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.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Brian Kelly answered questions for half an hour at a podium Friday afternoon. His new athletic director spoke before him, and his new players spoke afterward. Every word uttered could be summed up in a sentence supplied by Kelly's nine-year-old daughter, Gracie.
"I know," she said into a local television station's microphone, "that this is a big job for my daddy."
Leave it to the middle child to show the world what was important here Saturday. And it's not just that Notre Dame's new football coach was intelligent enough to name his only daughter after a princess. ("Grace Kelly," he said. "No accident.")
No, Friday's central theme was Brian Kelly's emergence into the big time. His performance before the press showed that his energetic personality and chuckle-heavy charm will carry over from Cincinnati. But the stakes at Notre Dame will test that personality like no other challenge that lies ahead.
"The spotlight," athletic director Jack Swarbrick said Friday, "can't be any brighter."
This week, Swarbrick and Notre Dame went all-in on Kelly, selecting him from an initial pool of 18 candidates as the school's 29th head coach. They bestowed on him a reported five-year contract and the privilege to pilot one of college football's most famous brand names.
And in the same handshake, Kelly went all-in on his skills and savvy, which in 19 years as a head coach have brought him 18 winning seasons, two Division II national championships and BCS bowl appearances the last two years at Cincinnati. Fail with the Irish, and those other accomplishments fade into the footnotes. Succeed, and Kelly earns a spot in the Hall of Fame.
Step one toward enshrinement went off in fine fashion Friday afternoon. As expected, with a preacher's passion and mannerisms, Kelly owned the audience at his introductory press conference. Cameras flickered, boosters cheered, and Irish players leaned forward in their auditorium chairs.
He supplied enough slogans for a new line of T-shirts. "There's a football coach," he said, "And then there's the football coach at Notre Dame." Later, he explained that you don't come to Notre Dame to be average.
Even the jokes worked. Kelly told the story of arriving Friday morning at the Guglielmino Athletic Complex, headquarters for the Irish football program. As he toured the second floor, and as he approached Charlie Weis' old digs, he made his first blue-and-gold boo-boo.
"I was ready to sit down at the reception area because I thought that was the office," he said. "It was beautiful. And they said, 'No, coach, it's in here to the left.'"
For a day, everybody laughed, and everyone was good. Kelly thanked everyone who offered congratulations and referred to each reporter who asked a question by his first name. He was short on guarantees Friday, but his demeanor showed he would definitely present a friendlier public front than the last Irish coach.
And that, of course, guarantees nothing that's important to Notre Dame football.
Sure, it's better if the guy in charge gets along with the alumni and the secretaries and the band director. But a charismatic coach doesn't make for a winning team. Nick Saban, who won't be caught doing a set at the Comedy Connection any time soon, hasn't lost a regular-season game since 2007. Urban Meyer would rather do the Seminole chop than chit-chat.
The last few months have demonstrated even more acutely that winning is everything. Mark Mangino's alleged ill treatment of Kansas players was no big deal until the Jayhawks went on a losing streak. And then there's Weis, who was celebrated as he took the Irish to back-to-back BCS bowl games after the 2005 and 2006 seasons. As the Irish started to slide, the stories of his alleged boorish behavior started to multiply.
So for a day, the laughter is fine. Personality wins. For a day, Kelly can be judged on how he works at a microphone, and his father and brother can spin stories about little Brian worshipping Fighting Irish football.
But tomorrow, the evaluation criteria change. Kelly affirmed his knowledge of that with another T-shirt-worthy zinger: There's no five-year plan, he said, just a five-minute plan.
He'll assemble a staff that will include at least a couple of his Cincinnati assistants and a holdover from Notre Dame. He'll try to rally a recruiting class that recently lost its kingpin, Colorado defensive end Chris Martin. He'll reconstruct the strength program. And then he'll try to win more than six games in a season.
It's a big job for Gracie Kelly's daddy. Let's see if he can handle it.
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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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.
