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.
PBT: Jeremy Lin wasn't his hot self on Saturday, but he still led the Knicks to victory.
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.
Journalists are duty bound to be objective, but they’re human, and occasionally some subjective viewpoint might seep into an otherwise straightforward news account. Judges have an obligation to be fair and unbiased, but they’re human, and it’s only natural that some will allow their personal views to color their interpretation of the law.
Officials are no less human, even though it may seem that way sometimes. Professional sports involve a highly charged, competitive atmosphere in which a lot of money often rides on the outcome of games. Tempers flare. Emotions run high. And refs are in the middle of all that.
They take guff from players all the time. They’re supposed to carefully assess whether a player is letting off an acceptable amount of steam over a call, or whether he’s stepping over a line. They’re trained to do that. And they’re scrutinized — but rarely punished significantly — by the league office.
But over the course of many weeks, many months and many years, a referee will sometimes grow to resent and even hate a player. Poisonous relationships develop in just about every workplace when people determine over the course of time that they don’t like each other. Why would the NBA be any different?
The problem in the past is that the NBA has been in denial about it. Rarely will it admit publicly that a referee has made a mistake, and it’s rarer still when it will acknowledge that a particular striped shirt has a personality clash with a specific player.
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