Rotoworld: Oregon RB LaMichael James and Oklahoma State WR Justin Blackmon among top 10 players who are being overhyped for the 2012 draft.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
The Detroit Red Wings equaled an NHL record with their 20th straight win at home, beating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 Sunday night on the strength of Johan Franzen's tiebreaking goal early in the third period.
PBT: Boston's Rajon Rondo continues to be named in trade talks, which is madness. The Celtics guard creates offense and makes everyone around him better, which was evident in Sunday's win over the Bulls.
Arc: Syracuse is among a solid group of No. 1 seeds in our latest tournament projections, but the middle of the pack is much more murky.
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.
Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods greeted their Sunday pairing at Pebble Beach with optimism. But the day would end happily only for one.
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.
Reuters file
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This is not personal. Neither does it have anything to do with business. As far as I’m concerned, greed hasn’t been good since Gordon Gecko was carted off to jail for insider trading. But what I do object to is the masquerade that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, owner of a likely champion named Bernardini, is some wonderful kind of new millennium sportsman.
Certainly it’s more than permissible for Sheikh Mohammed to try recouping some of the billion dollars he’s invested in horseflesh since he got into the racing business a few decades ago. The key word here is business. But, hey, I’d be more than a little concerned about the citizens of the United Arab Emirates if he didn’t concern himself with such bottom line issues.
Clearly, no one can question Sheikh Mohammed’s generosity and compassion for his fellow man following the events of 9/11, as well as the other charitable gestures he has made and continues to make. Doubtless, they are heart felt and sincere, but we’d be less than candid if we didn’t acknowledge that it’s good PR, too.
When we wrote a column some months ago suggesting that it wasn’t easy to root for people who use obscene amounts of money to buy success in a game meant to be fraught with uncertainty, we were accused of promoting a kind of class warfare based on xenophobic chauvinism. As an American horseplayer familiar with the humbling nature of the game, I was supposed to be better than that.
In the run-up to the Breeders’ Cup, Washington Post columnist Andrew Beyer wrote a piece that inspired a post-Classic tirade by one of the Sheikh’s advisers in which he called the piece an example of “trash journalism” and Beyer a know-nothing about the generosity of the man. Since Beyer doesn’t work for the Sheikh I assume that much is true.
It neither was surprising when members of a group of Kentucky horsemen and breeders wrote editorials in defense of the Sheikh’s profligate spending, as if the river of cash he pumps into horse sales was not the tide that lifted all equine boats. Apparently there’s no interest like self interest.
Perhaps least curious is how people in the sport continue to react to criticism in knee jerk fashion, failing to remember that negative publicity is better than no publicity at all in an age when column inches devoted to racing are disappearing faster than the newspapers themselves.
If Sheikh Mohammed were a sportsman in the manner of the Phipps family, or a Thomas Evans or a Mary Lou Whitney, Bernardini and Henny Hughes would not have been retired 48 hours after Breeders’ Cup XXIII became a part of history. But really, wasn’t that always the plan?
On Tuesday of Breeders’ Cup week, Internet news service Equidaily.com published a report that the Sheikh’s Darley Web site indicated that Bernardini would stand at stud in 2007. The following day, Darley spokespersons said that that decision had not been finalized and on Wednesday the Internet item was gone.
In another slip-of-the-tongue moment that week, it was learned that the sensational fast filly Dubai Escapade was entered in the Sprint only as insurance, in case something happened to stablemate Henny Hughes, the way Discreet Cat, the only horse ever to defeat Uruguayan Horse of the Year Invasor, was pre-entered as Bernardini insurance. At entry time, Dubai Escapade was declared from the race with an “ankle injury.”
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The thing is the retirement of Henny Hughes and Bernardini doesn’t make perfect business sense, insurance premiums notwithstanding. What did Henny Hughes really prove in a two-year, 10-race campaign? He finished second in the only three Grade 1 races he ran in at 2. This year, he defeated a total of 15 rivals in a three-race season, only two more than he would face in the Sprint.
Henny Hughes virtually lost all chance when he stumbled at the start of the Sprint, the deal sealed when he was unable to handle the cuppy track. These were truly legitimate excuses but neither fans nor future breeders can know how really good he is, what he’s truly worth as a sire of future champions. And would a true sportsman leave such challenging questions unanswered?
The first of three pools of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager begins its three-day run on Friday and the bet's opening scenario is very similar to each of its opening pools since the wager was created in 1999.
It's first time that Classic will be broadcast in primetime on Nov. 3.
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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.
The Red Wings have finally started to embrace a record they've been chasing.
