The Motor City: in search of the Detroit Cougars

The Homeland Security officer’s day suddenly improved.

“So, let me get this straight. You’re a UK citizen, live in Vancouver, Canada, and you’ve decided to come to Detroit for four days...just to look around?”

I’m standing at a counter in a scruffy immigration office on the US side of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. The driver of the Tunnel Bus and its four other passengers are waiting for me to clear so that the bus can continue its journey to various drop-offs in downtown Detroit. The suspicious reaction of the tiny red-headed DSH officer isn’t unexpected; I’d been getting similar winces and raised eyebrows from friends since booking the trip several weeks before. You’re going where? At this point I have a choice: I can continue to mumble monosyllabic answers and hope she loses interest, or I can come clean – admit I’m not just here as a tourist, but as a football fan....no, that’s soccer...and in search of the Detroit Cougars, a little known team that played in the city for seven weeks nearly 44 years ago. This second option would probably ease my border crossing, yet I know I’ll sound peculiar. As ardent as I am in my sporting interests, I’m aware that they may appear somewhat niche to the average North American.

I stick to the minimal answers. She shouts to the bus driver “On you go...”, while nodding towards me “...he can walk”. After a baggage search and further questioning (Her: “What’s the back pack for?” Me: “To carry things”) I’m sent out through the forecourt of open-boot vehicles, up the slope and onto Jefferson Avenue, downtown Detroit’s main waterfront thoroughfare. Walking into the Motor City.

Let’s get a few scene setting and downright dumbfounding facts about Detroit out of the way.

• Latest census data shows that since 2000, the population of Detroit has dropped 25%. That’s 238,270 people; an average of one resident every 22 minutes. The population of the United States as a whole has grown 9.7% in the same period
• That means that today’s population is the lowest since 1910, four years before Henry Ford started mass producing cars
• The city’s population peaked at almost 1.9 million in 1950, then making it the fourth largest city in the United States; today it is 713,777 and ranks as 18th largest
• Michigan, in which Detroit is the largest city, is the only US state to have experienced population shrinkage over the last ten years
• There are 80,000 vacant homes in Detroit, 22.8% of the total housing stock

I’m in Detroit on the trail of the Cougars, but I’m also here as a traveller, lover of cities, and voyeur – curious to witness a once great city slowly die.

It’s Thursday. The first thing I do, as a proper tourist, is go to the Visitor Center. Now this is a Visitor Center that plainly isn’t used to seeing many visitors. To begin with, it’s on the 10th floor of an aging high rise. I’m greeted by a kindly looking white woman in her late 50s. I mention her race because frankly, in Detroit, it still matters. The city itself is 87% black or Hispanic, the more affluent white population moving out in droves to the suburbs and surrounding municipalities following the notorious 1967 race riot, which changed the city forever and occurred only one month after the Cougars squad returned to Belfast. While helping me with maps I notice the woman’s accent and she confirms she’s originally from Dublin and has been in Detroit 23 years. So I try my luck and tell her the real purpose of my visit. She shows no recognition of either Glentoran or the Detroit Cougars, although expresses her curiosity that I’d return to the city after having being here several decades ago to play on a football tour. I don’t correct her, politely change the subject and soon leave when I notice her check her watch (4:50pm) and begin to shut down her computer.

It’s now 10pm and I’m standing in The Old Shillelagh waiting to meet Paul Altesleben. Paul is Corresponding Secretary of the Metro Detroit Soccer League. His wife serves as Recording Secretary. I’d set-up the meeting prior to my trip and despite Paul not being familiar with the story of the Cougars I still wanted to meet someone involved in football in the city today. The Old Shillelagh is in Greektown, less than a 10 minute walk from my hotel and yet Paul had recommended that I catch public transit, which I hadn’t. When he arrives he explains that he knows people can be nervous walking around Detroit. But in fact, the streets were just too quiet to be scary. They were quiet in the business district earlier that afternoon, even when I was leaving the Visitor Center at rush hour, and they’re quiet now in the heart of the entertainment district at 10pm on a Thursday night. We’re meeting this late because Paul has been playing his weekly mixed indoor five-a-side. He’s wearing a US Soccer track top, a Lamontville Golden Arrows FC shirt (Durban, South Africa) and an Altesleben FC cap. The guy on the guitar is playing I’ll Tell Me Ma and most patrons are watching the Detroit Tigers baseball team lose in Baltimore on TV screens above the bar. He explains later that the football club logo on the cap is copied from the emblem of Stroh, a former Detroit brewery, and I like his senses of priority and localism. Paul tells me that following our email exchange he’d researched Glentoran online. He compliments me, sort of, on The Oval. He doesn’t know about the Cougars but seems pleased to find out that Detroit is a founding city of North American professional soccer and appears proud when I tell him about the Glentoran Community Trust wall mural in an east Belfast street that depicts the Cougars name and logo. I ask if there has ever been a movement to bring a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise to Detroit. Apparently the owner of a third tier side somewhere north of the city has aspirations for moving his team through the divisions and finally entering the MLS, but Paul doesn’t sound hopeful. The nearest MLS teams are Chicago Fire and Toronto FC, both about four hours away by car.

GCT wall mural in Belfast depicting Detroit Cougars name and logo

We move to a more upscale bar where the drinks are served in glasses rather than plastic cups, past the workmen erecting beer tents in vacant car lots in readiness for tomorrow’s Opening Day festivities (first home game of the season for the Detroit Tigers). Paul has been to Belfast on his travels (“I wish I’d known about the Cougars and I’d have looked up your club”) and so, with some understanding of the intricacies of Northern Ireland, says he didn’t know what I’d make of The Old Shillelagh. When we loosen up around each other he talks about race in Detroit and I about religion in Belfast. He says he figured Glentoran is a Protestant club as he’d noticed we’ve been previous winners of the Ulster Cup. That’s why he’d decided not to wear his Celtic shirt this evening, although he claims also to own a Rangers shirt, bought when visiting Glasgow, and I notice later him wearing the light blue in photos on Facebook. We spend the next hour or so swapping stories from football trips, me especially curious to hear about his time in South Africa to watch all four of the USA’s games in the 2010 World Cup. He also talks about amateur soccer in Detroit and it sounds a familiar story of small time sport in any city – teams forming and folding, petty politics, last minute drops out and scrambles for players, the whole system kept afloat by the commitment of a very small nucleus of enthusiasts.

We’re getting on well and so I branch off from football and ask Paul what he does for a living. He’s an 8th grade maths teacher. He goes on to explain how his former school, which served mostly black kids, has been merged with another local school with a mainly white student roll. Schools and other public services are consolidating and closing all over the city.

As we say our goodbyes Paul promises to find me “an old timer” who would’ve been in the city in the late 60s, but this doesn’t sound like a straightforward task. I try to do some demographic calculations in my head. Factor one: the Detroit population was ~1.5 million in 1967 and is 713,777 today; therefore over half the population count during the time of the Cougars has since left or died and not been replaced. Factor two: average attendances at Cougars home games were only 5,708 i.e. one-third of one percent of the population of the city at the time. Factor three: I’m looking for someone born no later than 1950 to ensure they have more than early childhood memories of the Cougars, and yet no earlier than 1935 or 1940 to ensure they’re still in good health. Combine all three factors and I’m sad to realise there are probably no more than a handful of people left in Detroit who remember attending Cougars games.

Friday morning and I’m embarking on a full self-guided Cougars city tour. I stand for ages on Woodward Avenue – the spine of Detroit and epicentre of downtown – to catch a bus northwest but none arrive. I resort to walking back to my hotel and taking a taxi. The driver is friendly and so we chat. I explain my interest in Detroit. As we pass Cobo Hall I tell him that the team went there to see Frank Sinatra in summer ’67. While still on the freeway I spot the Fisher Building rising up in the distance, recognising its art deco design from photos on the internet. This was the office accommodation of The Detroit Soccer Co., Inc. 2400 Fisher Building, Detroit, Michigan 48202. Where W. Emmett Simms, Vice President and General Manager, ran the company and the great and the good of the Detroit auto and sports industries convened for Board meetings. I remark to the driver what a beautiful building it is and he doesn’t reply. As we draw alongside I notice the exterior is dirty and dilapidated. Before going inside I cross West Grand Boulevard to stand beside Cadillac Place, former world headquarters of General Motors, to get a photo, only taking out my camera when several shady characters have shuffled past.

Fisher Building, Detroit - former office of The Detroit Soccer Co., Inc.

As soon as I step inside I’m instantly impressed. Built in 1928, the Fisher Building is all marble, tiles, plaster moulds and gold leaf. The ceiling paintings in the atrium, which runs along the side of the Fisher Theatre, are Michelangelo-esque and 10 foot glass chandeliers hang from 20 foot extensions. I check out the wall mounted directory and scan for offices on the 24th floor. Two companies: 2401 – VMX International LLP and 2410 – Health Management Systems. No organisation listed for Suite 2400. I move past the security guards and catch the elevator to 24 and walk out into a dark rectangular hallway with several office doors around its perimeter. A woman emerges as I approach the only one with signs of life behind it. She asks if she can help and I tell her I’m looking for 2400. She’s unsure of the numbers but asks the name of the company. I mumble something about 2400, she again asks the name of the company, and I come clean with a “This is going to sound a little strange, but...”. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem fazed by my quest and explains that the whole floor has been remodelled since the 60s and so there probably isn’t a Suite 2400 anymore. She presses the elevator call button and leaves. There’s nothing else I can do but circle a few laps of the quiet hallway and know that from within a few paces – forward, behind, left or right – the Detroit Cougars were administered and match tickets were sold. I regret not bringing a plaque to screw onto the wall.

Floor 24, Fisher Building

I go back down to the atrium, buy a coffee and today’s Detroit Free Press and sit down to read. There’s a front page story about a software tycoon buying downtown office space and moving large numbers of staff there: the city and its people attempting to diversify from the auto industry that has both made and destroyed it. The inside pages talk unconvincingly of the City’s plans for a light rail scheme on Woodward Avenue, another attempt to regenerate through a multimillion dollar mass transit project. The Homestyle supplement bizarrely contains no ads for homes for sale. House prices in Detroit have dropped by 25% since 2008. This is similar to Belfast, but Detroit didn’t enjoy any of the boom experienced by Northern Ireland, and most of the western world, in the earlier part of the decade.

I walk out of the main exit and take a right, travelling only one block west from 2nd Avenue to 3rd Street. I’m looking for the Howard Johnson New Center Motor Lodge. This was the team hotel, home to Glentoran players and staff for the duration of the tour, except when they were ‘on the road’ in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Toronto. All I see is a car park and a McDonalds, but this is definitely the spot as I see the Henry Ford Hospital rise in the background and recognise other landmarks from an old photo printed in the 25th Annual Reunion Dinner brochure. The hotel building is gone, there’s not much to see, so I discreetly snap a few pictures and walk back to the Fisher Building where I call a taxi to take me to the University of Detroit Mercy, McNichols Campus.

Former site of the Howard Johnson New Center Motor Lodge - Detroit Cougars team hotel

It’s 5pm. The University of Detroit Mercy is a private university that is affiliated with the Jesuits and the Sisters of Mercy. The McNichols Campus in northwest Detroit was home to the U of D Stadium, which hosted the Detroit Cougars. The stadium – venue of a W2 D3 L1 home record for the Cougars – was demolished in 1971 but I want to see its location and get a sense of campus atmosphere.

Large, low rise academic buildings intermingled with prison-like residential halls dominate the grounds. Only a few students walk around, either with tennis bags on their backs or beer crates in their hands. I assume that most have gone home for the weekend: like Queen’s University and the University of Ulster, few of the students of the U of DM are from far away. There are more attractive places than Detroit for non-locals to spend their college years. Outside the perimeter fence on the southeast corner of the campus I notice some residential ruins, by now a typical sight. Nearly a quarter of all houses in Detroit are unoccupied and most of these lie derelict, often the victims of arson and always of glass, plumbing and scrap metal looting. From what I can tell, these ruins aren’t limited to one or two isolated areas of town, but are sprinkled throughout. As I looked down residential streets at rows of detached timber and brick houses in most parts of the city I could see every fourth or fifth house in ruins. For the remaining residents, this of course renders their homes all but worthless. If no-one wants or is able to buy and fix-up the derelict house next door for a pittance, then an occupied home is also without any value. For a while I stroll glumly around this southeast corner snapping photos of a car park, mistakenly thinking that this was the site of the old stadium and looking at the cracks in the asphalt where once Trevor Thompson fired in goals.

A Detroit ruin...in Glentoran colours

Then I realise my sense of direction is 90 degrees out and head to the far side of the large modern sports hall, where I’m delighted to discover a running track around an artificial grass football pitch. A women’s game is underway and there are about 50 people watching from bleachers on the half way line across the pitch from the team dugouts. This must be the Detroit Titans. Titans is the generic name for all sports teams at the University of Detroit Mercy. It refers most famously to its basketball team, which is housed in Calihan Hall – an 8,295-seater indoor stadium i.e. the ‘sports hall’, but also includes the men’s and women’s soccer teams. The pitch is within the U of DM’s perimeter fence on the very northeast corner of campus with a residential street to the side and a main road behind the north goal. I check the street signs and compare them to my notes: this is definitely the site of the old stadium and I get excited, wanting to explain everything to one of the players, coaching staff or fans, which of course I don’t for fear of sounding ridiculous.

Detroit Titians sports field at the University of Detroit Mercy - former site of the U of D Stadium, which was home to the Detroit Cougars in 1967

I stay for a while and watch the game, appreciating how technically good women’s college soccer actually is, and then wander around the adjacent car park. The old U of D Stadium actually straddled what are now the sports pitch and the car park. I walk down to where I guess the centre circle was, and then to both goal mouths, all the while trying to picture those six home games and think about the mark they have made on the history and heritage of Glentoran FC. Then I go into Calihan Hall. I poke my head into the basketball arena but a bunch of students are staging some kind of show, so I leave and walk around the Detroit Titans Hall of Fame, an impressive visual history of great players and games down through the generations of basketball, track and field, tennis, soccer and American football teams. Towards the end of the exhibition I see a beautiful backlit photo of the old stadium, full to capacity for what looks like an American football game in the first half of the last century. I recognise the distinctive floodlight pylons that I’d read about, positioned between the stands and the pitch. I note a few surrounding landmarks and go back outside to check my coordinates of where exactly in today’s car park and sports field the old stadium was located. Eventually I realise I’m exhausted and go back downtown to my hotel.

Photo of the old U of D Stadium in the Detroit Titans Hall of Fame

Now it’s Saturday morning and I’m running late for a group tour of Southwest Detroit organised by Inside Detroit, a private non-profit that seeks to promote and provide education about the city. It established in 2007 because no-one else was doing it, not even City authorities. Today’s two hour tour would take us around Corktown and Mexicantown, both areas named after the origins of their first inhabitants. Both areas depressed, full of vacant space where homes and other buildings once stood (locally know as ‘urban prairies’), and devoid of people on the streets. To be fair, Mexicantown is a little more alive, although one of the guides, who Monday-Friday works for the local business association, gets disproportionately excited about a supermarket that has undertaken two extensions in the last ten years. Everywhere I look, including downtown, I can see few options for discretionary spending: hardly any cafes, bars, newsagents or other shops, not even the classic indicator of UK inner city poverty – ubiquitous fast food outlets. Aside from in a downtown convention center which caters for the fly-in, fly-out business classes, I saw only a single Starbuck’s my whole stay. Many will consider this a good thing, but it’s not a sign of a thriving city in today’s America.

Both tour guides are white locals and advocates for Detroit. They are determined not to lead an urban decay tour and while we do visit a few derelict buildings the emphasis is all on the grandeur of the original architecture and prospects for refurbishment. I want to be convinced but am not. In their evangelistic zeal they only seem to be pointing out the exceptions that prove the rule: a community action group that occasionally organises litter pick-ups; a small business that has recently renovated its facade; a local artist that is splashing paint all over a burned-out house in some form of playschool attempt at social commentary.

Michigan Central Station - abandoned and derelict

We stop for refreshments and I get talking to the lead tour guide. He looks mid-twenties and is studying political science and economics at Wayne State University. He asks what I’m doing in Detroit and I tell him about the Cougars, their link with my home town of Belfast and my quest to visit sites of relevance in the city. He makes a small grunt of recognition when I mention the Detroit Cougars, but as he turns and walks off to make conversation with another group of customers I can tell he was just being polite.

As the tour ends I ask the same guide for directions to the Detroit Historical Museum. I’ve got a few hours to spare before the Detroit Tigers v Kansas City Royals baseball game late that afternoon. He says he lives close by and will give me a ride. As I wait for him in the Inside Detroit office I flip through the 624 pages of The Detroit Almanac: 300 Years of Life in the Motor City. I search the index under ‘Cougars’, ‘Detroit Cougars’, ‘soccer’ and ‘John Colrain’ and find no references. The tour guide asks if I’m ready and we depart.

Before my trip I’d shared several pleasant and informative emails with Joel Stone, Curator of the Detroit Historical Museum. Joel doesn’t recall the Cougars but seemed happy to help me on my mission and recommended some reading about Detroit so I could understand what was going on in the city’s politics and society in the 60s, especially in connection with the riot. He had spent some time studying at University College Cork in the late 70s and so was happy to draw comparisons between Detroit and what he knew of Belfast, despite his southern educators “suggesting that going to The North was not a good idea”. And so I wanted to visit his Museum.

I walk around the displays that tell the story of the city’s industrialisation and growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and panel after panel outlining its intimate relationship with the auto industry. I pass by a large display of ‘New Artefacts’ that have recently been donated to the Museum and notice some old Detroit Tigers memorabilia. The Museum will remain custodians of these artefacts and down through the decades they will be used both for private research and to publically tell their own tales of Detroit life. I start to weigh up how much I treasure my own small Cougars collection and how important it is that Detroit be reminded of this short chapter in its history, which has otherwise been forgotten.

I leave the Museum and walk back down Woodward Avenue towards the huge green floodlights of Comerica Park. The city or its suburbs host four major league teams and each of North America’s favourite sports are represented – Detroit Tigers (baseball), Detroit Lions (American football), Detroit Red Wings (ice hockey) and Detroit Pistons (basketball). During my stay I ask two people which sport rules Detroit: one replies baseball, the other American football. Despite or perhaps because of its modern day problems, Detroit remains a true blue collar sports town. I have a ticket for the baseball, only the second home game of the season, and munch peanuts with 33,809 others as the Tigers lose 3-1 to the Royals. Just about everyone is wearing a Detroit Tigers jacket, sweatshirt, t-shirt or baseball cap in dark blue and orange, but I notice several people with green versions emblazoned with shamrocks. Detroit is still Irish.

Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, with Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, in the background

After the game I get a call from Nick Deren confirming a time and place for us to meet. Nick is Head Coach of the Detroit Titans men’s team, undoubtedly the best soccer XI in Detroit today. The Titans are an NCAA Division 1 side, and therefore among the top 204 college teams in the country. Due to America’s vastness, the league system is regionalised until the play-off stages; however the Titans still regularly travel the length and breadth of the nation to play in tournaments. Players aren’t paid, but Nick receives a significant annual budget both for travel and for either subsidising or paying in full his players’ tuition fees as an incentive to attract the best possible talent to the university. His college-team budget certainly exceeds the annual turnover of Glentoran FC. Academic entry standards can be quietly lowered for the better players. His whole 25-man squad of 18-23 year olds train 20 hours a week.

Nick has just finished coaching a 90 minute training session before a ‘spring scrimmage’ tomorrow against local rivals Oakland University. He doesn’t want to come downtown, preferring instead that we meet not far from the U of DM in a suburb called Ferndale. It’s only a 20 minute cab ride from my hotel but I arrive in a busy main street, full of restaurants and night life that feels a million miles away from Detroit. It’s the home town of rapper Eminem and, from what I can see, it’s almost exclusively white. When I arrive in Dino’s, Nick, 33, is already seated at the bar, finishing an iced tea, and we spend the next three hours talking football. He is a former Detroit Titans star player and after graduation and three or four years “in the real world” he returned to become Assistant Coach. 18 months ago he got the top job, a full time position. He’s a coach to the core. Before long he starts scribbling on napkins to show me the formations that he likes his team to play. He talks about the lengths he goes to scout and attract talented high school players not only from Michigan but surrounding states and into Canada. Recently the college has started offering places to footballers from east Africa and the current team’s top striker is Kenyan. Following three, four or five years of NCAA Division 1 football, many of his players go on to play in the lower division pro or semi-pro leagues. Some have made it in Hungary and Scandinavia, although none have yet been drafted to the MLS.

I’ve brought the 25th Annual Reunion brochure and flip through it with Nick, concentrating on photos that show the old U of D Stadium in the background. He quietly listens to me talk about the Glens, and the Detroit Cougars, but I know he knows it’s a long way from the English Premier League, which he watches on ESPN. He finishes his third iced tea and leaves, promising to get in touch when he comes to Vancouver on a planned scouting trip. Half an hour later I collapse into bed.

It’s Sunday and time to leave Detroit. Although it will continue to disintegrate, the city has charmed me and I know I’ll be back. I come from Belfast and have learned to see beneath the veneer of a place. Yet as I wait to travel through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel I can’t help but draw sad comparisons between the decline of the Motor City and that of Glentoran since the happier days of our union in summer 1967.

The story of the Detroit Cougars has faded and gone in Detroit, a city with other things on its mind, but it will continue to live on in Belfast. Like the 1914 Vienna Cup, 1941 Belfast Blitz, 1949 return to The Oval, and European nights of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, the Cougars will remain a cornerstone of our great club’s past. But these four days in this city has reminded me that standing still and expecting things to stay the same forever is not an option. It’s important for us all to continue to make history, not be doomed to merely playing it on loop in our memories.