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' 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.
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.
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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What is the opposite of a sophomore jinx?
When Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen takes his first snap of the season on Saturday, he will not do so with the Fighting Irish trailing by 30 points, as he did last year. He will not be playing just one day after the USA Today ran a front-page (not of the red section, but of the blue section) story on him. His first pass attempt will almost certainly not be to a player who will later transfer (D.J. Hord) due to a sober realization of his place on the depth chart.
And he will be healthy.
Last year Clausen may have had the rudest introduction to higher education since Booger and the rest of the nerds were forced to sleep in the Adams College gymnasium. He went from a high school, Oaks Christian in Westlake Village, Calif., that went 42-0 in his four years as a starter to a university in which he went 3-6 as a starter. He went from being arguably the top-rated prep player in the nation to a college quarterback unable to crack the nation's top 100 list in terms of passing efficiency. He went from catching rays in the Golden State to learning plays with Golden Tate.
Good riddance to all that misery.
In 2007 Clausen was sacked more famously than Carthage. He was sacked six times in his first collegiate start at Penn State which, by his estimation, is a greater sum than the number of sacks he absorbed in his entire high school career. In the month of September, when most true freshman quarterbacks are deciding whether or not to wear a baseball cap on the sidelines, Clausen was the unwitting star of ESPN sack montage features. How better to illustrate Notre Dame's precipitous decline than to show its golden-boy QB being gang-banged in Happy Valley and Ann Arbor?
It was a humbling '07 for Notre Dame's No. 7.
Had Clausen, whose two older brothers, Rick and Casey, both played against the Irish as Tennessee quarterbacks, had wanted to enumerate a list of excuses, he might have mentioned that ...
... he was inheriting an offense that had seven new starters besides himself, including a trio of tailbacks (let's forget the Travis Thomas experiment; it lasted about as long as the George O'Leary era) that had never scored a touchdown and a wide receiving corps that had caught a total of two.
... he was still recovering from surgery to have bone spurs removed from his throwing elbow and, in most any other situation, would not have been playing. Not only was his arm not as strong as it had been, but he had been able to lift weights for a prolonged period of time. His overall strength and size had diminished.
... he was just a true freshman. Unlike the other J.C. of renown on Notre Dame's campus, he is not a miracle worker.
It took a while for the light bulb to go on, but when it did, Jonas Gray finally showed the talent many had expected from the blue-chip prospect from Detroit. In a recent interview, Gray, who is rehabbing an ACL injury to get ready for the NFL Scouting Combine, expressed the confidence and support he has for head coach Brian Kelly.
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The Week in Sports Pictures The Giants on top of the football world, getting ready for the London Olympics and more. more photos |
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.
Doron Lamb hit a 3-pointer with 3:18 left to put No. 1 Kentucky ahead to stay, and the Wildcats took a big step toward a Southeastern Conference regular-season title by beating Vanderbilt 69-63 Saturday night for their 17th straight win.
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.
