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.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Horse racing has long been a sport for the rich, but lately even those who can spend more on a horse than most people spend on a house have been struggling with the bottom line.
Racehorses are selling at auction for a fraction of what they did a year ago, if at all. Breeding operations are slashing thousands of dollars off the fees they charge to mate with their top stallions. A volatile market for mares saw one sell for a record $14 million last month while others were discounted by as much as 50 percent.
“We’re just going to have to slug our way through it and wait for better times,” said Robert Clay, owner of Three Chimneys Farm, a major stallion operation in Lexington.
Three Chimneys paid a sum believed to be about $50 million in May for the breeding rights to Big Brown, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner who faltered at Belmont to end hopes of a Triple Crown.
Last month, during a complicated ownership dispute, reigning Horse of the Year Curlin, the richest North American racehorse ever, was appraised at $20 million. Most thoroughbred experts consider his value as a stallion equal to or even greater than Big Brown’s.
What changed? The calendar and the stock market, analysts say.
“Big Brown was done in May, when the world was a totally different world,” said Geoffrey Russell, Keeneland’s director of sales. “Now you’re talking about trying to sell or syndicate a horse when there is no cash.”
The Kentucky Equine Education Project, a horse industry advocacy group, says horses are the biggest segment of the state’s agriculture business, representing a $4 billion economic impact. KEEP says the industry has directly or indirectly generated at least 80,000 jobs in Kentucky.
Richard Wilcke, director of the University of Louisville’s equine business program, said the economics of the horse industry aren’t as closely tracked the way they are in other businesses. Yet all indications are it has taken a hit in the past year.
Each November, Keeneland is host to one of the nation’s premier breeding stock auctions, usually a good barometer of where things stand in the thoroughbred industry.
In the 1990s, Keeneland reported eight straight years when its November sale did better than the year before. The prices have varied in this decade, but the general trend has been upward. This November, receipts have not just dropped, but plummeted more than 40 percent from last November.
Yes, buyers with the deepest pockets, such as Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, still put up millions of dollars for the cream of the crop.
And at a sale across town at Fasig-Tipton, Southern Equine’s Michael Moreno — who already owned 70 percent of broodmare-of-the-year Better Than Honour — bought out his former partner in a bid that set her price at a record $14 million.
“Obviously we’ve been through difficult times, but good quality should still always sell well,” said John Ferguson, the buyer for Sheikh Mohammed.
Yet Russell believes even the top-end horses would have done better in another year. And the horses that ranked just a notch below the top found few takers, despite low prices.
Dixiana Farm, a medium-sized broodmare operation in Lexington, was an unlikely buyer to rank second behind the sheikh in money spent at Keeneland. The farm’s owner, Bill Shively, decided the bargains were just too good to pass up.
He bought 40 mares, the most expensive being Capeside Lady, who went through the ring for $500,000 just one year after she fetched a bid of $1.1 million but didn’t sell because the minimum asking price was higher. Her first foal is a weanling that has yet to see a racetrack, so the mare’s value couldn’t have been driven down by anything other than the sagging economy, said Terry Arnold, Dixiana’s farm manager.
“In the past, when you looked at a mare and asked what she should bring she brought double,” Arnold said. “This year, they brought about what we thought they were worth.”
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.
 | INTERACTIVE |
 |
 | 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. |
 | Slideshow |
 |
The Week in Sports Pictures The Giants on top of the football world, getting ready for the London Olympics and more. more photos |
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.
NBC Sports TV and livestream listings
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.