Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
LIVE VIDEO: NBCSports.com shows Washington-New York, with alternate camera angles, HD views and more.
Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
CFT: Jordan Jefferson makes it clear he wasn't happy with LSU's game plan in the Tigers' BCS Championship Game loss to Alabama.
Golf's dream pairing - Woods and Mickelson - is on the course in the final round at Pebble Beach. Jason Sobel has hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) -England defender Joleon Lescott preserved Manchester City's two-point lead in the Premier League by scoring a second-half winner in a 1-0 victory at Aston Villa on Sunday.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
AP file
It really shouldn’t matter by now, but apparently it still does. For two very different reasons it matters greatly to Sheryl Swoopes and Laila Ali.
And, even though we live in politically correct times, it seems to matter to a lot of America’s sports fans, too.
Lesbians play sports, which by itself is no big surprise. The L word has hovered around women’s sports since the days when players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League wore long skirts to make them look more feminine.
The bigger surprise is how often the issue keeps coming up. And, for this discussion, we won’t even count the two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders recently caught in a bathroom stall.
“There is this fascination with the sexuality of women athletes,” said Todd Crosset, an associate professor of sports management at the University of Massachusetts. “If a woman is really good at her sport, people will question her sexuality.”
That fascination has been fueled in recent weeks, most notably by Swoopes when she came out of the closet and announced not only that she was a lesbian but also that she was involved with one of her now former coaches.
“I feel like I’ve been living a lie,” the WNBA’s best player said. “I’m finally OK with the idea of who I love, who I want to be with.”
Ali had an announcement to make last week, too. She announced that she wasn’t a lesbian, debunking Internet rumors to the contrary.
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That Ali had to come out and make such a statement reflects as much on the sport she’s in as it does the fact that people who cruise the Internet often aren’t able to distinguish truth from the blogging rumor mills.
She’s a boxer. Gay boxers, even if they’re women, don’t sell. So she took it upon herself to say something, even though she should have had no reason to say it.
Mike Piazza faced the same issue a few years ago when he held a press conference to announce he dated women, not men. Michael Vick found himself forced to do the same thing.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
NEW YORK (AP) - As the glow fades from the Giants' Super Bowl triumph, some New York sports fans are tuning in to basketball and hockey, with the Rangers in first place and the Knicks' overnight sensation, Jeremy Lin, sparking "Lin-sanity.''
Robins: This year, six new breeds will be making their debut on the green carpet for the Westminster Dog Show, which begins Monday.
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Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.