Sports

Last week my beloved television went POOF! It was seven years old, or 14 in sports writer years.  

So, what great sports events did I miss?

Well, I can’t be sure, of course, but I’m willing to bet… not much.

Sports writers complain about the dog-days of summer, when all we have to write about is tennis and Tiger and the Tigers – and, that’s about it. But there’s a lesser-known slow season for sports scribes, and it's called February.

Forty five years ago, the Super Bowl wasn’t even the Super Bowl.

They called it the NFL-AFL Championship game, until one of the founders renamed it after watching his grandson play with a “High Bouncing Ball” – a super ball.

Tickets were only fifteen bucks for that first game, and they barely sold half of those, leaving some 40,000 empty seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum.   

A 30-second ad cost only $42,000, and they weren’t any different than the ads they showed the previous weekend.

The half-time show featured three college marching bands, including one you might have seen from the University of Michigan.

Over the next couple decades, of course, the event became a veritable national holiday.  Tickets now sell for thousands of dollars, and ads for millions.  The game attracts more than 100 million viewers in the U.S. alone.

You can check-out some high-level squash in metro Detroit this weekend. And no, I’m not talking about butternut and acorn. I’m talking about the sport.

The Birmingham Athletic Club is hosting The Motor City Open professional squash tournament over the next few days.

The sport is similar to racket-ball. But the ball used in squash is not pressurized, so it doesn’t have much of a bounce. The strategy used in squash is also different.

Update: 5:00 p.m.:

The University of Michigan's athletic department announced today that San Diego State University’s Brady Hoke will lead the Wolverine football program.

Brady Hoke is no stranger to Ann Arbor. He worked as an assistant coach for the Wolverines for 8 seasons including on 1997’s national championship squad.

Hoke’s 28 year career includes stops at Grand Valley State, Western Michigan, and Toledo. 

The University of Michigan Athletic Department has announced that San Diego State University football coach Brady Hoke will be the next Wolverine football coach, succeeding Rich Rodriguez.

Here's the U of M statement

The search for the next University of Michigan head football coach will apparently not end in the Louisiana swamps.    U of M Athletic Director David Brandon met Monday with Louisiana State University head coach Les Miles.  But flew home empty handed.