On Thursday in Montreal, representatives of the NHL and its player's association broke off talks. The two sides had been negotiating for the last week and a half toward the creation of a new collective bargaining agreement and the salvation of the 2004-2005 season. We'll update the story.

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Major League Baseball's teams have only a score or so of games left to settle the arrangements for the post-season. The St. Louis Cardinals, the Atlanta Braves, and the Minnesota Twins are home free, but who'll occupy the remaining five playoff slots is an exceedingly open question...which we'll put to ESPN's Tim Kurkjian.

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A local swimming pool goes to the ...dogs?

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The NFL season is underway, courtesy of the New England Patriots, the Indianapolis Colts, and Mary J. Blige, among others. Paul Attner of the Sporting News previews the remaining 511 regular season games, as well as the playoffs and beyond.

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Over the past decade, the ABL, WNBA, MLS, WUSA, MLL, and NPF have added their league's letters to the great alphabet soup simmering in the melting pot of American professional sports. Some have gone belly up, and others are still treading water. But that hasn't dissuaded at least one group of dedicated sports fans from trying to add its own flavor to the mix.

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Bill Littlefield and Only A Game analyst Charlie Pierce discuss: NFL's Grand Opening, USA Basketball's New Plan, and the Best World Records.

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Perhaps no sports franchise has inspired more fiction than the Boston Red Sox. Maybe that's because the real baseball team, which hasn't won a World Series since 1918, needs fiction more than teams that have more recently won in fact. Howard Frank Mosher's current novel, Waiting for Teddy Williams, takes on the baggage of Boston, among other things.