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.
NEW YORK - Dick Ebersol’s passion for the Olympics began as a researcher in the 1960s and led him to help NBC lock up the U.S. TV rights through the 2012 Games.
Now the chairman of NBC Sports, Ebersol shapes the way millions of Americans watch the Olympics and influences the way the International Olympic Committee stages them.
“He’s kind of ‘Mr. Olympics,’ there’s no doubt about that,” Fox Sports chairman David Hill said.
On Sunday, Ebersol survived a charter plane crash in Colorado that killed at least two people, the network said in a statement through its Denver affiliate KUSA-TV.
Montrose County sheriff’s officials said three survivors, including Ebersol, were seriously injured when the jet crashed through a fence and burst into flames at Montrose Regional Airport, which serves the Telluride Ski Area.
The accident shook the TV world, where Ebersol is one of the leading figures — and has been for decades.
The consummate out-of-the-box thinker, he’s had a hand in all sorts of television experiments, in sports and entertainment, with success and not, from “Saturday Night Live” in the 1970s to the short-lived XFL in 2001.
“He is very innovative,” Hill said. “He’s obviously a great leader and, from my perspective, a very worthy competitor.”
Ebersol is fond of noting that he dropped out of Yale at 19 to work as an ABC researcher at the Grenoble Olympics in 1968. That began his love affair with the multisport event. He was a protege of Roone Arledge and carried on his philosophy of presenting the Olympics via storytelling, rather than emphasizing results.
Developing strong ties with the IOC, Ebersol made himself and his network synonymous with the Olympics.
“The Olympics are not to us a sporting event, they’re not about sports rights,” Ebersol said in June, when NBC acquired the 2010 and 2012 Games in a $2.2 billion deal. “The Olympics are something really, really special. They are the only great family viewing experience left in all of American television.
“They’re the only thing that puts Mom, Pop and the kids in front of the television set at the same time.”
In 1995, NBC obtained the rights to five Olympics from 2000 to 2008 in a pair of deals worth $3.5 billion. Those negotiations took place in secret without other networks getting a chance to bid.
This summer’s Athens Games dominated TV for 17 days, giving NBC ratings wins for every half-hour in prime time. An average of 24.6 million people watched each evening, a 14 percent increase over the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
“Dick is an inspiration, a leader. He’s innovative, and outspoken at times,” said Neal Pilson, a media consultant and former CBS Sports president. “He has focused on the Olympic coverage. He has strong personal relations with members of the IOC. He is a great fan of Olympic sports, and he has made the Olympics a cornerstone of NBC.”
He was there for the start of another of the network’s hallmarks, “Saturday Night Live,” and briefly replaced Lorne Michaels as that show’s executive producer in the early 1980s. Ebersol became director of late-night programming at NBC in 1974, and became president of NBC Sports in 1989.
In 1995-96, NBC broadcast the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals and Summer Olympics. But with Ebersol yet again following his own path, NBC gradually dropped out of covering major sports, saying that they’re money-losers.
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.
NEW YORK (AP) - As the glow fades from the Giants' Super Bowl triumph, some New York sports fans are tuning in to basketball and hockey, with the Rangers in first place and the Knicks' overnight sensation, Jeremy Lin, sparking "Lin-sanity.''
Robins: This year, six new breeds will be making their debut on the green carpet for the Westminster Dog Show, which begins Monday.
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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.
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.