Several years ago, when I was still in high school, ESPN had a contract with the NHL and developed their own theme music for games that became iconic. It is still hard for me to sit down to watch a hockey game and not hear that music in my head. The theme music even made it into the ESPN NHL ...
It was with more than a little regret that I read about the recent retirement of long-time Ontonagon High School basketball coach Dick Franti. In a business where you see coaches come and go with the regularity of a north wind off Lake Superior, Franti was unique. Sure, he was around for a ...
There are a number of strange things in the world of sports, that quite honestly, baffle me. Take the just completed National Football League draft, if you will. After listening to a so-called battery of experts (Mel Kiper Jr. and numerous others) dissect the draft for the last year, I still ...
Last week, hockey fans were treated to not one, not two, but three Game Sevens. Man, talk about an opportunity ripe with chances to run the full gamut of emotions over the course of 30 or so hours. On Tuesday evening, the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs got things going with a bang, ...
It was one of those things I intended to do …. but never got around to. The year was 1968, one of the most turmoil-filled in the history of this country. There was unrest in city streets, assassinations of our leaders and riots wherever you looked. But it was also the Year of the Tiger, ...
With two exciting games on Sunday afternoon and early evening, NHL hockey fans were treated to events leading to two of the best words in the English language: Game Seven. The Boston Bruins overcame a 1-0 deficit to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the afternoon game with power play goals from Brad ...
As far as I’m concerned, it’s never too early — or too late — to talk football. And the next big day for fans of the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions is coming up later this month with the annual college draft. The Packers showed definite signs of breaking down last season. Not ...
own the chute to the clubhouse at Augusta National Golf Club Sunday, a familiar cheer followed him, “Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!” How appropriate. I have never been a Tiger Woods fan. I respected what he did on the course, and hated him for his actions away from it. However, as Sunday ...
It was of those things I could never could figure out. Why did the annual Masters Golf Tournament hold such a fascination for me? It wasn’t because I had any particular interest in the sport. While I did my share of hacking around local courses, I never developed any golf skills to speak ...
Full disclosure from the outset: I did not sit and watch the NHL’s reveal of “Hockeyville USA.” I fully admit that I was enjoying a quiet Sunday of trying to find a goaltender for my hockey rental in the evening and playing a computer game about taming dinosaurs. When my phone buzzed, I ...
It’s way too early to make any predictions in the major league baseball season. But this is one I’ll post one right now. The Detroit Tigers are going to have a very rough year. The only reason the Tigers won’t lose 100 games is because they play in baseball’s weakest division, the ...
When I first heard that the Calumet Colosseum was up for Kraft Hockeyville again this year, my first thought was a very simple one: They wouldn’t award this thing to another U.P. rink so soon after Marquette’s Lakeview Arena, would they? In fact, I admit that I did not put a lot of effort ...
With that annual sports phenomena of March Madness here, the prospects of a national championship in NCAA basketball coming to Michigan are good. I firmly believe that either Michigan State or the University of Michigan can walk away with a title in the next couple of weeks. I’m aware ...
I was walking around the Michigan Tech campus Saturday doing the same thing almost everyone else I saw around campus doing: playing Pokemon Go. There is very little that convinces average Michigan Tech students to leave the safety of their dorm rooms, but apparently Pokemon Go does a pretty ...
There is no question about it: The Iron Mountain High boys basketball team was robbed of a state championship last Saturday at Breslin Center in East Lansing. The Michigan High School Athletic Association can sugar-coat it all it wants, but this was a pure case of highway robbery. The ...
“Know anybody over 30 who would be interested in playing this weekend in old timers?” was the question that hit my phone via text message on Monday afternoon while I was in the office. “Ambo is a few short apparently,” was the message that followed. Those two texts were from a ...
One often hears about a sports team being physically tough. But that’s a term, while overused, that also pertains to being mentally tough. A good example of that came during the Michigan-Michigan State basketball game this past weekend. The Spartans, missing two starters in Josh ...
With the high school basketball districts and regionals currently going on, I often think back to when this was truly the sporting event of the year in the Upper Peninsula. It was an iconic event because the tournaments were usually held in bigger venues. The practice of scheduling the ...
It’s a time of the year when special things can happen. But March Madness has two sides to it — hence you get the “Beware the Ides of March” concept. Oh, there is the special side when an underdog team rises up and knocks off the heavily favored opponent. Take the 1969 district ...
Just the other day I was talking to Gogebic Community College men’s basketball coach Dennis Mackey after a game versus Finlandia University. Mackey, the former Ewen-Trout Creek High product, said he recalled me covering a Panthers game back in the day. “You’ve been doing this for ...