With all of the fanfare that comes with the start of the football season, it’s easy to forget about the last couple months of baseball’s marathon season, especially when the hometown team has fallen out of contention.

Most Tigers fans probably got off the team’s bandwagon in mid-August after the team lost 21 of 27 games following the All-Star break. It was just the type of second-half slumber fans have become accustomed to in the Jim Leyland era.

Since that four-week stretch, however, the team quietly fought its way back over .500 and returned a sense of optimism for the future. Take away that lousy month when the team was ravaged by injuries and the Tigers would be 19 games over .500.

With the regular season coming to an end Sunday, it’s difficult to assess the team’s performance. Fans will be disappointed the Tigers couldn’t hang with Minnesota and win their division, but when you consider that a second or third-place finish was the consensus prediction before the season started, should anyone be surprised?

The offseason will undoubtedly bring sweeping change. By the time the Tigers take the field for spring training next March, we could be looking at a team with a dozen new players. Detroit Tigers General Manager and Team President Dave Dombrowski will have to make several significant personnel decisions as he tries to fill in the many blanks on the lineup card. There’s really only three position players that you can say with any certainty will return next season — Austin Jackson, Miguel Cabrera and catcher Alex Avila, if only because of his age and lack of alternatives. The rest is open to discussion.

One of the most difficult aspects of the offseason decision-making process will be whether to re-sign any of its trio of longest-tenured players, namely Magglio Ordonez, Brandon Inge and Jeremy Bonderman. They are among just a handful of holdovers from the 2006 World Series team that reinvigorated the franchise’s listless fan base. If the team does opt to part ways with all three, Justin Verlander could end up being the only integral player from that pennant-winning team that’s left by opening day 2011.

The other significant matter of business the Tigers face is less of a problem and more a question of strategy and careful calculation. So long as team owner Mike Ilitch doesn’t stray from his vow to continue spending money for the sake of building a winner, the Tigers will be blessed with a budget of as much as $60 million to spend on new acquisitions — enough money to rival that of the New York Yankees this winter.

Dombrowski will have to be smarter with the budget this time around, however. The criticism heaped upon him for past contract signings is warranted. Only now is the team free from the burden of the bad contracts given to Dontrelle Willis, Nate Robertson and others. It’s also imperative that the Tigers avoid giving out contracts based on loyalty. There will be equally effective options to Bonderman, Inge and Ordonez out there that will come at a lesser price.

You’d be surprised how quickly a departed fan favorite player is forgotten when his replacement is leading the team to the postseason, and ultimately that has to be Dombrowski’s goal. Detroit still only has one playoff appearance since 1988.

One way or the other, this offseason seems destined to signify the end of an era in Tigers baseball, though hopefully it will usher in a new period of prolonged competitiveness as the team builds around its impressive core of young

talent.