Meet your 2010 Detroit ROWDIES! (FAIL)

RedRedemption · Oct 21, 2010

Detroit has it rough.

blunto · Oct 21, 2010

Steve U (Deadspin comment) said:

Even worse - all eleven were actually Mark Madsen, wearing a series of increasingly-absurd disguises.
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DdotConrad503 · Oct 21, 2010

Spacemoth said:

I can already imagine it, a section of Detroit's stands populated by a bunch of Tyrone Biggumses, cheering for their next fix.
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5 o'clock free crack giveaway??

Kam · Oct 21, 2010

Detroit is a great sports city. It's a real shame about how Detroit is doing.

TheRealist137 · Oct 21, 2010

Wow if I were in Detroit I'd be all over this.

rockets247 · Oct 21, 2010

EPIC FAIL

Jontro · Oct 21, 2010

rockets247 said:

EPIC FAIL
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LOLOLOL man now that's just below sad. I hope at least 50 people show up. I'm embarrassed for the organization.

magnetik · Oct 21, 2010

here's the post for the lazy...

More than 300 people registered to try out for the Detroit Pistons' new 50-person spirit section, the Power Plant.

Exactly 11 of them showed up at the audition Wednesday night at The Palace of Auburn Hills, which is not very peppy. But this is a cheer squad, so you have to look on the bright side:Those 11 people have a very, very good chance of making the cut. And are the Pistons giving up?

That wouldn't be very peppy, either.

The Pistons Power Plant is designed to be a professional version of Michigan State University's Izzone — a core group of diehards whose sworn duty is to get the rest of the crowd standing, shrieking, frothing and rending their garments.

What that will do, in theory, is assure the Pistons of a whopping home court advantage. In return for their assistance, the Power Planters will each receive a free lower-level ticket for all 41 games — with the requirement they show up for every single, solitary, Oct. 29-through-April-11 one.

The people who didn't make it to the audition do not have great promise in that regard. But you get the feeling that the 11 who showed up would arrive for every tipoff even if they had to walk.

Showing pure passion
Clifford Wade of Hazel Park, for instance, named his 2-year-old son Rasheed Amir, after former Pistons Wallace and Johnson. He's a 38-year-old armed guard who wore a Pistons championship jacket over a Ben Wallace shirt over a Rip Hamilton jersey atop Pistons jeans and Hamilton basketball shoes.

"I love the Pistons," he said, and his wife loves him, which is why she signed off on a commitment to 41 games — plus, if you're an optimist, the playoffs.

Wade was the first potential Power Planter to show up, and before it became clear he'd have precious little competition, he outlined his strategy: "Be real. If it's in you, if it's love, it's going to come out."

Christina Mullen, 49, a Spirit Airlines flight attendant from Detroit, also did her clothes shopping at the Pistons rack. If it helps her case any, she said she fell for the Pistons when current president Joe Dumars was a player, and she noticed that "he had the sexiest legs ever."

Anthony Sterzick, 19, and Nathan Ziolko, 18, do not have sexy legs. They run cross country for Oakland University, so they have long, skinny legs. The legs were tinted blue and orange, part of their pick-me-please outfits, and Ziolko wasn't exactly sure what kind of paint he had picked up at a fabric store.

They might be blue and orange until midseason, whether they're cheering or not.

More auditions ahead
With that sort of enthusiasm to work with — 11 people can make an astonishing amount of noise in an otherwise empty 22,000-seat arena — Tim Dameron couldn't help but be upbeat.

That's his nature anyway. The Pistons' game presentation manager, 41, is a former MSU cheerleader. So sure, he said, he was surprised by the sparse turnout, but it's a weeknight and it's an unknown and these things take time.

"That just means we need to build it," he said. "In other cities, it's huge. We think it's going to be great."

The Houston Rockets were the first NBA team to try to clone an Izzone. Their Red Rowdies, established in 2006, have created the template for things like attendance (you can miss up to three games, but you have to find your own loudmouthed substitute) and lame cheers. After a steal by Luis Scola, for instance, they chant, "He's here, he's there, Luis Scola is everywhere."

The Power Plant can do better than that with 11 people. They'll look for reinforcements anyway, though, with on-the-spot auditions at Friday's 7:30 p.m. exhibition game against Memphis.

"We're keeping our options completely open," Dameron says. "No preconceptions."

Age, gender, size, ability to recognize a half-court trap — none of it matters, as long as Power Planters are willing to set their hair on fire for the cause.

Metaphorically, that is.

But then again …

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20101021/OPINION03/10210362/1127/rss13#ixzz1334XIQuf
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