Football in spring in the U.P.?

August 19, 2020

When the Michigan High School Athletic Association made its recent decision to scrap the high school football season, it was met with opposition from several quarters. A number of parents of players have opposed it and are even threatening lawsuits to have it changed. I don’t quite go that far, but I do question the idea of switching the grid season to the spring. Now, spring football might be fine downstate. After all, any snow they might receive below the Mackinac Bridge will likely be long gone by early April. And the weather can be downright balmy at that time of the ...

Is BIG 10 closure a rush to judgement?

August 12, 2020

Now that it’s official as far as the Big 10 football season is concerned, one has to wonder just how far this rush to judgement will go. When the Big 10 announced this week that it was scrapping the season because of COVID-19, it opened up a variety of options for those conferences who are planning to go ahead. The Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference say they will go by the advice of their own doctors on deciding whether football can be played. In a way, that makes more sense than the Big 10’s close-it-down right now decision. But the odds are very ...

Peterson: NCAA could be another casualty

August 4, 2020

For an organization that has been under fire in many quarters over the past decade or so, the NCAA could well be another casualty of the current mess we find ourselves in today. The COVID-19 disaster has already closed the athletic schedules of some smaller leagues (the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association is a prime example). The MIAA action caused Finlandia University to cancel its fall schedule — dealing the Lions football program what could be a telling blow. More on that later. But now football players in some major conferences have indicated they’re reluctant to ...

Tournament planning days over

July 29, 2020

Just the other day, I heard a voice boom out in my direction from across the street in Houghton. It was a familiar voice — but one I hadn’t heard for many years. The voice was that of a former softball opponent, going all the way back to the 1970s. “What we need right now is another big slow-pitch tournament,” he said. “The kind we had back in the old days.” While he had a reasonable point, starting a new tournament in these troubled times is not feasible. For one thing, we would have to enforce the safety limits that surely would be there. For another, we ...

Peterson: Can it be there is a glimmer?

July 21, 2020

Somewhere in all the darkness that has been 2020, there has to be a glimmer of light. No, I’m not unrealistic enough to believe a vaccine will be miraculously discovered to combat COVID-19 in the next few weeks. But it would be nice to hope that sports — in some form — can be restored before fall arrives. I firmly believe the loss of sports has damaged the American psyche greatly, far more than most people would believe. Late and great Hall of Fame basketball coach Al McGuire once said “Sports is the coffee break of life.” He was 100 percent correct because the dull ...

Peterson: Chip Hilton once lived in Crystal Falls

July 14, 2020

In these troubled times we find ourselves in today, there’s a tendency to look in the past as far as sports goes. There’s no baseball to watch on television ... or even on the radio. And there’s no guarantee there will even be a shortened 60-game MLB season. Football would have been a nice second choice. But again that sport, like hockey and basketball, are all threatened by the pandemic. So, I did the next best thing: I dusted off my old Chip Hilton books. Written by former college basketball Hall of Fame coach Clair Bee in the 1930s, the books were centered around a ...