Golfer Annika Sorenstam and Major League Soccer player Guillermo Barros Schelotto of the Columbus Crew
Annika Sorenstam closes out her storied LPGA career this weekend at the season-ending ADT Championship. The Swedish sensation has won 10 Majors, earned more then $20 million in prize money, scored an LPGA record 59 round, became a media sensation when she participated in a 2003 PGA Tour event and set a standard for class in the sport. Golf Channel has the...
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Juan Pablo Angel of the New York Red Bulls
There will be a new Major League Soccer champion this year. Two-time defending MLS Cup winner Houston Dynamo got bounced in the first round of the playoffs by the scrappy New York Red Bulls, a team that barely qualified for postseason play. In fact, due to their low seed the Red Bulls are playing as a wild card in the Western Conference bracket. MLS's New York franchise has never won a league title and this is their first appearance in the second round of the playoffs since 2000. With Colombian striker Juan Pablo Angel — MLS's fourth leading scorer this season — guiding the attack, New York faces Real Salt Lake in the Western Conference finals on Saturday, Nov. 15 (9:30 pm/ET, Fox Soccer Channel).
On the other side of the draw, the Columbus Crew host...
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April Holmes
If you thought the Olympic feats of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and Nastia Liukin were impressive, prepare to be overwhelmed by the competitors of the 2008 Paralympic Games. The quadrennial multi-sport festival for disabled athletes — held in Beijing's Olympic venues from Sept. 6-17 — is the subject of a stirring NBC documentary on Sunday, Nov. 9 ay 2:30 pm/ET.
Get more details on the special after the jump.
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Paula Radcliffe during the BUPA Great South Run
p>The New York City Marathon will have unprecedented coverage this Sunday. In addition to a same-day delayed hourlong highlights show on NBC (Nov. 2 at 3 pm/ET) and the local coverage in the New York area on WNBC (starting at 9 am/ET), the 30 million U.S. households with NBC's Universal Sports cable channel can also watch the entire race, live at 9 am/ET. (And if you don't have the channel, you can watch live streaming video at UniversalSports.com.) The 26.2-mile event, which is being run for the 39th time, has roughly 39,000 entrants, making it the largest marathon in the world ...
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The Major League Soccer playoff pairings are set and the Columbus Crew are the No. 1 seed overall. The Crew went 17-7-6 to top the Eastern Conference during the regular season. Two-time defending MLS Cup champion Houston Dynamo led the Western Conference at 13-5-12, the second best record overall. The playoffs begin this week with the conference semifinals, a home-and-home series of games in which the team with the most overall goals advances...
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Usain Bolt
Fans of sports magazine shows get a double bonus Tuesday night with the return of Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel and a new episode of ESPN's year-old E: 60. On Real Sports (10 pm/ET, HBO), Gumbel travels to Jamaica to interview Olympic gold-medal-winning sprinter Usain Bolt. Though the world-record speedster isn't a big talker, the piece offers a nice snapshot of his life both before and after the Beijing Games. Bolt tells Gumbel...
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LSU running back Charles Scott
It's a big weekend for college football. Oklahoma and Texas face off in Dallas (see our preview here while LSU and Florida meet for a huge SEC game (Oct. 11, 8 pm/ET, CBS). More of a Big 10 fan? The undefeated Nittany Lions of Penn State play Wisconsin (8 pm/ET, ESPN).
Over in the NFL, Sunday Night Football features a rematch of last year's AFC Championship game, with the San Diego Chargers hosting the New England Patriots (Oct. 12, 8:15 pm/ET, NBC).
Moving on to a different type of football, this is a busy weekend for World Cup soccer qualifying. The United States men's team can Lock up a spot in the CONCACAF regional finals with a win over Cuba Saturday at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC (Oct. 11, 7 pm/ET, ESPN Classic). Earlier in the day Fox Soccer Channel has two European zone qualifiers, Kazakhstan at England at noon/ET and Spain at Estonia at 2:30 pm/ET.
There's also a big selection of endurance sports on tap. Read all about them, after the jump.
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Quarterback Sam Bradford of the Oklahoma Sooners
National championship hopes are floating in Saturday's 103rd edition of the Red River Rivalry, the annual Oklahoma-Texas shoot-out at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas (airing on ABC Saturday, Oct. 11, at noon/ET). In both national polls the Sooners (5-0) are No. 1 and the Longhorns (5-0) are No. 5.
Perhaps more important than the game's BCS implications, pride is on the line. Both teams "really do feel like their season is ruined if they don't win this game," says ESPN's Ed Cunningham. The Sooners have so many offensive weapons, including quarterback Sam Bradford and running backs Chris Brown and DeMarco Murray, that "I'm not sure anybody's ever going to stop them this season," Cunningham says. "But Texas will have the best chance of figuring out a way of slowing them down some."
Adding to the tension, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops has stocked his roster with players from below the state line. "There's the inside joke that Oklahoma is really the University of Texas at Norman because they've gotten so many kids out of Texas," Cunningham says, "so I think there's a little bit of anger." As if any more motivation were needed. —Karen Rosen
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Sheryl Swoopes by William Kendall/LOGO
Sheryl Swoopes’ WNBA season ended prematurely when her Seattle Storm lost to the L.A. Sparks in the first round of the playoffs. But the three-time league MVP is back on the radar Monday in the latest episode of Logo’s Shirts & Skins. The fascinating new reality series goes behind the sometimes disharmonious scenes with the San Francisco Rockdogs, a gay basketball team on the proverbial rebound (Mondays, 10 pm/ET).
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Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The news that George Lucas has decided to go back to the Star Wars well not once but two more times — in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, an animated film (in theaters Aug. 15), and in a new animated series of the same name debuting this fall on the Cartoon Network — sent the Force-a-verse into a tailspin. We had some burning questions about these new Clone Wars-set stories, and we knew you would, too. So we went straight to the powers-that-be for some answers. (Don't worry, so far it appears to be a Jar Jar-free zone.)
What exactly are the Clone Wars?
First alluded to in 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, the Clone Wars are a conflict between the Galactic Republic — led by the Jedi Knights and their clone army — and Count Dooku’s Confederacy of Independent Sy
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