NFL teams have been courting free agents since (at least) midnight, and Washington made the first big move, signing Tennessee DT Albert Haynesworth to a monster contract that includes $41 million in guarantees and could be worth $115 million.
The Lions, meanwhile, have somewhere between $35 and $40 million in cap space to work with — [...]

This is a blog, which means I can speculate wildly with only a small connection to actual reported facts. So here goes . . .

Fact: QB Steven Threet is leaving Michigan. Speculation: This feels like a weird time to transfer. I mean, why make this decision in February, in the middle of the second semester? [...]

Today’s High Five:

Lions: Shack Harris is officially on board. There are some other personnel tidbits here as well — Jason Hanson, for instance, isn’t going anywhere despite his free agent status.
Tigers: Tom Gage runs down Detroit’s issues heading into Spring Training.
Pistons: Drew Sharp uses the All-Star break as a chance to assess (bleakly) the state [...]

It’s the Mitten’s first ever free association column, a group of disjointed thoughts on college basketball following last night’s MSU victory over Michigan at Crisler Arena.

Michigan State seems really to have taken the Penn State and Northwestern losses to heart. Specifically, if there’s a defensive weakness to a typical Tom Izzo team, it’s on the [...]

Today’s High Five:

Here’s a great interview that ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg did with Mark Dantonio about recruiting and the way the Spartans’ coach approaches “soft commitments.”
Indiana’s Devan Dumes is an apologetic and suspended thrower of elbows after the MSU-IU game over the weekend. Goran Suton is just looking out for future generations.
The Lions officially made some [...]

Good news: Pitchers and catchers report to Lakeland a week from today, and it’s going to be so warm this weekend it will almost feel like baseball season. So now that Brandon Lyon is on board and Justin Verlander kept Dave Dombrowski’s arbitration-avoidance streak intact, let’s look at the Tigers.
The purpose of this post is [...]