GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. The Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 2) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast new Episode 26 & more. 3) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: NEW EPISODE 26 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and we're back with new Episode 26! New episodes drop early every Monday on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you pod, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 26 we've done so far RIGHT HERE for free! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In Ep26 we chat up new TV finds, rank the five South Florida pro teams in terms of brightest future, and welcome in guest Roy Bellamy from the Le Batard Show. (Or do we?) Mount Gregmore, too, of course. We also had a lengthy discussion on the Armando Salguero controversy within the Herald, but unfortunately you won't hear it. It was censored from the podcast.

'IF I DIE, I DIE.' QB KIRK COUSINS SHAMES VIKINGS, NFL WITH CAVLIER COMMENTS ON PANDEMIC: “If I die, I die.” Kirk Cousins said that. The Minnesota Vikings quarterback. The team captain. The highest-paid player in the NFL. He appeared on a podcast in July in an interview that just aired this week, and host Kyle Brandt was talking with Cousins (pictured) about the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, and how concerned the quarterback was. How concerned was he on a scale of 1 to 10, if 1 represented “Masks are stupid”? Cousins said, “I’m about a .000001,” later allowing he only wore a protective mask himself to be “respectful to other people” (mighty magnanimous of him) and because his league’s protocols mandated it. The COVID-19 death toll in the United States surpassed another grim milestone Thursday morning. It was then 190,014. It is more as you read this. It isn’t right to just round off that number because those 14 most recent victims matter as much as any. That was 14 more families that had to say goodbye from behind a glass pane because it was too dangerous to hold their loved one’s hand at the very end. “If I die, I die.” I wondered if, in the company of any of those 14 families, Cousins might have offered his credo as a condolence? As his version of empathy? The quarterback also mentions he takes a “survival of the fittest approach” to the pandemic. Not sure if he’s a herd-immunity guy or just going all Darwinian on us, but someone needs to alert Kirk that the fittest among us die too, along with young adults. And children, too. For our full latest column, please visit 'If I Die, I Die.' QB Cousins' Shamefully Cavalier Attitude On Pandemic.

LIFTING SPIRITS AND A CITY, HEAT BEAT BUCKS AGAIN TO CONTINUE PANDEMIC PLAYOFF RUN: Nobody was believing in Miami yet, or ready to write off Milwaukee. One game wouldn’t flip the narrative, not even one as convincing as the Heat’s 115-104 victory against the Bucks to begin this NBA Eastern Conference second-round series. That is why Milwaukee, after the league’s best regular season, was a solid 5-point favorite entering Game 2 on Wednesday night in the Orlando bubble. It’s why ESPN’s Basketball Power Index gave the Bucks a 69 percent likelihood of winning the series even after the Game 1 stumble. Well, how about now? Anybody believing in the Heat yet? Maybe just a little? Miami 116, Milwaukee 114. An even more important score: Miami is 2-0 entering Game 3 on Friday night. Goran Dragic led the Heat with 23 points after scoring 27 in Game 1, to offset Jimmy Butler’s quiet 13-point night after he was scorched for 40 on Monday. But it was Butler’s two clutch free throws with no time left that decided it. That and an avalanche of 17 3-pointers, four each by Dragic and Jae Crowder. Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo rebounded from an off Game 1 to score 29 on Wednesday, but it was his foul on Butler in the last second that ended it. Milwaukee’s Kris Middleton had said after the Game 1 loss, “I don’t think anybody on our team has any doubt whether we will win this series.” Well, how about now? The Heat is reminding us what big games felt like. Why we love sports, and what we’d missed for most of this year like no other. The Heat on a playoff run doesn’t make real life disappear. The ongoing pandemic, our political divide, racial in justice, social unrest — those things are omnipresent, the NBA players’ own social-message uniforms mirroring much of that. Sports does have the power, though, to make real life go away for a minute. Right now, for South Florida, the Miami Heat holds that power. To make us cheer. To bring us cheer. For our full recent column, please visit Lifting Spirits And A City: Heat, Up 2-0, Continue Pandemic Playoff Run.

HEAT BEAT BUCKS IN GAME WITH BIGGER GOAL IN MIND: WOOING GIANNIS: What tipped off Monday night for the Miami Heat and Milwaukee Bucks felt bigger than a second-round NBA Eastern Conference playoff series. It feels like the next week-plus of games could shape what happens next summer for the Heat and help steer this franchise’s future. It feels like the perfect stage to commence the recruitment Giannis Antetokounmpo. Milwaukee’s young 6-11 superstar will be a free agent next summer, and if Milwaukee can’t keep him no team among his many suitors will go harder after him than whale-hunting Pat Riley and Miami. The Heat can’t say that out loud. It would be called tampering. But I can say it. (I think I just did). And what better platform for the Heat to impress and woo the “Greek Freak” than in a high-stakes, head-to-head playoff series? It is the perfect chance for Miami to put on display all of the elements of Heat culture, family and drive. Not to mention a showcase of the talent Antetokounmpo might be imagining as his future teammates. If Game 1 on Monday was an indication, this will be a long series. It was a night that fortified the idea Miami can go step-for-step and eye-to-eye with the team that has the best regular-season record in the league. The idea that a shocking upset wouldn’t really be that shocking at all. Miami 115, Milwaukee 104. Jimmy Butler (pictured), career playoff-high 40 points, in a performance that whispered, “Meet me in Miami, Giannis?” And the godfather, Riley, was in the Orlando bubble watching, behind a purple facemask, the first time he has traveled to see his team this postseason. For our full recent column, please visit Heat Beat Bucks In Game 1, In A Series Also About '21 Free Agency.

Our two most recent previous columns: Boycott Of NBA Playoffs Shows Nation That Injustice Is Bigger Than Sports Right Now and Having Fans at Dolphins, Canes Games A Bad Idea And Big Risk. Most recent other columns: Pat Riley's Grand Plan On Track As Heat Close In On Playoff Advance / For Marlins, A Home Opener -- And First Place -- In Mid-August / Fractured College Football Mirrors America's Divide On How to Handle a Pandemic / Fall Without Football: Big Ten, Pac-12 Set Moral Compass for NFL, Others to Follow / As Panthers Move on From Tallon, Who's Next Miami Team Executive on Hot Seat? / and ''Perfect Storm For Virus Transmission': Why Football Is Struggling to Lift Off.

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THE COTE ARCHIVES:

Marlins Hell Week Trilogy: Are Marlins To Blame For Own Outbreak? If So It Would Mirror America's Struggle / Marlins Outbreak Worsens, Sports Should Rethink Playing Again in 2020 / and Marlins Delaying Home Opener For COVID Outbreak a Scary Lesson For All Sports.

Special Don Shula tribute: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. / and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me.

George Floyd-related: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need / It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America / Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic / and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Other most recent columns: Here's Why Nobody Should Rule Out Heat Reaching NBA Finals / Marlins and Dolphins, In a Race For Relevance, Offer Hope At a Time We Need That / When Will Dolphins Unleash Tua? Exploring the Timetable as Rookies Report / Sports Resume, But Major Concerns Complicate Opening of Football Training Camps / He Made a Mistake, But Miami Knows Who Dwyane Wade Is And Knows It By Heart / Marlins Captain Miguel Rojas On Pandemic And Playoffs As Baseball Returns / Rest In Pieces, Redskins. Now Here Are Sports' Other Suspect Nicknames / 'Redskins Is Racist Nickname Based On a Lie. Time For It to Disappear / Money Or Health? NFL and Major College Football Face A Decision / Tough Times All Around, But Rise Of Miami Sports Offers Hope / The Face Of Miami Sports in 2020: Our Top 20 And Who's No.1 / Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020 / Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back / Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction / Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess? / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred / and Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street

Select columns from earlier in 2020: Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down / Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / Kobe's Death Sends Sports World Reeling, But Immortality Is His / Jimmy Johnson's Biggest Triumph? Knowing When To Quit -- And Why / Announcing Miami Dolphins' 2010-19 All-Decade Team / and two-part series on how Dolphins' Glory Day happened: 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 

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Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote: Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Columns. Podcast. Podcast on Twitter. Podcast on Instagram. LeBatard Show. Book: Fins At 50. Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, AUGUST 29. The Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 2) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast Episode 25 & more. 3) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: SILVER POD-IVERSARY EPISODE 25 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and we're back with Silver Pod-iversary Episode 25, out now! New episodes drop Monday mornings on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you pod, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 25 RIGHT HERE. Free! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In new Ep25 we chat with special guest Mike Tannenbaum, the former Dolphins and NFL executive, about Tua, the Fins and his regret about how it ended for him in Miami; Juju Gotti drops by; Greg saves the U.S. Postal Service'and of course we bring you the Mount Gregmore Name Game -- H's! All that and more in new Ep25! 

PLAYER BOYCOTT OF NBA PLAYOFFS SHOWS NATION THAT INJUSTICE IS BIGGER THAN SPORTS RIGHT NOW: Sports are leading the way. Again. Athletes are leading the way in the call — no, the demand — for racial justice in America and an end to unwarranted police force. On Wednesday, the NBA postponed all three Game 5s of the 2020 playoffs being held in the Orlando bubble after the Milwaukee Bucks boycotted their game against Orlando to protest the shooting of unarmed Jacob Blake. In addition to Bucks-Magic (whose series winner will face the Miami Heat), the Houston-Oklahoma City and L.A. Lakers-Portland games also will be rescheduled. Blake, who is Black, was shot at least seven times in the back by police on Sunday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as three of his children looked on. It was the latest in a series of such incidents that have led to an uprising of protest in the streets across the country. His family has said Blake is paralyzed from the waist down. It is the latest in a series of such incidents, including the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, that have led to an uprising of protests in the streets led by the Black Lives Matter movement. As the news of Milwaukee’s boycott broke, Lakers superstar LeBron James wrote this in all caps to his 47 million Twitter followers: “F--- THIS MAN!!!! WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT” Except he did not include dashes on that first word. Almost four years ago then-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick opened eyes to the social-injustice issue by leading players across the league who knelt during the national anthem in protest of police treatment of Blacks. Now, as systemic racism in America becomes harder and harder to deny, to not see, NBA teams’ actions are making a bold statement that injustice going gone in the United States is of far more urgent importance than sports, than a basketball game. Even a playoff game. For our full latest column, please visit Boycott Of NBA Playoffs Shows Nation That Injustice Is Bigger Than Sports Right Now. 

FANS AT DOLPHINS, CANES GAMES THIS FALL A DUMB IDEA, BIG RISK: Hard Rock Stadium officials are trying their best to assure Miami Dolphins and Miami Hurricanes football fans they will be taking every possible precaution to keep everyone safe in announcing on Monday that a limited number of fans would be permitted at home games this season. Well, they are not taking every possible precaution. Not the safest one of all, in fact. The safest by far. That precaution would be not allowing fans at all — like most every other major sports league is doing. NBA teams are hermetically sealed in a bubble with no fans. The NHL is doing the same. MLB is playing in empty stadiums. Half of college football is skipping the 2020 season entirely out of abundant caution. The vast majority of NFL teams have said they will have no fans this season or at least to start. But not us! Not Miami-Dade Mayor Carlo Giminez, who has decided, along with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, that allowing 13,000 fans to be at Dolphins and Canes games starting next month will be safe ... enough. Wow. Just wow. Breaking down the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic’s U.S. death toll of around 177,000 lives as of Monday, 15 counties nationwide have dubiously topped 2,000 deaths — with Miami-Dade ninth overall with 2,238 deaths. So it is in the heart of one of America’s hardest-hit counties that the Dolphins and UM are ready to welcome back fans? It isn’t smart, or safe. To read my full recent column, please visit Having Fans at Dolphins, Canes Games A Bad Idea And Big Risk.

Most recent previous columns: Pat Riley's Grand Plan On Track As Heat Close In On Playoff Advance / For Marlins, A Home Opener -- And First Place -- In Mid-August / Fractured College Football Mirrors America's Divide On How to Handle a Pandemic / Fall Without Football: Big Ten, Pac-12 Set Moral Compass for NFL, Others to Follow / As Panthers Move on From Tallon, Who's Next Miami Team Executive on Hot Seat? / and ''Perfect Storm For Virus Transmission': Why Football Is Struggling to Lift Off 

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THE COTE ARCHIVES:

Marlins Hell Week Trilogy: Are Marlins To Blame For Own Outbreak? If So It Would Mirror America's Struggle / Marlins Outbreak Worsens, Sports Should Rethink Playing Again in 2020 / and Marlins Delaying Home Opener For COVID Outbreak a Scary Lesson For All Sports.

Other most recent columns: Here's Why Nobody Should Rule Out Heat Reaching NBA Finals / Marlins and Dolphins, In a Race For Relevance, Offer Hope At a Time We Need That / When Will Dolphins Unleash Tua? Exploring the Timetable as Rookies Report / Sports Resume, But Major Concerns Complicate Opening of Football Training Camps / He Made a Mistake, But Miami Knows Who Dwyane Wade Is And Knows It By Heart / Marlins Captain Miguel Rojas On Pandemic And Playoffs As Baseball Returns / Rest In Pieces, Redskins. Now Here Are Sports' Other Suspect Nicknames / 'Redskins Is Racist Nickname Based On a Lie. Time For It to Disappear / Money Or Health? NFL and Major College Football Face A Decision / Tough Times All Around, But Rise Of Miami Sports Offers Hope / The Face Of Miami Sports in 2020: Our Top 20 And Who's No.1 / Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020 / Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back / Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction / Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess? / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred / and Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street

Special Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. / and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need / It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America / Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic / and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Select columns from earlier in 2020: Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down / Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / Kobe's Death Sends Sports World Reeling, But Immortality Is His / Jimmy Johnson's Biggest Triumph? Knowing When To Quit -- And Why / Announcing Miami Dolphins' 2010-19 All-Decade Team / and two-part series on how Dolphins' Glory Day happened: 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 

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Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote: Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Columns. Podcast. Podcast on Twitter. Podcast on Instagram. LeBatard Show. Book: Fins At 50. Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, AUGUST 15. Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 2) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast new Episode 24 & more. 3) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: NEW EPISODE 24 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and new Episode 24 is out now! A new episode drops every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 24 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In Episode 24 Greg discusses his likes and dislikes about being on the Le Batard Show. Also, hear from a screenwriter with a movie on Netflix who also happens to be running for Broward County supervisor of elections. And: A guy who wrote a book about baseball cards ... and a double dose of Mount Gregmore (G's)! Hear all that and more now in new Ep24! 

FOR MARLINS, A HOME OPENER -- AND FIRST PLACE -- IN MID-AUGUST. CAN THIS YEAR GET ANY WEIRDER?: [From Marlin s Park and last night's 8-2 win over Atlanta in Miami's much-delayed home opener]: Oh my how the Miami Marlins tried. Did everything they could to make their much-delayed first home game of the season Friday night feel special. Only in baseball does Opening Day get capital letters, and so for their return to Marlins Park — finally! — they hung red, white and blue bunting and even called the full team to the baseline for pregame introductions. Like it was April. Like everything was the same. When absolutely nothing is. The jumbo video screens were lit and the PA announcer enthusiastically called out the Marlins to a sea of 37,000 empty blue seats. Manager Don Mattingly has been in 31 big-league home openers as player, coach or manager, and he wasn’t even going to try to pretend. "I know it’s a home opener, but it doesn’t feel like much of one," said Donnie Baseball via a remote Zoom hookup, de rigeur now for coach and athlete interaction with media. "It’s another game, honestly. It ends up being a regular game." Well, not that, either, though. Not in a time when hardly anything in 2020 is regular, in sports or in life. That includes the Marlins themselves, more happily for Mattingly. His team unexpectedly held onto first place in the NL East with an 8-2 home-opening win led by Pablo Lopez’s eight-strikeout, no-walks gem. One month ago Lopez, 24, was grieving the sudden death of his father to a heart attack. Now he’s a big reason why Miami is an unlikely feelgood story in MLB. (Pictured: Lopez and first baseman Jesus Aguilar during the game]. "We were eager and excited to come home," Lopez said. "A really fun game all around." Clutch hitting, speed, great base running including another steal of home, a pair of highlight-reel defensive plays in left field by Matt Joyce -- all of that happened on a night that would have set the ballpark rocking, had there been fans in it. "A well-rounded game for us," Mattingly understated it afterward. "Kind of got contributions from all over the place. Speed is a difficult thing to deal with. The bats are coming alive." (Can it be real? The Marlins look good). The Fish became the first South Florida pro team in more than five months — in 156 days, since March 11 — to play a home game that actually was at home, following a 24-day, 12-game road trip to begin the delayed MLB season. It was the latest home opener by any team in the sport’s 144-year history. For my full latest column on a night both eerie and exhilarating, please visit For Marlins, A Home Opener -- And First Place -- In Mid-August.

FRACTURED COLLEGE FOOTBALL MIRRORS AMERICA'S DEEP DIVIDE ON HOW TO HANDLE A PANDEMIC: Who is in charge here? Anyone? We haven’t seen this before. Not at any time, in any major sport. It has elements of anarchy. Mutiny. Insanity, even. Hello, NCAA? Anybody home? Like pandemic-plagued 2020 itself, what we see happening in college football ahead of this fractured 2020 season is unprecedented. Wait. No. There was the Spanish Flu of 1918 as a pandemic precedent. But in terms of sports? Nope. This is a first. College football always has been an entity of many conferences at different levels, but with a cohesion to it. One sport under one umbrella, under one governing body. Now we see a sport splintered, going in starkly different directions. The Power 5 Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announcing Tuesday they would not play football in 2020 was the biggest sports headline of this coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. Other smaller conferences and individual colleges already had done so. Now the onus is on the sport’s three other major leagues — Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12 — to follow the path of safety first, of prudent caution, or be seen as recklessly putting revenue over the health of their student-athletes. And all indications are they will follow the money, of course. But even that is a crapshoot in a fluid time of uncertainty. "We’re going forward. The Big 12, SEC and ACC have made their decision," as director of athletics Blake James of the ACC’s Miami Hurricanes told us Wednesday. "But we can’t say anything with certainty. Can anything change? Without a doubt." College football's divide on whether to play in 2020 mirrors America's division on how best to handle a pandemic. To read our full recent column, please visit Fractured College Football Mirrors America's Divide On How to Handle a Pandemic.

FALL WITHOUT FOOTBALL: BIG TEN, PAC-12 SET MORAL COMPASS FOR NFL, OTHER SCHOOLS TO FOLLOW: Something amazing and nearly unimaginable is happening. Major college sports is doing the right thing. Not the popular thing. Not the best thing for its financial bottom line. But the right thing. If reports are true the Big Ten and Pac-12, major Power 5 conferences, will not play college football in the fall of 2020. Reports are official announcements from both leagues are expected Tuesday. The much smaller Ivy League and Centennial Conference previously had opted out of football season. The Mid-American Conference joined them to become the first FBS-level league to do so. But the Big Ten and Pac-12 opting out takes this to a whole new level. This is the biggest news in sports since the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic turned everything upside down exactly five months ago. It is a monumental development because it a powerful message that our government — federal, state and local — should hear and heed: That in the ongoing national struggle to balance health and economic concerns, there should be no real debate. Lives are more important than dollars. The adults in the room, in this case Big Ten and Pac-12 presidents, commissioners and athletic directors, are saying as much, loudly, on behalf of their student-athletes. They are saying so even knowing acutely that football is the big dog on campus producing the revenue that sustains entire athletic programs. This also is a seismic development for what it may portend, for the huge domino that may have just tipped. Because, now, how can the Southeastern Conference, the Big 12 and the University of Miami’s Atlantic Coast Conference go on with their seasons as planned? How reckless will they seem, putting money ahead of safety, now that the Big Ten and Pac-12 have taken hold of sports’ moral compass? Same with the mighty NFL. To read this full recent column, please visit Fall Without Football: Big Ten, Pac-12 Set Moral Compass for NFL, Others to Follow.

AS FLORIDA PANTHERS MOVE ON FROM GM TALLON, WHO'S NEXT MIAMI TEAM EXECUTIVE FACING HOT SEAT?: When you don’t know what else to do, you fire somebody. When you’re out of answers and excuses, fire somebody. This is the way it works in big-time sports. Coaches and team executives are not often let go based on incompetence, but rather because the team owner ran out of patience, felt pressure and needed a fall guy. Needed a bold stroke to convey action, perhaps to divert attention from his own inability to find a winning combination. Change merely for the sake of change is sometimes enough, and it erased Dale Tallon from the South Florida sports landscape on Monday. The Florida Panthers’ longtime general manager — 10 years is a lifetime in sports — leaves the hockey club by what is being called a "mutual agreement," because a respected 69-year-old NHL lifer deserves that, at least. Plainly, his contract expired when this season did and would not be renewed. It is understandable, this move. I am sorry to see it, and to say, but it is justifiable. Said team owner Vincent Viola: "When we purchased the Panthers in 2013 we did so with a singular goal, to win a Stanley Cup. We have not seen our efforts come to fruition." Tallon thanked fans and Viola in a parting statement issued through the club, but he is hurting. I texted Dale on Monday to ask if we might speak. He replied and, politely, wrote, "I will hold off at this time." Ironically, Tallon’s own successes as a GM raised the bar that ultimately caused his sacking. His Cats made a cannonball splash during the past offseason in hiring star coach Joel Quenneville (pictured with Tallon) and top free agent goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. The moves screamed win-now-or-else. Let Tallon’s departure be a warning that applies elsewhere in this market to others who are feeling job pressure, should be, or might be soon. Because not many get the 10 years Tallon got, and everywhere you look in South Florida — outside of the steadily competitive and stable Miami Heat — you see potential change. For my full recent column, including who I see as the next Miami team executive to feel pressure, please visit As Panthers Move on From Tallon, Who's Next Miami Team Executive on Hot Seat?

Our two most recent previous columns: 'Perfect Storm For Virus Transmission': Why Football Is Struggling to Lift Off and Here's Why Nobody Should Rule Out Heat Reaching NBA Finals.

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THE COTE ARCHIVES:

Marlins Hell Week Column Trilogy: Are Marlins To Blame For Own Outbreak? If So It Would Mirror America's Struggle / Marlins Outbreak Worsens, Sports Should Rethink Playing Again in 2020 / and Marlins Delaying Home Opener For COVID Outbreak a Scary Lesson For All Sports.

Other most recent columns: Marlins and Dolphins, In a Race For Relevance, Offer Hope At a Time We Need That / When Will Dolphins Unleash Tua? Exploring the Timetable as Rookies Report / Sports Resume, But Major Concerns Complicate Opening of Football Training Camps / He Made a Mistake, But Miami Knows Who Dwyane Wade Is And Knows It By Heart / Marlins Captain Miguel Rojas On Pandemic And Playoffs As Baseball Returns / Rest In Pieces, Redskins. Now Here Are Sports' Other Suspect Nicknames / 'Redskins Is Racist Nickname Based On a Lie. Time For It to Disappear / Money Or Health? NFL and Major College Football Face A Decision / Tough Times All Around, But Rise Of Miami Sports Offers Hope / The Face Of Miami Sports in 2020: Our Top 20 And Who's No.1 / Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020 / Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back / Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction / Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess? / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred / and Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street

Special Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. / and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need / It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America / Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic / and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Select earlier columns from 2020: Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down / Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / Kobe's Death Sends Sports World Reeling, But Immortality Is His / Jimmy Johnson's Biggest Triumph? Knowing When To Quit -- And Why / Announcing Miami Dolphins' 2010-19 All-Decade Team / and two-part series on how Dolphins' Glory Day happened: 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 

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Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote:  Twitter.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Columns.  Podcast.  Podcast on Twitter.  Podcast on Instagram.  LeBatard Show.  Book: Fins At 50.  Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, AUGUST 8. Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 2) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast Episode 23 & more. 3) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

"The COVID-depleted Miami Marlins are now 5-0 since the restart, 7-1 overall. All on the road. With a makeshift team. Don Mattingly: Manager of the year!" -- Greg Cote

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: NEW EPISODE 23 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and new Episode 23 is out now! A new episode drops every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 23 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In new Episode 23 Greg and Chris are joined by two special guests. ESPN's Amin Elhassan is in to discuss the Miami Heat/NBA restart and leftovers. (Yes, leftovers). And Herald Marlins writer Jordan McPherson joins us to talk about working in a pandemic hotspot and covering the team whose season was derailed by a COVID-19 outbreak. New episode also includes the latest Mount Gregmore Name Game (F's). Hear all of that and more now in new Ep23! 

'THE PERFECT STORM FOR VIRUS TRANSMISSION': WHY FOOTBALL IS STRUGGLING TO LIFT OFF: Football season is struggling mightily to lift off in the pandemic year 2020. We are seeing it in the NFL and we are seeing it at the college level, and it is not the least bit surprising. We should have all seen this coming. Football in the fall is chugging at us like a malignant locomotive. That the NFL and college game are still planning to play at all with schedules including travel, even in stadiums with few or no fans, lends a whole new shade of meaning to the idea this is a "dangerous sport." Cleveland Browns center J.C. Tretter, the new president of the NFL Players Association, wrote this in a recent communique with the league’s players: "More than any other sport, the game of football is the perfect storm for virus transmission." Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned the same, saying players, coaches and staff must be isolated in an "enclosed community" to safely play this season. And it’s common sense. Amid a coronavirus/COVID-19 plague not nearly contained, in a time when social distancing is a part of the lexicon, football oppositely demands close and violent contact. There isn’t a single play where sweat isn’t flying and bodies aren’t colliding. Health and safety protocols are fine (when followed) and frequent testing is fine; still, what Tretter said is true, and the danger is magnified by by travel, by airports, hotels and other stadiums — things outside that "closed community." My my full latest column, please visit 'Perfect Storm For Virus Transmission': Why Football Is Struggling to Lift Off. 

HERE'S WHY NOBODY SHOULD RULE OUT MIAMI HEAT REACHING NBA FINALS: Heat now 2-2 in the restart after losses to East powers Washington and Toronto. Original post: This was something we hadn’t seen, in this strangest of all years, in almost five months, since March. A big game. It’s almost tough to remember what those were, but Miami Heat vs. Toronto Raptors felt like one Monday in the NBA’s Orlando bubble. It felt like a game that might mean something. Might tell us something. It did. Even in a 107-103 loss Monday, Miami reminded us it is on a level with the defending NBA champions, and that a deep run in the looming playoffs -- maybe even one reaching the NBA Finals -- is not an unreasonable notion. (pictured: Miami's Goran Dragic greets Toronto's Fred VanFleet). This arrived as a measuring-stick game for the one South Florida team best positioned to come out of this delayed, truncated, upside-down sports year with an actual shot at a title. This eight-game regular-season restart will be over and the playoffs will be here in a flash. Can the Heat actually get through the Eastern Conference? I say yes. Still. And I'm not alone. For my full recent column, please visit Here's Why Nobody Should Rule Out Heat Reaching NBA Finals.

Marlins Hell Week: Column Trilogy: As Miami's COVID-19 outbreak wreaks havoc with the roster and with MLB, putting the Marlins season on pause: Latest: Are Marlins To Blame For Own Outbreak? If So It Would Mirror America's Struggle / Middle: Marlins Outbreak Worsens, Sports Should Rethink Playing Again in 2020 / And first: Marlins Delaying Home Opener For COVID Outbreak a Scary Lesson For All Sports.

Other most recent columns: Marlins and Dolphins, In a Race For Relevance, Offer Hope At a Time We Need That / When Will Dolphins Unleash Tua? Exploring the Timetable as Rookies Report / Sports Resume, But Major Concerns Complicate Opening of Football Training Camps. And: He Made a Mistake, But Miami Knows Who Dwyane Wade Is And Knows It By Heart / Marlins Captain Miguel Rojas On Pandemic And Playoffs As Baseball Returns / Rest In Pieces, Redskins. Now Here Are Sports' Other Suspect Nicknames

Other recent columns: 'Redskins Is Racist Nickname Based On a Lie. Time For It to Disappear / Money Or Health? NFL and Major College Football Face A Decision / Tough Times All Around, But Rise Of Miami Sports Offers Hope / The Face Of Miami Sports in 2020: Our Top 20 And Who's No.1 / Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020 / Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back / Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction / Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess? / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred / Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street

Special Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need / It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America / Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic / George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Select earlier columns from 2020: Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down / Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / 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 / Announcing Miami Dolphins' 2010-19 All-Decade Team

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Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote:  Twitter.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Columns.  Podcast.  Podcast on Twitter.  Podcast on Instagram.  LeBatard Show.  Book: Fins At 50.  Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, AUGUST 1. Welcome, Augie. Be nice to us. You, too Isaias!  2) Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 3) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Marlins postpone opener due to virus outbreak, Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast Episode 22 & more. 4) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: EPISODE 22 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and Episode 22 is out now! A new episode drops every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 22 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In Episode 22 Greg and Chris are joined by special guest co-host Juju Gotti, the Atlanta rapper, for a fun and veering conversation. New episode also includes Greg's Mail Sack, the top 10 Miami sports stars of all time, and the Mount Gregmore Name Game (E's). Hear all that and more in new Ep22! 

OUR TRILOGY OF COLUMNS ON THE MIAMI MARLINS' WEEK FROM HELL:

3RD/LATEST: ARE MARLINS TO BLAME FOR OWN OUTBREAK? IF SO IT WOULD MIRROR AMERICA'S STRUGGLE: The COVID-19 outbreak that has derailed the Miami Marlins season so soon after its delayed start perfectly mirrors America’s struggle to contain and get past this coronavirus pandemic that has turned 2020 upside down. The lesson: It only takes a relative few, on a team or in a nation, to mess things up for everyone. Half of the Marlins roster — 17 players and two coaches after one more test-positive Thursday — have been hit by the virus. The infection total for the other 29 MLB teams combined: Zero. How can that possibly be? If what USA Today’s Bob Nightengale said on the radio is true, a very few unnamed Marlins went out partying in Atlanta after an exhibition game a week ago Tuesday, in violation of health and safety protocols, contracted the virus and unknowingly spread it. I would emphasize the word if there. MLB is investigating that report, according to ESPN. The team has made no statement on its truth but also is investigating the cause. Meantime, CEO Derek Jeter (pictured), manager Don Mattingly, team captain Miguel Rojas — anyone who fancies himself as leading this team — should be profoundly embarrassed if the cause is proved to be self-inflicted. If a few players’ rule-breaking selfishness caused this outbreak, the Marlins would owe their fans an apology. Last season’s 57-105 record was bad. This outbreak, no matter its root, is every-way worse. For our full latest column, visit Are Marlins To Blame For Own Outbreak? If So It Would Mirror America's Struggle. 

2ND: AS MARLINS COVID OUTBREAK WORSENS, SPORTS SHOULD RETHINK PLAYING AT ALL AGAIN IN 2020: Maybe the Miami Marlins have done sports a huge favor. Maybe this is the slap in the face, the slap of reality, that every league commissioner in America has needed. Because maybe this is when the perils of playing in a pandemic begin to seem more and more like, well, like insanity. Then again, maybe I’m dreaming. That sure seemed the case when the MLB commissioner’s first words on the Marlins’ COVID-19 outbreak that postponed their Monday and Tuesday home games was that this could be "managed." "I don’t see it as a nightmare," said Rob Manfred, a man paid to put his team owners’ financial bottom line ahead of the health and safety of his players and coaches and their families. "We think we can keep people safe and continue to play." How did that work out for you with Miami, Rob? Or are at least 17 Marlins players and coaches testing positive three games into the start of the season not enough to make you rethink the risk? One of the infected players is team captain Miguel Rojas, it was reported Tuesday, after Rojas had begun the season 7-for-10. This is a nightmare, Rob. This should be enough to make all sports rethink the risk. For this full column, visit As Marlins Outbreak Worsens, Sports Should Rethink Playing Again in 2020. 

1ST: MARLINS ARE NOW 'EXHIBIT A' AND SCARY LESSON ON PERILS OF PLAYING IN PANDEMIC: For all the world to see, the Miami Marlins just became Exhibit A for all that can go wrong when you try to play games in a pandemic. It is this baseball club, in one of America’s continuing coronavirus/COVID-19 hotpots, that you look to now when you wonder if this whole sports restart — for our entertainment and so leagues can make money, not necessarily in that order — is worth the risk. The worst that can happen, happened. The Marlins (masked manager Don Mattingly is pictured) suffered a virus outbreak infecting half the team on the first road trip of the season. At least 12 players and two coaches have tested positive — forcing Monday night’s scheduled home opener at Marlins Park to be canceled. It is an historic happenstance in a year unlike any in American history as the U.S. virus death toll grimly approaches 150,000 while sports start back up in empty stadiums and arenas. The Marlins’ next game, when and where it will be — all to be determined. For this full column, visit Marlins Delaying Home Opener For COVID Outbreak a Scary Lesson For All Sports.

Our most recent other columns:

Marlins and Dolphins, In a Race For Relevance, Offer Hope At a Time We Need That

When Will Dolphins Unleash Tua? Exploring the Timetable as Rookies Report

Sports Resume, But Major Concerns Complicate Opening of Football Training Camps

And: He Made a Mistake, But Miami Knows Who Dwyane Wade Is -- And Knows It By Heart  /  Marlins Captain Miguel Rojas On Pandemic And Playoffs As Baseball Returns  /  and Rest In Pieces, Redskins. Now Here Are Sports' Other Suspect Nicknames

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, JULY 25. Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 2) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast new Episode 21 & more. 3) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: NEW EPISODE 21 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and Episode 21 is out now! A new episode drops every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 21 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In Episode 21 we chat with Miami Marlins captain Miguel Rojas about Opening Week in a pandemic, and also about fun stuff. New episode also stars Greg's wife complaining about an odd habit of mine; the Mount Gregmore Name Game (D's); and some gossip about David Beckham that's blowing up the British tabloids. Hear all of that and more in new Ep21! 

OPENING NIGHT WIN FOR MARLINS!: FISH AND DOLPHINS, IN RACE FOR RELEVANCE, OFFER HOPE AT A TIME WE NEED IT: [Marlins won at Philly 5-2 last night behind a sharp start from Sandy Alcantara and a Jesus Aguilar home run] Original post: The Miami Marlins were flying to Philadelphia to begin their 28th season, one like none other, while back home, the Miami Dolphins’ coming season began to unfurl as rookies reported for training camp. Both restarts occur, of course, amid the peril and gloom of the ongoing coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic that is overshadowing all of life in America in 2020, with South Florida having it worse than most. Will the Marlins and MLB get through unscathed to finish their delayed, truncated 60-game season? Will an NFL season happen at all when expectations of the coronavirus worsening already have led some teams to announce they will play with no fans attending? The bizarre, frightening time we’re all in makes sports’ restart seem risky and small. Even as we hunger for the distraction of live games, leagues crowning champions in 2020 will seem almost a Pyrrhic victory for sports as we see the U.S. death at 145,000 and climbing. As one who writes and talks about sports for a living, I can tell you I cannot bring myself to see teams and athletes and games as mattering much these days, beyond the brief escape from reality that isn’t really possible. I recall I felt something similar on and after September 11, 2001, when my country suffered another deadly hit. That was the day I stopped using words like "tragedy" or "disastrous" to describe anything happening in sports. So, yes, for me, it is difficult today to focus much on the Marlins opening in Philly Friday night with Sandy Alacantara (pictured) on the mound. (The home opener in an empty Marlins Park with piped-in crowd noise will be Monday night). Just as it is hard to muster much gravitas on Tua Tagovailoa and other Dolphin draft picks and rookies showing up for work Thursday. I’m going to do my best, though. To talk sports. Fins coach Brian Flores calls a football field "a place to get away for a little bit" — away from the reality of a coronavirus plague and the racial injustice spawning protests nationwide. So here’s that rabbit hole for me as the Marlins and Dolphins both get back to work: The similarities between the state of the two franchises are stunning. The blueprints are identical as is the timing. The Dolphins and Marlins are in the midst of complete, ground-up rebuilds that saw both teams trading away all of their star players, one for high NFL drafts picks, the other for top MLB prospects. "Trust us," is the basic message as both teams continue in a race for relevance. For our full latest column, please visit Marlins and Dolphins, In a Race For Relevance, Offer Hope At a Time We Need That. 

WHEN WILL/SHOULD DOLPHINS UNLEASH TUA? EXPLORING THE TIMETABLE AS ROOKIES REPORT: He didn’t start until the sixth game of his rookie season. When Dan Marino finally did start, he threw for 322 yards and three touchdowns. It was electric. Palpably, the NFL’s next big star had introduced himself. I once asked Don Shula what he was thinking as he watched his new quarterback’s first start. "What took me so long!?" the coach answered, not kidding in the least. "Why didn’t I give him the ball sooner! He was that special right away." Thirty-seven years later, Miami Dolphins rookies report for training camp Thursday, five days ahead of the full team. The new quarterback is Tua Tagovailoa. He is the gift Dolfans cannot wait to unwrap and enjoy. Brian Flores is the man now who’ll decide when that happens. When, in effect, the Dolphins’ future — the next great chapter in franchise history — begins for real. Don’t hold your breath, folks. Every indication is that history will repeat and that Tagovailoa will begin his pro career as an understudy to Ryan Fitzpatrick just as Marino was to David Woodley, before the new No. 1 draft pick out of Alabama finally is handed the football and the keys to the team. I would love to be wrong. I would love to imagine that, in the September 13 regular season opener at New England, it’s Tua time, and the rookie is let loose like a rodeo bull leaving his holding pen. For our full recent column, please visit When Will Dolphins Unleash Tua? Exploring the Timetable as Rookies Report.

AS SPORTS RESUME, MAJOR CONCERNS COMPLICATE STAR OF NFLAND COLLEGE FOOTBALL CAMPS: It’s about to get real. Real exciting. Real scary. Real weird. Real fast. This week into next, sports resumes in full — playtime in a pandemic. It might be a wonderful, needed boost to the American spirit. It might be closer to insanity. Sports is high on a 10-meter board, blindfolded, about to dive in. It might be water below. It might be concrete. The massive endeavor could prove a huge success, or collapse under the weight of enough athletes testing positive for COVID-19 to call the whole thing off. The only certainty is that nothing is certain. Major League Soccer has been at it for a while in the Orlando bubble; expansion Inter Miami played Monday, losing its third consecutive match since returning. Now all of the other major U.S. team sports step into the great unknown as well — including the NFL and college football, whose training camps are set to begin amid trepidation and uncertainty. Dolphins rookies are to report to training camp Thursday (two days later than first scheduled), with full camp starting July 28. The Hurricanes (at least three of whom have tested positive for the virus) are scheduled to open camp August 7. Major concerns hover, though, as football is the sport with by far the largest roster of players and coaches. And the one sport that, in an age of social distancing, mandates unavoidable physical contact on every play. For our full recent column, please visit Sports Resume, But Major Concerns Complicate Opening of Football Training Camps.

Other columns from the past week:

He Made a Mistake, But Miami Knows Who Dwyane Wade Is -- And Knows It By Heart

Marlins Captain Miguel Rojas On Pandemic And Playoffs As Baseball Returns

Rest In Pieces, Redskins. Now Here Are Sports' Other Suspect Nicknames

Other recent columns: 'Redskins Is Racist Nickname Based On a Lie. Time For It to Disappear  /  Money Or Health? NFL and Major College Football Face A Decision  /  Tough Times All Around, But Rise Of Miami Sports Offers Hope  /  The Face Of Miami Sports in 2020: Our Top 20 And Who's No.1  /  Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020  /  Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back  /  Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction  /  Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess?  / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred  /  and Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street

Special Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need / It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America / Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic / and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Select earlier columns from 2020: Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down / Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / 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

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Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote:  Twitter.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Columns.  Podcast.  Podcast on Twitter.  Podcast on Instagram.  LeBatard Show.  Book: Fins At 50.  Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, JULY 18. R.I.P., John Lewis, 80, Congressman, civil rights giant, American patriot. 2) Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 3) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast new Episode 20 & more. 4) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: NEW EPISODE 20 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and Episode 20 is out now! A new episode is out every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 20 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In new Episode 20 we chat ESPN's IT wizard Tim Cronin, who shares behind the scenes stories about working with the network's on-air stars, and about his recently being diagnosed with COVID-19. We also throw a pod-y party for our 20th podiversary, including a montage of Greg's greatest throat-clears, and bring you the controversial Mount Gregore Name Game (the C's). Oh, and we bury the Redskins name. Hear it all now! 

MIAMI HEAT ICON DWYANE WADE HAS DONE WAY TOO MUCH GOOD TO HAVE ONE MISTAKE DERAIL HIM. NEW COLUMN: Dwyane Wade made a mistake. He knew it and tried to fix it very quickly, but it’s never quickly enough in the age of social media and instant everything. When you tweet something you should not have to 9 million Twitter followers around the world, it’s out there, an echo reverberating. You can delete what you wrote, and he did, but you cannot make it disappear. D-Wade, retired Miami Heat legend and beloved icon, was defended by some but buried by consensus. The mea culpa came fast, the explanation, the carefully worded oops. It helped. But it’s never enough. In the offending tweet, Wade supported Nick Cannon after the TV host was fired by ViacomCBS for making anti-Semitic comments on his podcast. Wade tweeted at Cannon, "We are with you" and "Keep leading!" along with a black fist emoji. The national context made it worse, as both Cannon’s comments and Wade’s initial reaction come at a time of great tension in America over prejudice and divide. It is more than the ongoing protests for racial justice in the wake of the George Floyd killing. It is anti-Asian incidents ignorantly related to the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic originating in China. And it is a rise in hate crimes of anti-Semitism targeting those of the Jewish faith. Wade quickly wrote, "I want to clarify my now deleted tweet. I was not supporting or condoning what Nick Cannon specifically said, but I had expressed my support of him owning the content and brand he helped create." The emoji this time was prayer hands. Less than an hour later Wade said in another tweet: "I was too quick to respond without being fully informed about his hurtful anti-Semitic remarks. As you all know I have ZERO tolerance for any hate speech!" The first response was an explanation that fell short of contrition. The second was better, because it acknowledged that Cannon’s words were anti-Semitic, offensive and hurtful to many in the Jewish community — and because it rightly reminded the world what Miami knows very well about Dwyane Wade’s heart. Who he is as a man. For my full latest column -- free; no paywall! -- please visit, He Made a Mistake, But Miami Knows Who Dwyane Wade Is -- And Knows It By Heart.

MARLINS CAPTAIN MIGUEL ROJAS ON PANDEMIC, PLAYOFFS AND MONKEY MASKS AS MLB RETURNS: Miguel Rojas has earned "face of the Marlins" status as far as players go. He is the starting shortstop, team captain, clubhouse leader, fan favorite and player rep to the MLBPA. He’s been in Miami the longest, since 2015, surviving the roster teardown to be a part of the work-in-progress rebuild as a veteran at age 31. Now Rojas helps a young team navigate the great unknown, the return of baseball amid a coronavirus/COVID-19 threat that finds his team, his team, at the epicenter of one of the pandemic’s worst hot spots. So, naturally, when speaking with Rojas, you must get to the obvious serious question first: Will the postgame monkey be back? We’re looking for signs of normalcy here, ports in a storm, and for the Marlins one of them the past few years has been Rojas, in a rubber monkey mask, sneaking up with a whipped-cream pie to the face of the game’s hero after a win as the teammate is being interviewed on TV. That was before wearing a mask took on a whole new meaning in 2020. Alas, everything has changed. Players aren’t even supposed to shake hands or fist-bump now. Or spit. So pies to the face are on indefinite hold. "I think it’s gonna have to be on a Zoom call now," Rojas joked this week — on a Zoom call with us, as a matter of fact. "Maybe I’ll create a YouTube channel or something like that? This is the new normal. We have to be responsible. It was fun, the monkey thing, but we have to move forward from that. Our conversation with Rojas comes as the Marlins and MLB prepare for Opening Week in a pandemic next week. For that full recent column, please visit Marlins Captain Miguel Rojas On Pandemic And Playoffs As Baseball Returns.

REST IN PIECES, REDSKINS. NOW HERE ARE SPORTS' OTHER SUSPECT (OR JUST WEIRD OR DUMB) NICKNAMES: They are out there. Fans of the Washington football club formerly known as "Redskins" who are genuinely upset that their team is burying some of its tradition and heritage with the nickname change that the franchise officially announced Monday was coming. Which invites the question: Can you be indignant and angry while simultaneously wearing a rubber hog’s nose strapped on your face? Oft times elements of tradition and heritage are lousy things to celebrate. Slavery, for example. Fans angry at the disappearance of Redskins is the same misplaced outrage you see from folks attaching great significance to the Confederate flag and outraged to see it ceremonially lowered without salute. Racist symbols gotta go. The belated national consensus on that is some of the good to come from the hurt. From the George Floyd killing that forced an opening of eyes to social injustice and racial inequality. Sports is playing its part, that’s all, so NASCAR bans Confederate flags at its racetracks and now Washington is retiring Redskins and its Indian head logo, the new nickname yet to be revealed. Are the Nickname Police looking elsewhere now? Are other teams nervous about a forced rebranding? Nothing is as bad as Redskins — a dictionary-defined slur that some Native Americans saw as their N-word. Redskins was never really defensible, and team owner Dan Snyder needs to acknowledge that at some point. As for the other teams under related scrutiny? And what about teams whose nicknames are not so much controversial as just weird or dumb? We name 'em. For lour full recent column, please visit Rest In Pieces, Redskins. Now Here Are Sports' Other Suspect Nicknames.

Other columns from the past week: 'Redskins Is Racist Nickname Based On a Lie. Time For It to Disappear  /  Money Or Health? NFL and Major College Football Face A Decision  /  Tough Times All Around, But Rise Of Miami Sports Offers Hope  /  and The Face Of Miami Sports in 2020: Our Top 20 And Who's No.1.

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Other recent columns: Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020 / Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back / Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction / Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess? / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred / Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street

Special Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need / It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America / Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic / and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Select earlier columns from 2020: Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down / Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / 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

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Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote:  Twitter.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Columns.  Podcast.  Podcast on Twitter.  Podcast on Instagram.  LeBatard Show.  Book: Fins At 50.  Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND

1) It's SATURDAY, JULY 11. Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 2) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast new Episode 19 out now & more. 3) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: NEW EPISODE 19 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and Episode 19 is out now! A new episode drops every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone, iHeart or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 19 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In Episode 19 we chat with the University of Miami's new Chief Diversity Officer for athletics, Dr. Renae Myles Payne, whose job takes on magnified relevance as America protests for social and racial justice. She talks about the anger, frustration and fear of many of her own Hurricanes athletes. For the fun  stuff, we bring you the latest installment of Greg Doesn't Know Movies, plus the Mount Gregmore Name Game B edition. Greg also talks Tuscaloosa COVID-19 parties and the (supposed) return of sports. Here it all in the new pod now! 

'REDSKINS' IS A RACIST, PEJORATIVE NICKNAME BASED ON A LIE. TIME FOR IT TO DISAPPEAR: The money is talking now. You can ignore logic and even turn a deaf ear to conscience, but when the money starts talking, you must listen. The Washington Redskins’ nickname has no chance to survive what is happening. It has long been an offensive, racist, pejorative anachronism beyond any real argument, but only now is it falling like a Confederate statue. No matter how much longer Redskins owner Dan Snyder pretends to dig in and defend the nickname, it does not have a chance. Mammoth retailers including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Nike and Dick’s Sporting Goods have eliminated Redskins merchandise from their websites. Now FedEx — whose name is on the NFL club’s suburban Maryland stadium — officially requested a nickname change. The franchise plans to build a new stadium and move within the D.C. city limits to better suit its first name, Washington, but officials there say it won’t if Redskins remains. Snyder is being backed into a corner with no way out. It seems only a matter of time before the commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL itself demand the change, the new impetus for which is borne of the national attention to race relations, fairness and justice in the wake of the George Floyd killing. The NFL has announced itself as woke by standing behind Black Lives Matter and (albeit four years late) supporting the Colin Kaepernick-led anthem kneeling representing a demand for social justice. Goodell must know that not entering the fray against the Redskins name is giving it tacit approval. This week it is reported the Redskins will remove all Native American imagery from the franchise. That’s a start. Of course that start must end with a different nickname altogether. Now. Before the 2020 season starts (presuming the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic allows one). Redtails, the choice of Washington quarterback Dwayne Haskins, is the betting favorite at 3-1 odds. Other possibilities at 10-1 or better: Generals, Presidents, Lincolns, Veterans, Capitols, Americans, Memorial, Monuments. "Anything but Redskins" is the point. To read our full latest column, please visit 'Redskins Is Racist Nickname Based On a Lie. Time For It to Disappear.

AS OTHER SPORTS RESUME AMID PANDEMIC, DO NFL AND COLLEGE FOOTBALL HAVE THE HEART TO BE SMARTER?: The Ivy League, the high-brow conference of Harvard and Yale, last claimed a national championship in football in 1927, when you could buy a new Ford Model A Roadster for $385. Ivy League teams appear in the Top 25 about as often as Halley’s Comet appears in the sky. Yet the the Ivy League, where "student-athlete" actually still describes the priority, had the attention of all of college football Wednesday. It is because, in the void of definitive answers to the question, we are all looking for harbingers and hints. Signs. Will there be college football in the fall? Will there be pro football? Will it be on time, or delayed perhaps even to the spring? Will schedules be reduced? Will stadiums be full (as pictured), empty or somewhere in the great in between. Small signs emerge. The Division 3 Centennial Conference just suspended all fall sports for 2020, notably including football, due to growing concerns over a coronavirus pandemic not nearly contained and, in much of the United States, surging anew. Wednesday the Ivy League announced no sports will be played until January 2021, and the major Power 5 conferences were watching as they weigh their own path forward. If reports are accurate the Ivy League is headed for a reduced-schedule 2020 football season to be played in the spring of ‘21. Clearly, small-college football does not rule campuses and coffers the way it does in the Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference and other giant leagues that rely on football revenue to primarily sustain their entire athletic budgets. The Centennial Conferences and Ivy Leagues et al have the luxury to make decisions with health and safety a dominant priority or even the only one. So should the Power 5 leagues and the NFL, obviously, but it isn’t that simple for them. They must marry their health-related concerns with the imperative of, well, money. It makes for an awkward marriage. A dangerous one, too. To read our full recent column, please visit Money Or Health? NFL and Major College Football Face A Decision.

NEED SOME FEEL-GOOD DURING TOUGH TIMES, FANS? LOOK TO THE RALLY AND RISE OF MIAMI SPORTS: Outside of my window today: Only bright skies, a cool breeze and three little birds telling me don’t worry ‘bout a thing ‘cause every little thing gonna be all right. The heart sings with optimism! I am trying to see if I can pull this off, folks. I have my doubts. For reasons nearly medicinal I need to write a column seeing nothing but the bright side and the glass half full ... of Moet & Chandon! Call this exercise my armor against the relentless gauntlet that has been life in America the past four months. A deadly coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic that is only growing again because far too many in our country are too selfish or stupid to wear a mask and avoid crowds. Racial tension amid national protests demanding social justice in the wake of George Floyd and too many other unwarranted killings by police. It is a challenge to our national conscience, mettle and resolve such as I have not seen in my lifetime. Sports to the rescue as a diversion from the headlines? Not so much. Sports have been shut down by the virus since March. Now they attempt to inch back this month, but amid the pitfalls of players opting out and testing positive — reminders of the mess we’re in as we wonder if the games will soon shut down again just like the restaurants in Miami-Dade County have. Against everything bleak and depressing, I am here to offer a big fat slice of sunshine. I am Gene bleepin’ Kelly not only singin’ in the rain, but dancing in it, too. Brighter days are here or ahead in Miami professional sports. A corner is turned. A landscape barren too long begins to bloom. Winning looms. For all five of our major pro teams, optimism fits like one of Pat Riley’s Armani suits. (The Heat's Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo are pictured, as an example). For our full recent column, a team by team snapshot of reasons for the optimism, please visit Tough Times All Around, But Rise Of Miami Sports Offers Hope.  

THE FACE OF MIAMI SPORTS IN 2020. OUR TOP 20: In our previous column we decide who is the face of Miami sports in 2020 among current athletes from our five major pro teams: Dolphins, Heat Marlins, Panthers and Inter Miami. Not a simple, or inarguable, answer. We list our Top 20 choices and arrive at a No. 1 that may surprise you. (As for your choice, we had a Twitter poll listing four choices, the max allowed, and your vote was Tua Tagovailoa 52.6 percent, Jimmy Butler 23.6%, Udonis Haslem 16.3% and Aleksander Barkov 7.5%). For our full recent column including my Top 20 list, please visit The Face Of Miami Sports in 2020: Our Top 20 And Who's No.1.

Other most recent columns: Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020 / Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back / Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction / Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess? / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred / Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street

Special Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

Special George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need / It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America / Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic / and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Select earlier columns from 2020: Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down / Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / 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

-- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * --

Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote:  Twitter.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Columns.  Podcast.  Podcast on Twitter.  Podcast on Instagram.  LeBatard Show.  Book: Fins At 50.  Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND.

1) It's SATURDAY, JULY 4. Happy Fourth of July, all! Fight to save yourself, America. Don't be stupid. Wear a bleepin' mask! 2) Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 3) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Greg Cote Show podcast new Episode 18 & more. 4) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: EPISODE 18 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and new Episode 18 is out now! A new episode drops every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 18 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In Episode 18 we talk baseball but also get funny/personal with ESPN's Tim Kurkjian, chat with somebody else named Greg Cote, introduce a new segment called the Mount Gregmore Name Game, and praise the South African nation of Botswana. Why? Only one way to find out, right?

Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need  /  It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America  /  Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic  /  and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

WHO IS THE FACE OF MIAMI SPORTS IN 2020? HERE IS OUR LIST, AND NO. 1 MAY SURPRISE YOU: The question is simple: Who right now is the face of Miami sports? South Florida’s biggest star on any of our professional teams? We thought the timing was right to ask as all of our teams reassemble this month and prepare to play again, always presuming the coronavirus/COVID-19
pandemic lets them. The answer is not so simple because of a lack of obvious candidates reflecting the evolution and flux we are in this weird summer of 2020. We see the Dolphins and Marlins plainly in tear-it-down-and-start-again rebuild mode. The Heat is still trying to find its way back to contender status, post Big 3 era. The Florida Panthers are improved but always in search of some elusive missing piece. And we welcome an expansion team in soccer’s Inter Miami. Face of Miami sports is an exercise we like to do every couple or three years to suit an always-shifting landscape. And oh how easy it used to be! We first did this in December 2015 and we were amid a bounty of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Fernandez, Jaromir Jagr, Roberto Luongo,Christian Yelich, Cameron Wake, Ichiro, Chris Bosh, Ndamukong Suh — all gone now. Honestly, the biggest sports stars we have today are former athletes both distant (Dan Marino) and near (D. Wade). We hold onto memories more fiercely than we embrace anyone new. Our biggest current sports figures don’t play at all, they wear suits. Derek Jeter. Erik Spoelstra. Pat Riley. David Beckham. For our 2020 Face of Miami Sports Top 20 we are considering only players on the current rosters of our five major pro teams. Our criteria is a mashup of career accomplishment, potential, starpower, popularity, local impact and national stature. A starting point for me? Imagine: You are driving along Interstate 95 and see a giant billboard. It reads, THIS IS MIAMI SPORTS, with a Mount Rushmore-like display of the four active athletes who best represent us. Who are they? Here’s what I say. To read our full latest column, please visit The 2020 Face Of Miami Sports Top 20. Some of our top contenders are pictured in no particular order.

IT'S TIME TO ABORT SEASON RESTARTS AND CALL OFF SPORTS FOR REST OF 2020: It might be time to shut the whole thing down. No more sports in 2020. It is looking more and more like that. All of our leagues have plans to return this summer to help recoup their financial losses, let’s not kid ourselves. The resumption might be couched as a magnanimous move to entertain America at a time when the nation’s spirits badly need lifting. But it’s about money first. And that health-of-the-industry priority seems increasingly at odds with the health of teams, players coaches and staffs. Sports’ grand return is already fraying. You can feel it. You can see it collapsing by degrees, this ambitious plan. It is a giant wobbling on balsa wood legs as it steps into a treacherous unknown. July now. The month when everything is supposed to resume. When MLB, the NBA, NHL and MLS all reassemble toward restarting their seasons. When NFL and college football players report and start to prepare for their seasons. U.S. pandemic expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday: "Clearly we are not in total control right now. We’re going in the wrong direction." And sports wants to step in that? Do we believe it? Do we really think sports will start back up, let alone finish their 2020 schedules, without being swallowed by a worsening pandemic and made to abort the restart? The uneasy feeling grows palpably: That leagues and teams should put the safety of their people first and not expect them to place themselves at risk, any risk, for the sake of revenue. To read our full recent column, please visit Time to Abort Season Restarts and Call Off Sports For Rest Of 2020.

UH-OH. THEY NEVER LEFT, BUT CAM NEWTON MEANS BILL BELICHICK AND PATRIOTS ARE BACK!: America awakened Monday to the perfect little juxtaposition of NFL news, the timing of it exquisite. Top headline on ESPN.com: ‘Sources: QB Newton joins Patriots on 1-year deal.’ Headline right below that: ‘NFL fines Pats $1.1 million, takes pick for sideline film.’ I was raised being told, "Cheaters never prosper." Hmm. Really, ma? The cheaters just prospered. The rules-bending, corner-cutting New England Patriots — prematurely written off as a dead dynasty when Tom Brady departed for Tampa Bay — just signed free agent prize Cam Newton (pictured) to replace him. Crreeaak. The coffin lid lifts and Bill Belichick sits bolt-upright, a maniacal grin on his maw. He winks. The wink says, "Not that I ever left — but I’m back!" The dynamic in the AFC East just shifted dramatically if Newton is fit and can again be the three-time Pro Bowl player who was league MVP in 2015. He missed almost all of last season with a Linsfranc fracture of his foot and also has labored through a shoulder injury but is said to be fully healthy. And when he is, he’s a dual-threat offensive force as good as most anybody. Miami will find out first. Season opener, presuming there is a season: The Newton England Patriots host the Dolphins on September 13. To read our full recent column, please visit Uh-oh. Cam Newton means Belichick and Patriots Are Back.

Most recent other columns: Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction  /  Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess?  / Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred / Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street  /  Should Sports Take the Rest Of 2020 Off? There's An Argument  /  and Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down

Select earlier columns from 2020: Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / 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

--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --

Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote:  Twitter.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Columns.  Podcast.  Podcast on Twitter.  Podcast on Instagram.  LeBatard Show.  Book: Fins At 50.  Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).

GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND.

1) It's MONDAY, JUNE 29. Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on both! 2) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Why sports should not abandon the Star-Spangled Banner, Baseball has restart plan but is sports walking into a giant mess?, Noose in Bubba Wallace's garage, Greg Cote Show podcast Episode 17 & more. 3) Join us on Twitter and Instagram.

GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: NEW EPISODE 18 OUT NOW!: Our Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in March and new Episode 18 is out now! A new episode drops every Monday morning on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Megaphone or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all 18 we've done so far RIGHT HERE. Free! No paywall! Please listen, subscribe, rate and review. In Episode 18 we talk baseball but also get funny/personal with ESPN's Tim Kurkjian, chat with somebody else named Greg Cote, introduce a new segment called the Mount Gregmore Name Game, and praise the South African nation of Botswana. Why?Only one way to find out, right?

Don Shula tribute columns: Don Shula, 1930-2020, R.I.P. and What Shula Meant to a Father & Son. They Boy Was Me

George Floyd-related columns: Sports' Gradual Return Offers America Relief We Desperately Need  /  It Took George Floyd To Finally Wake Up White America  /  Goodell's NFL Response to Floyd Killing Is Hypocrisy At Its Most Ironic  /  and George Floyd Is Why Kaepernick & Sports Must Continue Fight For Social Justice

Columns from this past week: Saving the National Anthem From Sporting-Event Extinction  /  Baseball Joins In With Restart Plan. But Is Sports Walking Into a Giant Mess?  / and Noose Left For NASCAR's Bubba Wallace's Only Grows Resolve to End Racial Hatred

HOT BUTTON TOP 10 (JUNE 28-29): WHAT SOUTH FLORIDA SPORTS FANS ARE TALKING ABOUT: Our blog-exclusive Sunday-into-Monday feature is part week-in-review, part look-ahead. Hot Button means what's on our minds, locally and nationally, from a Miami perspective, as the sports week just past pivots to the week ahead. This week's HB10:

1. MARLINS: Finally! MLB has announces a restart plan: After owners and players failed to agree on anything, MLB exercised its power and imposed a 60-game season, with Opening Day expected on July 23 or 24 and the regular season running through September 27. Players are to report for spring training July 1. Teams will play 10 games each vs. their four division rivals, with interleague play making up the other 20 games. Teams are to play home games in their own stadiums and travel for road games despite that adding coronavirus risk to the equation.

2. HEAT: NBA sets restart dates for Miami, rest of league: Unless the whole grand plan collapses under the weight of the coronavirus -- the NBA tested 302 players and found 16 positive for COVID-19, reportedly including the Heat's Derrick Jones Jr. -- NBA games will resume for real (sans fans) on July 30 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports campus in Orlando, where teams will report July 7 to begin preparing. The Heat's return will be on Saturday, August 1 vs. Denver. Teams will play eight regular season games, which, combined with their record at the time of stoppage, will determine playoff seedings. There are negotiations ongoing to allow players to wear social-justice messages on their jerseys.

3. NFL: Patriots sign Cam Newton: New England reportedly has agreed to a one-year deal with Cam Newton to replace departed Tom Brady. In other news, the Pats have been fined $1.1 million and lose a third-round draft pick over their TV crew filming the field and sideline during a Browns-Bengals game. 

4. NASCAR: Confederate flag, noose overshadow the racing: NASCAR banned Confederate flags from its tracks and properties in the wake of the national George Floyd protests, angering many race fans who still think it's 1863. Oh, and a noose turned up in the Talladega garage of Bubba Wallace, the Cup SerIes' only black driver, but an investigation found it had been there for years, not intentionally left for him. Um, OK. And whhhhyyy had it been there for years!?

5. NFL: Preseason-opening Hall of Fame Game is canceled: There won't be a Cowboys-Steelers game to christen the NFL preseason this August, after it was canceled this week. As of now, the regular season still is set to start on September 10 (the Dolphins open at New England on the 13th), but whether any or a limited number of fans will be in stadiums is open to doubt. Training camps remain set to open July 28. For now, at least.

6. SOCCER: NWSL ushers in return of pro sports: The National Women's Soccer League Challenge Cup began Saturday in Utah -- marking the return of professional team sports leagues in the U.S. for the first time since March shutdown for the cornavirus pandemic. All players from the first game, North Carolina Courage and Portland Thorns, knelt during the national anthem in an empty stadium to protest racial injustice.

7. PANTHERS: NHL close to naming hub cities for restart: With the Panthers and other NHL teams set to open training camp in their home cities July 10, the NHL expects this week to name the two hub cities where the direct-to-playoffs season will be played and finished, starting in late July. Hub city finalists are Chicago, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Toronto and Vegas.

8. SOCCER: Next Women's World Cup headed Down Under: FIFA announced its 2023 Women's World Cup would be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand. The United States has won the past two WWC's. Let's gooooo States!

9. ESPN: Backstory on LeBron's 'The Decision' premieres: ESPN's 'The Decision" (about LeBron James' show to reveal he was taking his talent to South Beach 10 years ago) debuts tonight at 9, yet another reminder ESPN Is desperate for content in the void of live sports. Spoiler alert: The idea for the controversial show was not LeBron's, his agent's or ESPN's. The idea came from a 38-year-old Pistons fans from Columbus, Ohio, identified only as "Drew" in a Bill Simmons mailbag column published by ESPN in November 2009. So there.

10. CORONAVIRUS: The updated South Florida Games-Lost Tracker: The SFGLT is a weekly update on how many major local pro games have been lost to coronavirus shutdown. We'll continue this until the first of our four spring/summer teams has resumed play. Through today/Sunday -- 133-plus games lost: Marlins have missed first 84 games of regular season. Heat missed last 17 games of season and at least two first-round playoff games based on NBA standings when season stopped. Inter Miami, after playing first two games of season, has missed last 17. Panthers missed last 13 games but would not have made playoffs based on NHL standings at time of stoppage.

Missing the HB10 cut: Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has pledged $13 million over the next four years to fight systemic racism through the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), the nonprofit foundation he began in 2015 ..... Vince Carter has retired after 22 NBA seasons, surprising analysts who thought he'd retired around 2012 ..... Canes legend Ray Lewis donated personal protective equipment to the UM football program ..... Family of thr late great Dolphin Jim Kiick have donated his brain for research. Good for them! ..... Somebody named "Chez Reavie" leads by four shots entering today's final round of he PGA Tour's coronavirus-depleted Travelers Championship. Even money Chez blows it? ..... Countdown 10 days until Inter Miami resumes its inaugural with a July 8 match vs. Orlando in the MLS Is Back tournament being held sans fans in that city ..... The debacle-in-waiting, UFC's Fight Island, is set to debut July 11 ..... WNBA players begin reporting next week ..... The new, independent 3-on-3 pro ice hockey league set to debut next year, called 3ICE, has launched an online merchandise store. Buy now. That crap will be a minor collectors' item once the league folds ..... FLorida Panthers announced the launch of an all-access, behind-the-scenes online series, "Panthers Uncaged," chronicling team's preparation for NHL's upcoming 24-team postseason. First episode is this Wednesday on team's Facebook, IGTV, PanthersVision and YouTube channels ..... Shaq and Gronk had or are having some sort of virtual party, but HB didn't care enough to find out details ..... Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown reopened on Friday with enhanced health procedures including masks and social distancing ..... The Greg Cote Show podcast is out with new Episode 18 on Monday ..... Update: Countdown now 2,192 days (give or take) until Miami hosts its first match in soccer's 2026 World Cup. Hope large social gatherings are OK again by then?

Previous most recent columns: Team That Signs Kaepernick Will Be Champions Of the Street  /  Should Sports Take the Rest Of 2020 Off? There's An Argument  /  and Amid Pandemic And Protests, 'America's Pastime' Is Letting American Down

Select earlier columns from 2020: Return Of Sports Promises Historic TV Smorgasbord / Homestead Is Test Lab As NASCAR Gradually Welcomes Back Fans / R.I.P. Kurt Thomas, an American Gymnastics Pioneer  / MLB Players Demanding More Millions, Right Now, Is A Bad Look / Amid a Pandemic, An Outrage in Alamance County / Welcome to Sports Without Fans, the New Normal / As NBA, MLB Plot Return, We Miss Them -- Yet Sports Have Never Seemed More Trivial / Anticipation of Relevance, Excitement Is Tua's Gift to Miami / Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19 / Dolphins Aim High, Win Big With Tua Tagovailoa Pick / Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft / Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever / NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Florida Derby / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / 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 / 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

--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --

Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote:  Twitter.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Columns.  Podcast.  Podcast on Twitter.  Podcast on Instagram.  LeBatard Show.  Book: Fins At 50.  Songs: Letting Go (audio) and The Ballad Of 1440 (video).