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.
Eleven shots separated Phil and Tiger Sunday at Pebble Beach as Lefty secured his 40th Tour win. Jason Sobel had 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.
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.
APNot even an MVP award in 2005 helped the relationship between Rodriguez and his teammates. "There's this culture of the clubhouse that's very primal, and I think Alex just doesn't fit into that," one of the Rodriguez's non-baseball friends told me. Once, when asked to identify his biggest support on the team, Rodriguez searched for a name before coming up with Rob Thomson, the team's batting-practice pitcher. He became so overwhelmed by his fear of failure that his wife, Cynthia, a former psychology teacher at her high school alma mater, Miami's Gulliver Prep, convinced him to enter therapy. (The couple's first daughter, Natasha, was born in November 2004 and they are expecting another girl this spring. Rodriguez has said that being a father is the "most rewarding thing God's ever given to me and my wife... Before, everything was about us or what we wanted to do. Now, you think about yourself third or fourth.") And his continued struggles in the postseason got so bad that in the last game of the 2006 playoffs, then manager Joe Torre dropped Rodriguez to eighth in the batting order. It was the farthest down he'd hit since May 7, 1996.
Jeter, the Yankees captain and leader, refused to help Rodriguez gain acceptance on the team. Still, the two players continued to deny that A-Rod's comments had affected their friendship. That charade ended last February, when Rodriguez told reporters at the Yankees' spring-training complex in Tampa that it was "important" for him to come clean about the "change in the relationship" with the Yankee captain. The situation, he said, was "obviously not as great" as it used to be. "We were like blood brothers." For Rodriguez, it was a return — albeit a temporary one — to the openness he so often exhibited early in his career, when he talked freely about both his personal and professional struggles.
Jeter was annoyed by Rodriguez's announcement, but A-Rod appeared liberated. As the season progressed, he seemed more in control, less likely to be thrown off stride by every bit of news. Even the May revelation that he'd spent a night at a Toronto strip club with a woman other than his wife didn't stop his offensive assault. In July, he freed himself of another crutch he'd relied on when he stopped working with Jim Fannin, who says he's not sure why his best-known client stopped calling on him other than the fact that Rodriguez was having "a good year." That he most definitely was, topping the majors in home runs (54), RBIs (156), slugging percentage (.645), and runs scored (143).
Finally, after the World Series announcement, Rodriguez apparently put the brakes on his relationship with Boras. "I have the experience now to know what feels right and the conviction to raise my hand when something doesn't," he wrote. Instead of sitting back and waiting for someone else to tell him what to do, Rodriguez got in touch with Warren Buffett, whom he's become friendly with since a meeting between the two several years earlier. (Buffett has a signed Rodriguez jersey hanging in the headquarters of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, in Omaha.) Buffett advised A-Rod that if he truly wanted to go back to the Yankees, he had to be proactive. Rodriguez then sent word through a friend at Goldman Sachs that he wanted to meet with the Yankees owners on his own. Within weeks, the outline of a new 10-year, $275-million contract was in place. For the second time in less than a decade, Rodriguez had signed the richest deal in team-sports history.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
DeMarco: Plug in a well-heeled ownership group and negotiate one of those mega-bucks TV deals that are going around, and the Dodgers could become the west coast version of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.
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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.
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