GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND.
1) It's SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23. Merry Christmas Eve-Eve! Procrastinating shopper? Need the perfect inexpensive gift for the Dolfans in your life? Click on Amazon or Barnes & Noble and buy my historical book, Fins At 50. 2) Sorry we haven't had as many general sports columns lately. Burning a slew of leftover vacation time this month. 3) Watch for our season-ending college State Offensive Player of the Year (SOPY) results following all of the bowl games involving state FBS teams. 4) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Jeter's Marlins town hall meeting, Sadness poll, Shameless Book Plug, Herald NFL QB rankings, Pix 'n Fantasy results, FAU wins bowl game & more. 5) Join us on Twitter @gregcote. Also Facebook, Instagram, Periscope and Snapchat.
R.I.P., Dick Enberg, the classy, much-loved, much-respected sports broadcaster, gone at 82.
UPSET BIRD DAY IN AMERICA! NFL WEEK 16 PICKS: ON DOLPHINS-CHIEFS AND THE REST: The NFL's 12-team playoff picture will come into sharp focus this weekend -- it's possible 11 of the 12 spots, all but one AFC ticket, could end up spoken for -- but the chances of that picture including Miami are, well ... let's just say Dolphins in the postseason won't be one of the gifts under your tree. Fins must win out and get much help to sneak in and that first order of business -- win out -- won't happen because Sunday at Kansas City looks like a bad matchup to me. Figures as a rough day for Miami's defense. Click Week 16 Gems for my full Fins-Chiefs predix capsule, my Game of the Week (Falcons-Saints), Upset of the Week (Rams-Titans: "Aawwk!") and all the rest. Thursday games have ended (and the angels sang!), so the week kicks off Saturday.
FIU BOWL LOSS CAN'T DAMPEN POSITIVE SEASON: Update: FIU got hammered by Temple, 28-3, last night in the Gasparilla Bowl. Panthers lost starting QB Alex McGough to a collarbone injury early in the game and could muster little offense. Still, a school-record-tying 8-win season ..... Original post: Florida International University always will perform in the shadow of a winning Miami Hurricanes football team in terms of local attention. This year FIU also got bumped by Lane Kiffin and FAU, which capped an 11-3 season with a Boca Raton Bowl win and (I doubt it, but maybe) could sneak into the final, post-bowls Top 25. But none of this should detract from the job Butch Davis has done in his first season with The Int'l, guiding the Panthers to an 8-4 mark heading into tonight's Gasparilla Bowl (8 p.m., St. Petersburg) vs. the 6-6 Temple Owls. It is the only bowl game on the calendar, so FIU is about as close to having the national stage as is possible. Temple, I'm not sure justifiably, is favored by seven points. I like FIU to cover, and give the Cats a medium shot at an outright upset. I'd like the underdog more if the Cats' solid QB, Alex McGough, wasn't missing top receiver Thomas Owens to a knee injury. Win or lose though it's been an encouraging season for what had been a downtrodden program. This is only FIU's third bowl game in 14 seasons at the FBS level, and first since 2011. A ninth win tonight would set a school record for most in a season. Mark Richt and Kiffin have made a lot more national noise, but Davis turned around his program, too, and aimed it right.
POLL RESULT: NO SURPRISE. MARLINS FANS SHOULD BE SADDEST: We asked: "As 2017 ebbs, fans of which of these teams have the right to be the saddest?" We offered South Florida's four major pro teams. But timing is everything in any poll, and we asked this question just after the Marlins traded Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees. So the results are predictable, although a second team made the Sadness Meter wiggle, too. The results on whose fans should be saddest: Marlins 64.9 percent, Dolphins 26.9%, Panthers 5.3% and Heat 2.9%.
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