Sports

The Lions will play under the Monday night spotlight this evening as they face off against the Giants.

Last week, fans watched the team start the season with a win – amidst errors all over the place.

Hang around the Midwest long enough and you’ll hear just about every Big Ten fan say, “I love fall!”

It makes a lot of sense when you experience our famously frigid, gray winters, our non-existent springs, and our surprisingly steamy summers.

But in Big Ten towns, life begins anew not in spring, but in fall— when the students and professors return right on schedule, concerts and shows pack the calendar again, and the whole cycle starts over.

The Next Idea

I confess that I love football. I played it in high school. Some of my teammates went on to the college gridiron, and one of them even had a long career in the NFL. That’s the dream, isn’t it? Big plays and big money on Sunday. Well apparently things are changing these days, and with good reason.

Just in time for college football's kickoff, Michigan Radio sports commentator John U. Bacon returns to Stateside today to give us his first predictions of the season.

To start, the big game happening this Saturday in Arlington, Texas will pit the Michigan Wolverines (ranked 11th) against the Florida Gators (ranked 16th).

Bacon said the tea leaves tell him to expect a “wild, gun-slinging, crazy game.”

Dan Gilbert and Tom Gores want to build a soccer stadium in downtown Detroit and then become owners of a Major League Soccer (MLS) Team. Gilbert is founder and chairman of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Tom Gores owns the Detroit Pistons with his private equity firm.

Gilbert wants to build this new soccer stadium on the unfinished Wayne County jail site, which stopped construction due to cost overruns. He wants the stadium so badly that he’s offering to build a new $500 million criminal justice complex for the county somewhere else.

The question is, why?

A public cricket field opened in Detroit on Saturday for the first time since the 1970s.

Cricket player Saiyed Ahmed is one of the people who helped make the new pitch a reality. To keep up with cricket’s rising popularity in Detroit, he pushed for the city to build a professional, public field.

Problems keep piling up for Michigan State University.

The sports doctor Larry Nassar, sitting in jail on federal and state criminal sexual assault charges, accused of assaulting the gymnasts who turned to him for care. The woman's gymnastics coach who retired after it became known she vigorously supported Nassar, even in the face of athletes' complaints.

And, two separate allegations of sexual assault against Spartan football players since January.

The game of disc golf is on the rise in Michigan. The relatively young sport, which began in California, follows the rules of traditional golf, but there's a twist. Instead of striving to smack dimpled balls into 4-inch holes, players hurl hard, flat discs into baskets.

Courses can be found all throughout the state, from metroparks in the southeast, all the way up to Copper Harbor in the U.P. Disc golf is especially popular in West Michigan, which has been dubbed the “Golf Coast” by Don Jensen.

Softball teams from the Big Ten, including Michigan State and the University of Michigan, open their conference tournament in Ann Arbor today.

Next month, thousands of fans will attend the NCAA Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City. In 2020, softball will return to the Olympics after a 12-year-hiatus.

It’s a far cry from softball’s early days when top female and male players often had to move to find a company-sponsored team with a travel budget so they could play in a big tournament.

The 2017 NFL Draft in Philadelphia wrapped up this past weekend and there were a number of storylines involving players with Michigan connections.

This week, the University of Michigan did something it hasn’t had to do in 33 years: hire a new hockey coach.

The last time the job opened was 1984. Athletic director Don Canham heard Red Berenson was on campus moving his oldest son, Gordie, into his dorm room. Canham called Berenson to his office, offered him the job for the third time, and Berenson finally took it.

If he hadn’t, it’s not clear who Canham could have hired. After all, the guy Michigan just fired was a failed former high school hockey coach. Michigan was at the bottom of a glorified bus league, with an empty building, and nothing to brag about.

It was recently announced that the National Hockey League (NHL) will not be sending its players to the 2018 Winter Olympics.

The last time NHL players weren't included in the Olympic hockey tournament was in 1998. After nearly two decades, that is expected to come to a close next year when the Winter Games are hosted in Seoul, South Korea.

Gordon “Red” Berenson"  loved the game from the start. When he was a six-year old kid in Regina, Sasketchewan, for Christmas his parent gave him new skates, gloves, and shin pads.

He was so excited, he called his best friend on the party line – at 6 a.m. When his friend’s mom answered, she said, “Do you know it’s 6 a.m.?”

Berenson replied, “Yes -- but this is important!”

He played most of his games outside, where the prairie winds make it feel like you’re skating uphill. By 18 he was so good, the Montreal Canadiens wanted him to turn pro. When he decided to go to the University of Michigan instead, the Canadiens' general manager warned him, “If you go to an American college, you’ll never become a pro.”

Berenson went anyway.

Ninety seconds into his first game at Michigan, he skated end to end and scored his first goal. He scored 78 more, including 43 his senior year, still a Michigan record. He was the best player in the country.

Big outdoor stadiums hosting hockey is a trend that’s been on the rise over the past decade. The 2014 NHL Winter Classic, held in Michigan Stadium, drew more than 100,000 fans to watch the Red Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs, the largest crowd ever to watch a professional hockey game.

But the Wings' very first outdoor game wasn’t at a stadium or even in a big city. It took place in 1954, at the self-proclaimed “Alcatraz of the North.” The opponent: the Marquette Prison Pirates.

It is the end of multiple eras for sports fans in Michigan and specifically metro Detroit. Last night, the Detroit Red Wings played their final game at Joe Louis Arena, a place they have called home since 1979.

Tonight, the Detroit Pistons will play their last home game at the Palace of Auburn Hills, an arena where they've played since 1988.

It’s the cherry on top of the March Madness sundae.

When either Gonzaga or North Carolina emerges victorious tonight, "One Shining Moment" will play to close March Madness.

The U.S. Women’s Hockey team will play in the IIHF World Championship after all. The team ended their threat of boycotting the tournament after agreeing to a four-year deal with USA Hockey.

One of the players happy to be back on the ice is Farmington Hills native Megan Keller. The defender who plays college hockey for Boston College joined Stateside to talk about what the women's national team was hoping to gain from the new deal.

The first part of this story, you probably know.

The Michigan men’s basketball stunk so badly two months ago, just about everyone figured they’d never get to the NCAA tournament in March. They had some talent, but other coaches considered them one-dimensional: all offense and no defense. Worse, they said Michigan was soft and lazy – two things no coach wants to hear about his team.

Today on Stateside, a widow says mental health stigma killed her husband. And, we learn what's left to honor Detroit's Brown Bomber when  Joe Louis Arena is gone.