It's Radio Tuesday!: I'm back in-studio today for my historic 12th national appearance on the Dan Le Batard Show. We go 4-7 p.m. on ESPN Radio, 3-7 locally on 790 and 104.3 The Ticket. Today I'd imagine we'll be talking a lot of women's hockey, curling and skeleton. Ears welcome.
1) It is TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18. CBS dumps Dan Marino from its NFL studio show. 2) Click on Random Evidence for our latest Sunday notes-column package, leading with Dolphins' Bullygate saga. 3) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Bullygate report and poll, Heat in All-Star Game, NBA's Mount Rushmore, Olympic farting & more. 4) Follow us on Twitter @gregcote and also on Instagram, Vine and Facebook.
Dolphins' leadership void allowed Bullygate to happen, and continue: Ted Wells had his 140-page finding. Mine covers two pages in the Miami Herald today. I find, in my latest column, that the team's lack of leadership across the board is why this happened here. Click on Nobody Stood Up to read.
New Olympic hockey, March Madness betting odds: Via our friends at Bovada... Olympic men's hockey: Sidney Crosby and Canada still a small favorite for gold at 7-4 over Team USA at 11-4. After that it's Russia 16-5 and Sweden 5-1. Men's March Madness: Florida Gators now co-favorites with Syracuse for NCAA national title, both at 6-1. Then it's Kansas 15-2, Michigan State 17-2 and Arizona/Duke both 9-1.
DWYANE WADE'S COOL GIFT TO HIGH-SCHOOL TEAM: The best use of celebrity (and its related access and wealth) is surprising others with kindness, and understanding that small gestures might mean the world to those who look up to you. Heat star Dwyane Wade gets that. While in New Orleans for the NBA All-Star Game, along with sponsor Gatorade, he did an extreme makeover of the lockerroom of a New Orleans prep basketball team, Riverdale High, that was in the playoffs for the first time in 20 years, turning it from the classic metal-locker high-school room into something closer to NBA standard. Now, the cynic would justifiably note that it didn't cost Wade anything or that making a video of it casts it as easy, inexpensive publicity for Gatorade. Nevertheless, Wade showed up, the school and kids were thrilled, and so for me it's a cool thing all-round. Pictured is a still from the video. Click HERE to watch the 4-minute vid, and feel good.
SI'S 50th ANNIVERSARY SWIMSUIT ISSUE: OK I'm only writing about it to give me a cheap vehicle for the mildly naughty cover shot at right. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is patently sexist but yet sort of an American tradition I guess. I hear the 50th anniversary edition will include original models, now mostly in their early 70s, wearing nothing but body paint. Alright, I made that last part up.
A QUICK LESSON IN PUBLIC RELATIONS FOR FIU BASEBALL: Of all the people in the world, of all the former players, FIU baseball coach Turtle Thomas chose ex-pitcher Dennis Wiseman to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the team's season opener the other night. Unfortunately the honor went to a registered sex offender who'd been arrested years earlier on three counts of improper relations with a student while working at North Miami High. Does that mean Wiseman should forever be shunned by FIU as a persona non grata? Maybe not. But it does mean, Turtle, that you pick somebody else to represent your program with the honor of a first pitch at a season opener.
SPECULATION ON HEAT TRADE: The NBA trade deadline is this Thursday so the rumors and speculation are flying. Much of it amounts to the media hurling s--- at a wall to see what sticks, but this speculation from Sam Smith of Bulls.com caught my eye. The 76ers have hybrid 6-7 small forward/shooting guard Evan Turner (pictured) on the block, and Smith reports Miami could be interested, with some combination of Udonis Haslem, James Jones and a No. 1 draft pick available, and a third team possibly involved. (Bear in mind Miami's top pick will be near the end of round one, and Heat don't put much stock in the draft, anway). Acquiring Turner would be inetresting. He's only 25, averages 17.5 points this season, and would be a hedge against the lingering injury issue(s) of Dwyane Wade. Plenty of reasons why this might not happen (and I doubt it will), but still worth keeping an eye on the next couple days.
KILL THE NBA ALL-STAR GAME!: Of course by "kill" I pretty much mean "ignore." Why watch? The East beat the West Sunday night, 163-155, and it was like watching a Harlem Globetrotters-Washington Generals game in terms of competitiveness. Even as entertainment it's lacking. There were an even 100 3-point shots taken, and 162 points were scored in the paint -- underlining the disinterest in defense or even the pretense of defense. The NBA dresses up the faux-game in hip-hop -- still love me some old-school Snoop Dogg, or Lion, or whatever -- but the whole affair remains pointless even as the scoring breaks records. (LeBron James scored 22 points, Dwyane Wade 10 and Chris Bosh five, by the way). Only because the NFL and NHL all-star games are such hot messes does the NBA's seem decent by comparison. MLB' s all-star game continues as the only one worth the slightest attention.
LeBron says nothing of value about his future!: LeBron, in an NBA TV interview last night, asked if he could picture himself playing anywhere else: "At this point, I can't, [but] we don't know what can happen from here to July."
Poll result: Dolfans embarrassed, but also sharply divided, by Bullygate: We asked in the last blogpost how serious you think the whole Bullygate controversy was, and 44.5 percent called it a "major embarrassment" but another 37.8% called it minor and "way overblown." Only 16.5% were in between, calling it "fairly serious," and a scant 1.1% were still undecided.
A RECOMMENDED BOOK: Just bought and finished I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers and the March Up Freedom's Highway (Scribner, $26), by Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot. Devoured the 308 pages in two days because I've been a Staple Singers fan since college and currently write the independent Twitter site @mavis_staples -- but also because the story is so engaging. The family group enjoyed chart success in the first half of the '70s but their story starts in rural, deeply-segregated Mississippi and explores their unheralded role in the Civil Rights movement. They were favorites of Martin Luther King. Their music blurred lines between gospel, R&B, soul, funk and pop. Mavis continues to tour to this day, at 74, and as more than just a nostalgia act. Her two most recent albums (produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy) both were Grammy-nominated for Best Americana album. Mavis is a national treasure, and the book is wonderful.
Click back. Will be updating/adding to this latest blogpost...
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