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.
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NEW YORK - Peyton Manning had a lot of witnesses to his soggy super win, with the estimated 93.2 million viewers representing the second most-watched Super Bowl broadcast ever.
Only the 1996 Super Bowl between Dallas and Pittsburgh, which had 94.1 million viewers, had a bigger audience, according to Nielsen Media Research on Monday. Behind that 1996 game and the M-A-S-H series finale, Sunday’s game was the third most-watched program in television history.
The presence of the colts quarterback, one of the game’s most popular players, and a major-market team from Chicago undoubtedly juiced the ratings.
“The story line was about as good as you could have hoped for,” said CBS Sports President Sean McManus. The game was shown on CBS, a division of CBS Corp.
It was the highest-rated Super Bowl game since St. Louis-Tennessee in 2000. The ratings were lower this year than in 2000, but, because there are more homes with television sets than seven years ago, there were more people watching. Last year’s Super Bowl between Pittsburgh and Seattle drew 90.7 million viewers.
CBS was also lucky, in a sense, that the Colts’ 29-17 victory over the Bears was closer on the scoreboard than it appeared on the screen. Although Indianapolis was dominating the game, Chicago was close enough until the end to have a chance to win, which kept viewers interested.
CBS wasn’t so lucky that the game was played in a driving rainstorm.
“It was very difficult,” McManus said. “We lost a number of cameras during the telecast.”
A camera suspended over the field on cables had to come down, and one sideline camera was knocked out of commission because it overheated when covered in canvas, he said. Camera operators were constantly wiping raindrops from lenses.
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Despite the huge audience, the Super Bowl didn’t provide much of a jolt to the CBS drama “Criminal Minds,” which was given the choice time slot following the game. “Criminal Minds” was seen by 26.2 million viewers. While that’s the biggest audience the second-year show has ever delivered, it dwarfs the 38.1 million people who saw “Grey’s Anatomy” after ABC’s telecast of the game last year.
According to another measuring service, the most-watched moment of the CBS broadcast wasn’t Manning’s lone touchdown pass, the interception and touchdown run by Kelvin Hayden or even Prince’s electrifying halftime show. It was the Bud Light ad featuring Carlos Mencia and a language class, according to Tivo.
The digital recorder company’s measurement includes not only people who watched the commercial live, but those who froze the set and went back and watched the commercial, said Todd Juenger, vice president and general manager for audience research.
More viewers with digital recorders tend to replay the Super Bowl commercials than game action perhaps because broadcasters offer plenty of replays of game action on their own, he said.
The most popular minute of the actual game, representing most Tivo replays, was after a personal foul was committed following an Indianapolis kickoff in the third quarter, he said.
Rotoworld: Oregon RB LaMichael James and Oklahoma State WR Justin Blackmon among top 10 players who are being overhyped for the 2012 draft.
Rotoworld: Texas A&M QB Ryan Tannehill among the 10 players who will slip down draft boards, but probably shouldn't.
Super Bowl XLI |
Colts 29, Bears 17 |
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.
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.
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.