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?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
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.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Eleven shots separated Phil and Tiger Sunday at Pebble Beach as Lefty secured his 40th Tour win. Jason Sobel had 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.
Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
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 fileFirst came Guillen’s comments to Sports Illustrated about Alex Rodriguez being a "hypocrite" over his waffling for whether he would play for the U.S. or the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, accusing him of having no real intention of playing for the Dominican team.
Guillen later apologized for his remark. However, he said he was just joking when he questioned Nomar Garciaparra’s qualifications to be on the Mexican team.
"Garciaparra only knows Cancun when he went to visit," Guillen told SI.
Williams, however, is making no apologies for his fusillade at recently dumped, aging superstar Frank Thomas, who told the Daily Southtown, a suburban Chicago newspaper, in an interview published Sunday that he wasn’t thrilled with how the team handled his departure. And he said he would have stayed away from postseason events, including throwing out the World Series’ first pitch and visiting the White House, had he only known (as everyone else in the free world had long figured out) that the Sox were going to bid him farewell.
Williams decided to be aggressive in his response, calling Thomas an "idiot," "selfish" and angrily maintaining the Sox covered his, ahem, posterior many times (including loaning him money) during his 16-year career.
"He better stay out of our business. He better stay out of White Sox business," Williams huffed.
So if being aggressive is a sign, then management is very, very hungry.
Following their lead, players are continually saying, yes, they’re hungry, too.
"Personally, I’m just as hungry to do it again," catcher A.J. Pierzynski told reporters in Tucson.
Maybe one arbiter of whether the White Sox are sufficiently hungry should be President Bush. During the White Sox’s White House visit, Bush, explaining why Chicago was able to break its 88-year titleless streak, quoted World Series MVP Jermaine Dye’s 2005 preseason comment that "from the start of spring training, everybody was hungry.
"He didn’t say one player was hungry or a guy going into arbitration was hungry. … He said everybody was hungry."
During the ceremony, pitching coach Don Cooper looked into the eyes of his pitchers.
"A lot of those guys were (in Washington) to meet the president, and all I had to do was take a look around,'' Cooper told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I looked into the eyes of Mark Buehrle, looked into the eyes of Jon Garland.
"I remember thinking, 'You know what? We've got the belt. We're the champs. Now we're defending that belt.' Looking into their eyes, I think we're going to be real son-of-a-(bleep) and not let anyone take it from us.''
I guess he means they’re hungry.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
DeMarco: Plug in a well-heeled ownership group and negotiate one of those mega-bucks TV deals that are going around, and the Dodgers could become the west coast version of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.
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Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
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.
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