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 three goals as the New York Rangers beat Philadelphia 5-2 on Saturday for their seventh straight win over the Flyers.
Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
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 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.
Move over, Hollywood and NFL types, golf's two real A-listers take center stage Sunday at Pebble Beach, both in need of a win.
The United States swept favored Switzerland out of the Davis Cup on Saturday when Mardy Fish and Mike Bryan beat Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.
Luis Suarez's refusal to shake hands with Patrice Evra overshadowed Manchester United's 2-1 win over rival Liverpool that lifted the defending champions to first place in the Premier League on Saturday.
Marlies Schild of Austria won her sixth World Cup slalom of the season Saturday after overall leader Lindsey Vonn and defending champion Maria Hoefl-Riesch crashed out in the opening run on the windy Pyrenees course.
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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It’s never a good idea to have the stars of a live performance watched by tens of millions die on camera. And when fatal injuries happen during your showcase events twice in three years, you’d better fix the problem. If you don’t you’ll find you won’t have any events.
Horse racing had better wrap its collective brain around this simple truth. In the space of two calendar years plus two weeks, it’s broadcast the fatal injuries of two of its stars live to vast audiences. At the Preakness in 2006, it was Barbaro suffering multiple breaks in his hind leg. The colt soldiered on for months before its doctors finally put him down. With that memory still etched in sharp relief on the nation’s consciousness, another huge audience watched Eight Belles go down on two broken forelegs in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. This time, there was no vigil, no prayers for a horse’s recovery, no get-well cards sent by the thousands to a veterinary hospital. Instead, there was just a horrible reality TV show that ended with a dead horse on the sport’s most famous race track.
If there was shock at Barbaro’s fate, there was outrage at Eight Belles'. Suddenly, critics who had been writing bright and breezy celebrations of an ancient sporting tradition decided enough was enough. They added in the death by euthanasia of George Washington at last year’s Breeders’ Cup and decided the sport had reached a level of carnage that left no alternative but to shut it down.
The New York Times sounded that trumpet. PETA dug its spurs into the mess: Horse racing must be banned, Eight Belles’ jockey must be suspended, criminal charges must be considered.
In a word: whoa.
I’m not going to argue that horse racing is the most civilized recreational pursuit in the Republic. Animals are bred to beyond the limits of their own mortality for the sole purpose of running around in circles so that people can bet on which one will get to the finish first. And, while the horses are born to run, there is the bothersome fact that it is necessary to put small people with whips on their backs to keep them focused on their goal.
Even so, the animals are treated exceptionally well, especially the running money factories at the top of the industry. Yes, there is a problem with the fragility that’s been bred into the animals. But the solution isn’t to ban a sport that’s been practiced for as long as horses have been domesticated, which goes back thousands of years.
Regardless of what you think about the morality of the activity, you are talking about a very sizeable industry that supports thousands of jobs. You can’t simply end it and tell all the people who depend on it for their livelihoods that you’re sorry, but they’ll just have to find something else to do.
This isn’t bear-baiting or cock-fighting, no matter what The New York Times says. The object isn’t to kill an unoffending animal. The object is to run it successfully in a handful of races and then sell its stud rights for millions of dollars. Nobody wants investments worth that much to up and die.
This is what horse racing has to address before it doesn’t have a sport. Lose a couple more horses in the next two big races — the Preakness and the Belmont, which are also the only two most people watch — and the industry won’t have to worry about being banned. It won’t have an audience that will notice.
I don’t think that there is yet a danger of viewers tuning out in fast numbers. If Big Brown can win the Triple Crown, it will overshadow Eight Belles’ death and revive the sport. But only if all the horses get around the track with all their limbs still in the minimum number of pieces nature intended.
The first of three pools of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager begins its three-day run on Friday and the bet's opening scenario is very similar to each of its opening pools since the wager was created in 1999.
It's first time that Classic will be broadcast in primetime on Nov. 3.
 | Special feature |
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| INTERACTIVE |
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 | Slideshow |
 | Derby celebs Plenty of stars from the entertainment and sports world attend the 136th Kentucky Derby. more photos |
| INTERACTIVE |
 | Triple Crown winners The horses that have won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont in the same year. |
Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
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.
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.
