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.
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.
Euro Roundup: First-place Manchester City won 1-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday on Joleon Lescott's goal in the 63rd minute, maintaining its two-point lead over Manchester United in the Premier League.
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.
Getty ImagesEven the promoters are less flamboyant, and that is a profession in which bombast and hyperbole are as vital as a left jab and a right cross. Neither Bob Arum nor Don King is involved. De La Hoya is embroiled in a bitter legal tussle with Arum involving their respective companies (De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions is in charge of the Mayweather fight), while King splits time between promoting fighters like lightweight Juan Diaz and junior middleweight Cory Spinks and keeping his hair elevated.
The landscape for such entertainment is changing. The Ultimate Fighting Championship, a sport that involves mixed martial arts, has muscled in on boxing’s core audience of young men with startling force. The UFC has put both boxing and pro wrestling in the dust; last year it raked in over $222 million in revenue, setting a pay-per-view record for a single year of business.
A recent episode of “Entourage” did not feature the supposed “pound for pound” boxing champion of the world looking to beat up Johnny Drama, but rather Chuck Liddell, a UFC light heavyweight champ.
Certainly boxing has been on this course for some time. The emergence of the NFL and the NBA over the past 30 years in the era of big television money has signaled to young athletes looking for major cash that they don’t have to get their heads beat in to get it, like it was in the days of Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali. But with the explosion of other entertainment options, especially on cable and satellite TV and on the Internet, boxing’s mojo has seriously diminished.
De La Hoya-Mayweather will illustrate, though, that the sport is not on life support. These are two fighters with personality and back stories who seem to genuinely dislike each other, although you never know, they could be puffing cigars together and chuckling over the money they’re making after each public oozing of bad blood. They even had a reality show on HBO to promote the event.
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De La Hoya (38-4, 30 KOs) has been fighting at around the 154-pound mark since 2001, while Mayweather (37-0, 24 KOs) is stepping up to make his first foray into this weight class after pounding smaller men. Mayweather has longed for such a glamour fight for some time now and has often lobbed verbal grenades at De La Hoya in an effort to get their names on a contract. Finally, De La Hoya relented, or more accurately, De La Hoya the promoter convinced De La Hoya the boxer that the sport is starving for a mega-bout such as this one and then explained how much money was available.
The De La Hoya-Mayweather spectacular will be just the latest in a long parade of thrilling moments in boxing along the Vegas strip. They just don’t come along nearly as often as they used to.
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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De La Hoya's can't-miss matchup May 3: With lucrative business deals and smart merchandising, boxing's Golden Boy will cash in regardless of the outcome of his bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr. "On the Money's" Michelle Caruso-Cabrera reports. |
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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.
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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.
