was big and muscular and should have been wearing a football helmet, not a batting helmet.

He cocked his bat just before he swung—another staple from the slugger’s repertoire. And while he connected with nothing but air a whole bunch of times, pity the poor baseball that he didn’t miss.

A Cecil Fielder home run came in three varieties—towering, lasered, and crushed. No one had punished baseballs in Detroit before him, or since. He was the strongest man to wear the Old English D not named Willie Horton or Marcus Thames.

One afternoon, Fielder took Oakland A’s pitcher Dave Stewart downtown—downtown Lansing, that is. He drove a baseball over the left field roof at Tiger Stadium, which was by far the harder of the two roofs to clear.

Fielder kept knocking home runs throughout the summer of 1990, and around the All-Star break it was whispered: could Cecil hit 50? He had 28 and there was still about half a season to go.

Damon Runyon must have written the script from the afterlife and sent it down to Detroit, because going into the last game of the season—in New York, no less—Fielder had 49 dingers. If he was going to reach 50, he’d have to do it in Roger Maris-like fashion—in Yankee Stadium on the season’s final day.

Manager Sparky Anderson placed Fielder second in the batting order, to give him an extra at-bat if necessary. He didn’t need it.

In the fourth inning, with Tony Phillips on base, Fielder jacked a baseball off someone named Steve Adkins deep into the upper deck in left field in the Bronx. Number 50. Then, as if to make sure in case they added wrong, Fielder hit another, in the eighth inning. Number 51.

They usually don’t take kindly to Japanese imports in Detroit, but they made an exception in the case of Cecil Fielder.

It’ll be 20 years ago, coming up. No Tigers player—Cecil included—has come close to 50 since then.

Big Daddy, to Detroit from Toronto via Hanshin, Japan. Not the shortest route between two points, unlike his home runs. But it worked out.

They’re putting a Michigan-Ohio State football game on this Saturday, right on schedule. The third Saturday in November, usually. You used to circle the date. Now you happen upon it, by accident.

“Oh, is THAT still playing?”

Michigan-Ohio State creeps up on you now, like your wedding anniversary, or a dentist appointment. It used to be a must see. Now it’s a “MUST we see?”

Michigan vs. Ohio State. Time used to stand still for this one. Woody Hayes would bring his brood up from Columbus and he’d start to get a nervous twitch somewhere around Monroe.

There weren’t any namby-pamby Bowl games back then—the 1970s in case you were wondering. It was Rose Bowl or bust. One of those teams would play their hearts out for 11 games and only one of them was going to Pasadena. The other went home—with a 10-1 or 9-2 record.

Now, they hand out Bowl berths like numbers at the deli on a Sunday. Just wait till it’s your turn and find out whether you’re going to Mobile or Tampa or (gulp) Detroit. With a 6-6 record.

Michigan is 5-6, and we should stop right there. They shouldn’t allow them into Michigan Stadium with such a record, to play Ohio State and still pass it off as a “big game.” Unless they make the Buckeyes play with one hand tied behind their backs.

Where has this game gone, anyway?

When Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler were prowling the sidelines—and that’s as good a verb as any—the game was a tug of war. No one went on a basketball-like run of victories.

Michigan and Ohio State. You felt like it was the only game being played that Saturday. At least the only one worth a hill of beans. Like Monday Night Football.

It made the Hatfields and the McCoys look like an episode of “Family Feud.”

Always the Big Ten title was on the line. The season was a 10-game tune up. They used to call it the Big Two and Little Eight in those days. Occasionally Iowa or Purdue or Minnesota would give one of the Big Two a scare but sure enough, come the third Saturday in November, there the conference championship belt dangled, waiting to be claimed.

It started in Ann Arbor in 1969, when Bo was a rookie at Michigan and the year before, Woody’s team blew the Wolverines out of Columbus and halfway to Toledo.

1968 was the year Woody had the penultimate U-M/OSU line. The Buckeyes won, 50-14, and late in the game Woody went for a two-point conversion. Afterward, they asked him why.

“Because I couldn’t go for THREE,” Woody snarled.

But the next year Billy Taylor ran wild and Michigan upset Ohio State and it was, as they say nowadays, ON.

This was genuine hatred. Nothing contrived or forced. The schools would rather lose their accreditation than lose to each other. Woody refused to even buy gas in Michigan, or so he said. I believe him.

Kids from Michigan’s campus drove their jalopies around with bumper stickers that read “WOODY IS A PECKER.”

Then Woody got fired and OSU started hiring coaches who, if Michigan was a wet paper bag, couldn’t fight their way out of it.

Someone named Earle Bruce was brought in and it was like going to the theatre expecting to see Olivier and getting his understudy.

Bruce did last nine years, though, then John Cooper came in and even the names of these guys were getting worse. John Cooper? What was this, a Disney movie?

Bo beat Cooper’s brains in until he grew bored and retired. Then Gary Moeller took over and immediately got Cooper into a headlock, too.

Cooper was a good football coach—until the third Saturday in November. Then he turned into someone Matt Millen would have hired for the Lions.

Bruce and Cooper were the ones who threatened to euthanize this rivalry. Now Jim Tressel looks to be the one to finally pull the plug.

They did it in different ways, of course—Bruce and Cooper by losing all the time, and Tressel by turning the tables.

Tressel stormed into Columbus when he was hired, led a pep rally in the basketball arena, counted the number of days until the Michigan game, and guaranteed victory. Woody and Bo wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a thing. They had hate but some decorum.

But Tressel’s kids backed up their coach’s words and decided that this beating Michigan thing was pretty cool. So they kept doing it. And doing it, until they’ve damned near killed the game entirely.

There’s no reason to think it’s going to be any different this time around. Michigan has a defense that’s offensive. They jog onto the field and if the wind is blowing wrong you can smell the stench.

The Wolverines don’t have anyone on their roster who knows what it’s like to beat Ohio State. Literally. The last Michigan victory was in 2003. In college football rivalries, that’s a generation. It also gets coaches fired.

Cooper couldn’t beat Michigan—he went 2-10-1 against them—and that became his legacy at Ohio State. Bruce, before him, did alright (5-4). But that’s a combined 7-14-1 after Woody and before Tressel. And so the rivalry teetered, and now it’s about to fall entirely.

Today, Michigan’s biggest rival seems to be itself. The program is so busy with the in-fighting that you half expect the team to forget to show up to play the Buckeyes. Of course, it wouldn’t be much different than the past five years, so who could tell?

Everything was better back in the day, wasn’t it?

Gas prices. McDonald’s. The “Tonight” show. And Michigan-Ohio State.

It wasn’t a game, it was High Noon. It was the fight with the kid after school. Be there or else. They didn’t finish it, they reconvened. The winner went to the Rose Bowl and the loser’s intestines got gnarled for 364 days.

MichiganOhioState. It was a two school rivalry said in one word. You could empty a crowded theatre in Ann Arbor or Columbus by saying it, more so than if you yelled “Fire!”

Now it’s been reduced, like a sauce that’s been sitting on the stove for too long. Its stock has fallen faster than General Motors. Ohio State so outclasses Michigan anymore that it’s not a rivalry, it’s a chore—something that has to be done before you can close up the cottage for the winter.

This pairing has all the drama and suspense of a “Brady Bunch” episode. They should put it on “Nick at Nite,” not ABC.

Michigan-Ohio State. I have one question for you.

That show’s still on?

Brendan Shanahan shouldn’t have been a hockey player. He should have been tasting wine, or taking in the theater. Or maybe he should have been in the aisle behind you at the bookstore, helping some pretty young thing pick out a title for her dad on Father’s Day.

Instead, he elbowed, bulled, and plowed his way into goalies’ nightmares. He put his movie star good looks on the line every night, until slowly his face got that Etch-a-Sketch look that befalls all hockey players, if they play long enough.

Shanahan played long enough. He said so, retiring yesterday at age 40, which in the NHL is the new 30 anymore.

Before Shanahan, power forward was a basketball designation. “Cerebral” and “hockey player” were antonyms. Someone named Brendan was probably a Pistons assistant coach.

Shanahan started and ended a Devil, and it’s only fitting that he bookended his career, because he was a library on skates.

He knew his movies, for one. Shanahan didn’t only play on lines, he could recite them. From many a flick. That’s another thing he could have been: a movie reviewer. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in a camel jacket, a sweater vest, and glasses.

Brendan Shanahan brought the word “refined” to hockey, both in terms of his demeanor off the ice and his goal-scoring skills on it. He was, at his best, perhaps the most complete player in hockey. He might have led the league many a season in the Gordie Howe Hat Trick: a goal, an assist, a fight.

Yeah, he could fight. Can’t all Irish men? In his career, he scored 656 goals and was whistled for over 40 hours worth of penalties. Often, that was the only way to keep Shanahan off the scoresheet—by hoping he’d end up in the penalty box.

The Red Wings grabbed him in his prime, hoodwinking the Hartford Whalers into coughing him up for an aging Paul Coffey and a meh Keith Primeau early in the 1996-97 season. Shanny was 27 at the time and coveted by every team in the league—at least those interested in winning hockey games.

Forget all the Detroit jokes. Shanahan couldn’t wait to get here. He was traded the afternoon of the Red Wings’ home opener, and made like those poor folks on “The Amazing Race” just so he could get to Joe Louis Arena in time for pre-game introductions.

So he makes it and it’s his turn to have his name called, and the roar is deafening. They stood and cheered and hollered and the guy hadn’t even taken a shift yet as a Red Wing.

But the people of Detroit, so knowledgeable about their hockey, knew their team had fleeced the Whalers and had brought to town a player the likes of whom hadn’t been spotted wearing the Winged Wheel since Bobby Probert turned people on with his own kind of hat trick: a goal, a fight, and another fight.

Shanahan was more talented than Probert, though. That, too, was no secret.

Shanny looked like a matinee idol and played like an action hero. The ladies who showed up at Joe Louis Arena wearing oversized Red Wings sweaters were smitten. He might have seemed like just another sniper on a team that was full of them, but then you’d look up and some poor sap was in a headlock and Shanahan—Brendan—was using the guy’s noggin as a punching bag.

He scored 309 goals as a Red Wing, nearly half his career total, and his best years were spent in Detroit, both in terms of individual accomplishments and those of the team. Three Stanley Cups he won playing with Yzerman and Draper and Lidstrom and Maltby and the rest.

Oh, and there was the time when he saved hockey.

Exaggeration? Sure—like calling water that’s at 210 degrees boiling.

It was after the horrific canceled season of 2004-05 that Shanahan went to work, making like Jimmy Carter and bringing the Players Association and ownership together. Others helped him but Shanny took the lead, putting his big brain to use and being instrumental in chiseling out an agreement that took the game out of conference rooms and put it back onto the ice.

Without Shanahan, the NHL might still be in hibernation. Another “exaggeration.”

It ended for him in Detroit shortly after Steve Yzerman retired in July 2006. Shanahan didn’t care to be part of the good old days. He thought his continued presence in the Red Wings locker room would stunt the growth of some of the kids, so he made like Sinatra and wanted to be a part of it—New York, New York.

But Shanny was getting closer to 38 and he could no longer score his age in goals. He popped in 29 pucks his first season as a Ranger, 23 the second. It used to be that he could score that without breaking a sweat. Now it was all he could muster without needing an oxygen mask.

Then a swan song last season with the Devils, the team he broke into the NHL with as an 18-year-old in 1987. In New Jersey he couldn’t play his age—at age 40 he skated in 34 matches. He scored six goals. The action hero was now just an extra.

So now it’s done—21 years in the books as an NHLer, 1,354 points scored, and all those penalty minutes. And three Stanley Cups. And still a face for movies.

He shouldn’t have been a hockey player, much less one helluva one.

Yet he was both. Go figure.

First, a semi-major announcement: “The Knee Jerks” will be moving up a couple of hours!

Beginning December 14, you’ll be able to get your jerkosity two hours earlier. The show will debut its new 9:00-11:00 ET time slot, so everyone can get some sleep on Monday nights!

The first quarter of the Red Wings’ season is almost done with, so on “The Knee Jerks”, my weekly gabfest with Big Al Beaton, we figured it was time to get a perspective on the team from someone who covers it, day in, day out.

Our guest was Ansar Khan, the team’s beat writer for MLive.com. Ansar has been on the Red Wings’ beat for about a dozen years, starting with his days at the Oakland Press.

Ansar gave us some good ice time, going up and down his wing and not committing any costly turnovers, as he gave us an insider’s look at the Red Wings. It was worthy of two points.

After talking Red Wings, including Ansar’s experience of being at Steve Yzerman’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Al and I got down to Detroit sports talk business.

Al wanted to riff on the Tigers’ off-season plans, particularly as they relate to the rumors swirling about the team possibly shopping Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson. So we plunged into that, along with chiding some of the so-called “experts” who have been reporting some pretty zany things that GM Dave Dombrowski is supposedly considering. Al’s voice went up a couple of octaves upon the mentioning of pitcher George Sherrill, and I went off on all the people in town who look at Granderson through rose-colored glasses.

After that, it was on to the Lions.

Al likes QB Matthew Stafford’s toughness, and feels that the kid won over some teammates after enduring the brutality that was Sunday’s game in Minnesota. I crabbed about the less-than-accurate throws and the drops of the accurate ones. We both agreed that if the Lions lose to Cleveland this Sunday, they may be looking at having the No. 1 overall pick two years in a row.

We took a few minutes to grind Patriots coach Bill Belichick into the turf for his boneheaded decision to go for it on fourth down late in the game against Indianapolis. I called Belichick unlikable, and Al said the decision smacked of hubris. I know–a $20 word, eh?

Then, as Al said, we had to “hustle” and go to our “Jerks of the Week.”

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Upcoming guests/topics:

Nov. 23 U-M/MSU football post-mortem
Nov. 30 TBD (likely Pistons-related)
Dec. 7: NHL Central roundtable with Bleacher Report writers from Columbus, Chicago, Nashville, and St. Louis
Dec. 14: Gregory Shamus, one of the best sports photographers you’ll ever know (Getty Images, Pittsburgh Penguins, Red Wings, Cleveland Cavaliers, and others); don’t forget—this will be our first 9:00 show!

Some highlights from Monday’s show:

Big Al

On the Tigers: “I can’t believe they’re going to dump payroll now. They could have up to $60 million come off the books before the 2011 season. And some of the rumors coming from out-of-towners are ludicrous!”

On the Lions: “How many different ways can we say that they suck?”

On Matthew Stafford: “He didn’t have happy feet. He showed a lot of toughness against the Vikings. Way more so than Joey Harrington or Scott Mitchell.”

Eno

On talks of trading Granderson: “There are a few bloggers in Detroit who I respect, who went on as if the Tigers had announced they were going to start drowning puppies!”

On the Lions-Browns game: “Maybe the NFL can black it out in Cleveland, too.”

On the No. 1 overall pick in 2010: “If they lose to the Browns, I think the Lions WILL get the No. 1 overall pick. They’ll have lost to the Browns AND the Rams.”

You can listen to the episode by clicking HERE.

It’s a hockey-centric episode tonight (Monday) on “The Knee Jerks,” my weekly gabfest on Blog Talk Radio with my co-host, Al Beaton, as we talk all things Detroit Red Wings and NHL with Kahn. Ansar Kahn, that is.

Khan has been the Red Wings beat writer for Mlive.com and Booth Newspapers since the 2000-01 season, and for several years prior to that for the Oakland Press. You can get the latest Red Wings insight from Kahn online at Mlive. After getting the scoop on the Wings and NHL, the Knee Jerks will spew all sort of thoughts on the past week of Detroit sports.

Tigers: We’ll give our thoughts on all the trade rumors surrounding the supposed availability of Curtis Granderson, Edwin Jackson, Brandon Inge and even Miguel Cabrera. There’s nothing wrong with listening to offers, but what do I think of some of the proposals being thrown around by the MSM? I’ll give you a hint. Starts with “ludi”, ends in “crous”.

Lions: Another Sunday, another loss. Same old, same old, right? Not exactly, as Matthew Stafford showed a toughness in getting beat up by an aggressive Vikings defense we never saw from such luminaries as Joey Harrington and Scott Mitchell.Coming up for the Lions is a huge game with the Browns. Why “huge” when they are playing the 1-7 Browns? The 1st overall pick in 2010 may be at stake.

Wolverines: Another Saturday, another loss. Another Monday, another possible NCAA “issue”. But it is tOSU week, so could it be possible the staggering to the end of the season Wolverines can step up their game? Uh…no. However, John Beilein’s basketball team started the season with a bang, as Manny Harris had a triple double in a win over NMU. Funny how the Wolverines’ fanbase is now pinning all their winning hopes on the hoopsters, when they were persona non grata a little more than two years ago.

Pistons: Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon are showing signs of being a solid one-two scoring punch . Even more unexpected is the offensive firepower backup PG Will Bynum is bringing off the bench and the surprisingly effective Ben Wallace.

As always, At the end of the show, we’ll also name our respective Jerk of the Week!

Tune in at 11PM every Monday night for the latest and greatest in sports talk…sports talk with a Detroit attitude! Of course, if you can’t tune in live, the podcast will be available for download and streaming at our show page Tuesday morning!