1) It's SATURDAY, APRIL 4. Hang in, stay apart and eventually we rise together! 2) Hey, our new Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram! Follow the show on both platforms at TheGregCoteShow. 3) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Clark Spencer buys a racehorse, time for NBA and NHL to shut down, Greg Cote Show podcast & more. 4) Join us on Twitter.com/gregcote. Also on Facebook and Instagram.
GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: EPISODE 5! OUT NOW: Our new Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in early March and Episode 5 is now available! You can find a new Greg Cote Show out every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Megaphone or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Or find all five episodes we've done including the new one right here. Please listen, subscribe, rate and review! Our podcast is a variety show, sports and non-sports, 3-0-5 and national, fun and (when necessary) serious. In Episode 5 we interview the man who brought notorious sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to justice. There's fun stuff, too, as we share things we're doing these Stay at Home days, I get mocked over halibut fishing and we introduce a new Q&A feature called Greg's Mail Sack. Check it out now HERE!
NFL DRAFT, TIGER & PHIL ON A GOLF COURSE A BAD LOOK AS CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIUC WORSENS: The Wimbledon tennis tournament has been canceled. Not delayed indefinitely but erased from the calendar. The IOC has postponed the Summer Olympics an entire year until 2021. Meantime in the United States, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell refuses the wishes of most of his own team general managers and says the draft will go on scheduled in three weeks. And Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are planning a round of golf on an unnamed Florida course, and quarterback buddies Tom Brady and Peyton Manning might join them. This as the NBA and NHL still delude themselves to think their seasons might yet resume, or somehow should. Basketball, hockey, baseball and soccer all envision playing games soon or by summer, albeit likely with no spectators allowed, amid a horror show likely to result in the most American deaths since the more than 400,000 in World War II. Why is U.S. sports not facing this coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic or taking it as seriously as the rest of the world? Is it a cue from an American federal government that still has not enacted a nationwide stay-at-home order the way some other hard-hit countries have? Is it that such edicts have been left to individual states and that so many, including Florida, have been so slow to act? The idea of Tiger and Phil and Tom and Peyton playing golf at this time is an optics thing. It isn’t a good look. Comes off as tone deaf. Yes, it would raise money for charities fighting the coronavirus. Those four gentlemen writing big checks from their living rooms would do the same. Instead they want to be seen yukking it up and fist-pumping long birdie putts on a golf course? While doctors and nurses are in a relentless national triage? When we’re all supposed to be staying at home except when unavoidable? As the coronavirus death toll metastasizes? While there is a growing outcry that so many golf courses are still open when only “essential businesses” are supposed to be? For our full latest column (no paywall), please visit NFL Draft, Tiger 'n Phil Not A Good Look Right Now.
BORED AT HOME DURING NO-SPORTS CORONAVIRUS THREAT? ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGE ... IF YOU DARE!: You are at home, social distancing against the coronavirus threat. You need a break from online, from binge-watching. You finished Tiger King. You’re caught up on my new podcast (!). You’re a sports fan lost in the abyss of no live sports. Now what? I’m here for you, fellow pandemic fighter. I present to you the ultimate all-time South Florida major sports trivia challenge. Do you dare? Are you good enough? Warning: The is not beginner’s level. If you’re expecting, “What NBA star took his talents to South Beach in 2010?” you better leave now while you still can. This is a challenge. It is difficult. Gather all of the sports fans under your roof or go on Zoom with friends and make a game of it. This is geared to greater Miami sports but you can create a challenge of your own for your city and your teams. Answers are at the very bottom here but no peeking, no cheating. Smart phones off. No Googling. Ready? Let us begin! Want to check out our 25-question trivia challenge (almost) guaranteed to stump you? Please visit Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge. (No paywall!)
AS CORONAVIRUS RAGES, TIME FOR SPORTS TO GET REAL AND NOT PRETEND IT'S RESUMING ANYTIME SOON: There seems to be a continuing disconnect between sports and reality. Between leagues hoping to resume their games as soon as possible — perhaps with no fans allowed — and a global pandemic crisis that experts say will get much worse before it begins to ebb. The 
Florida Derby horse race ran as scheduled Saturday at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, but with no spectators. It was more than eerie, this ghost race. It was offensive. Broward County and city officials preferred it be canceled or postponed, but there was revenue to be had from television and off-track betting. The optics are bad, if nothing else. Thoroughbreds racing to the finish line, business as usual, amid a surrounding coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis that is killing more and more thousands and threatening millions — the biggest public health crisis since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic — as underequipped doctors and nurses work valiantly, under siege, in a relentless emergency. Even President Donald Trump, who just recently said he thought the country might "open back up' as soon as April 12 and that he envisioned packed churches on Easter Sunday — words that sounded fancifully unlikely even as they left his mouth — has now faced reality and begun hearing what his medical experts are saying. The response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Deborah Birx, on NBC’s Today show, estimated 100,000 to 200,000 eventual U.S. deaths, "if we do things almost perfectly," she said, adding. "We’re very worried about every city in the United States." And we’re still talking about resuming games? For our full recent column (no paywall), visit Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages.
Other featured recent column:
LONGTIME HERALD SPORTS WRITER BUYS RACEHORSE, HITS JACKPOT: [Thanks, Peter King, for naming this his national Sports Column of the Week] "This all started the day I got hit in the balls my last day on the job." For the full story of how Clark Spencer came to own racehorse that turned out to be great, visit How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Saturday's No-Fans Florida Derby. Pictured: Clark's horse, Gouverneur Morris, who would finish fourth, missing third by a nose. For that column: In Midst Of Pandemic, A Horse Race.
Other most recent columns:
Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons
Backlash Over NBA Coronavirus Testing Mirrors Growing Anxiety, the New National Mood
Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval
Dolphins' Most Important Rebuilding Is Yet to Come
Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go?
Desperate Fans Turn to NFL After Reality Of First Weekend With No Games
Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified
It's Dominate Or Bust For Dolphins GM Grier Over Next 6 Weeks
LATEST 'BACK IN MY DAY': HAIRCUTS!: Ah, the simplest of things have become a challenge in these stay at home days. This new BIMD premeired today on the Le Batard Show on ESPN Radio:
Bonus BIMD: Back In My Day: Quarantining!
Select additional recent columns: Repentant Cheater A-Rod Slams Astros With Lesson On How to Handle Their Own Scandal / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / As NFL Free Agency & Draft Near, All You Need To Know About Dolphins' QB Situation / Beckham, Inter Miami Survive To Finally Reach Opening Week / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / Why Marlins Aren't Pursuing Puig All About Change In Ownership / and Pressure On Marlins for Big Improvement Now -- and It's About Time / It's Time For Anonymous Lone Voter Who Denied Jeter To Step Forward / Heat And Gloriously Impatient Riley Win In Trade For Iguodala / Return Of Ed Reed, Even If Mostly Symbolic, Leads Surge By Canes Football / Poor Dolphins Finally Getting Rid Of Brady Only to Have Mahomes Take His Place / Our two-part series: How One Man Long Forgotten Changed Everything For the Miami Dolphins and How Shula Made Dolphins Perfect and Made Miami Matter, And the Coach Today at 90 / Kobe's Death Sends Sports World Reeling, But Immortality Is His / Jimmy Johnson's Biggest Triumph? Knowing When To Quit -- And Why / and Announcing Miami Dolphins' 2010-19 All-Decade Team.
Visit Greg Cote Column Headquarters, and revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors 2018 writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Author of 'Fins At 50,' available on Amazon. Regular co-host on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio and ESPNews. Follow on Twitter @gregcote. And check and our new The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote podcast HERE and listen, subscribe, rate and review for free!
Comments