Peterson: Has a team ever had a bad draft?

May 5, 2021

It always amuses me to hear the comments from National Football League teams after the annual college football draft. I don’t think I can ever recall a team saying they had a bad draft. Most of the time, the main theme you hear is how the club “knocked it out of the park,” or “we really strengthened our team in this draft.” Horse hockey to those assessments. I know of many drafts that did just the opposite — many of those by the Detroit Lions. The one that really sticks out is the one a few years ago when the team had two picks in the first round. Detroit picked ...

Peterson: How will Lions, Packers draft?

April 28, 2021

The Detroit Lions have a long, and not very storied history, in the NFL draft. Despite finishing in the lower regions of the standings of the time, the Lions have constantly made picks that have made people scratch their heads. Without going into detail, you only have to look at the 2016 draft to understand that. Instead of going with top lineman Aaron Donald, they selected a tight end, Eric Ebron. Donald is today the top defensive tackle in the game, being a consistent big play factor. Ebron had problems hanging on to the football in Motown, but did improve after he was ...

Peterson: Recalling a special year

April 14, 2021

It’s hard to believe that 40 years have gone by since the spring of 1981. I was watching some of the St. Cloud State-Massachusetts NCAA hockey championship game over the weekend when it struck me how fast the years have flown by since. In April of 1981, I was just returning from Duluth, Minn., with the late Tom LaJeunesse. We had just covered the Final Four, which featured Michigan Tech, Northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. It was a good solid tournament with all the entrants coming from the Upper Midwest in the old days when the WCHA was the true hockey power in the ...

Peterson: Why baseball offers little thrill

April 7, 2021

All the signs are there. The snow banks have all but melted away. I just saw a robin the other day. The Masters golf tournament, a sure sign of spring, is this week. And even the famous “peepers” of WLUC-TV weatherman Karl Bohnak made their appearance just this week. So why don’t I feel any excitement about the major league baseball season? It could be because my longtime favorite team, the Detroit Tigers, appear to be headed for another under-.500 season. It isn’t all about winning or losing, either. I can clearly remember following the exploits of past Detroit teams ...

Peterson: A rare kind of player

March 31, 2021

He, or she, is the kind of player you seldom see on the basketball court. I’ve only seen a handful of them since I started watching the sport a very long time ago. They have that uncanny sense of where to be or where not to be. Karl Rautiola of Chassell is that kind of player. This past Saturday afternoon, the CHS junior forward displayed all those skills when he led the Panthers to a district tournament championship. Sure, he scored 41 of his team’s points in helping defeat a very good Dollar Bay-Tamarack City team in overtime. But he also found the time to haul down 12 ...

Peterson: Big Ten hoops absorbs beating

March 24, 2021

All season long, college basketball observers have been wondering if the BIG 10 was really as good as it appeared on paper. The recent NCAA tournament provided an answer, if an incomplete one. No, the conference wasn’t that great. Strong, but not the juggernaut many pundits had it pegged as. Of the nine league teams that landed a spot in the Big Dance, only one, Michigan, will be playing in the Sweet 16. In contrast, the PAC 10 has three teams still going. People are looking for reasons for the failure of the conference in what has been the strangest season of all. You have ...