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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Youth is always served in the NFL, so six teams decided to hire younger head coaches this year.
That includes 59-year-old Wade Phillips and 54-year-old Norv Turner. Both are younger than the men they replaced.
Everybody talks about how young Lane Kiffin is. The Oakland Raiders made him the youngest coach in the league at 31.
But there are players on the Dallas Cowboys who believe Phillips is a breath of fresh air after putting up with Bill Parcells, who was 61 when he was hired and 65 when he left and headed straight to Medicare.
Turner replaced 63-year-old Marty Schottenheimer in San Diego, where a history of old coaches includes Sid Gillman, Tommy Prothro, Don Coryell and Bobby Ross.
The only new coach this year who is older than the man he replaced is the Atlanta Falcons' Bobby Petrino, eight months older than Jim Mora.
Five of the seven new coaches are younger than their predecessors were when they were hired.
One who wasn't is Mike Tomlin. At 34, he was two months older than Bill Cowher was when the Pittsburgh Steelers hired him.
The other is Petrino, who at 45 was two years older than Mora was when hired.
The ideal age for a coach is whenever he wins. If he loses, then he's either too young, too old, or too in-between.
Having hired John Madden at 32 in 1969 to coach his Raiders, Al Davis didn't think Kiffin was too young at all.
True, Davis got rid of 30-year-old receiver Randy Moss before Kiffin had to deal with him, but Davis probably would have done the same thing had he hired Kiffin's dad, Monte, who is 67.
The only coach Moss might have agreed to play for in Oakland is Dennis Green, and Green's age (57) would have had nothing to do with it.
Some of the great coaches in NFL history started in their 30s. Don Shula was 33 when he became head coach of the Baltimore Colts, which gave him a chance to surpass George Halas as winningest coach in history. Halas, of course, started as a player-coach with the Chicago Bears as soon as he founded them in 1920 at 25.
Tom Landry was 36 when he took over the Dallas Cowboys. Hank Stram was 37 when he took over the Dallas Texans, soon to become the Kansas City Chiefs.
Chuck Noll was 37, which makes him the oldest coach the Steelers have hired in the last 40 years.
Bud Grant was only 40 when he came down from Canada to the warmer climate of the Minnesota Vikings.
Vince Lombardi was a relatively ancient 46 when the Green Bay Packers hired him. Bill Walsh was even older at 47 when the San Francisco 49ers came to their senses.
Weeb Ewbank is in the Hall of Fame after coaching in arguably the two most historic games in NFL history. He was 51 when his Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in the 1958 overtime "Greatest Game Ever Played." He was 61 when his New York Jets upset the Colts in Super Bowl III.
Like Walsh, Ewbank was 47 before getting his first head-coaching job.
Although it's more likely for a coach to be too old and out of touch than it is to be too young, Amos Alonzo Stagg coached at College of the Pacific until he was 84 after the University of Chicago made him retire at 70. He was an assistant at Susquehanna University when he was 96.
Players respect authority, knowledge, fairness, and ability more than they respect old age or disrespect youth. The advantage of a young coach over an old coach is he has a better chance to improve. An old coach has fewer excuses and less time to prove himself, although not many teams are willing to stay as patient with a young coach as the Steelers once were with Noll.
The new coaches are quickly staking claim to territory and making it their own.
Kiffin's predecessor, Art Shell, is a Hall of Fame offensive tackle who brought in another Hall of Fame offensive tackle, Jackie Slater, to help coach the Raiders' offensive line.
Raiders center Jake Grove told the Contra Costa Times: "Nobody really understood what we were trying to do. Ever. From Day 1, that has not been the case this year. Things have been set in stone. 'We're going to do this because of this, or when this happens.' Everything, every situation, is taken care of right now."
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Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts started a trend of hiring young college coaches because he thought they were by necessity better and faster teachers. In the free-agent era, it is imperative to develop young players quickly. Chicago's Lovie Smith, a product of Dungy's philosophy, hired the youngest, least-experienced staff in the league with the Bears and got them to a Super Bowl within three seasons.
Owners like results, and they also like the reduced payroll of having young coaches.
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.
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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.
