The mind combs back across the decades, across the map of our big teams, looking for an intersection such as the one we are approaching. Looking for a precedent. For a time like this.
Operating under an umbrella called Bizarre, the two names most on the lips of Dolphins fans this week were two players not on the team, one who used to be and who might yet be.
The Miami Marlins are such a natural fit for Yoenis Cespedes and such a prohibitive favorite to sign the Cuban-defector outfielder that one struggles to imagine what could possibly prevent it happening.
Pondering the greatness of LeBron James this season has been like inviting a da Vinci scholar to consider the Mona Lisa’s smile, or asking a theologian, “What is life?” Where to begin? LeBron steps onto a basketball court and it must have been how it felt watching Gershwin sit before a piano. What is next? What magic?
Is there a pattern to any of this? A formula? A key? A clue? There must be historical guideposts that indicate or at least suggest why teams reached a Super Bowl. How they did it. Right?
I don’t mean to pull you away from the homestretch of ESPN and NFL Network’s 6,040 consecutive combined hours of nonstop Super Bowl pregame coverage. Don’t forget to turn your TV back on at noon, when ESPN rolls out its highly anticipated special, “The 10 Most Unheralded Long-Snappers in Super Bowl History,” and NFL Network counters with a panel discussion on whether Archie Manning’s daughter, had he had one, would be a starting quarterback in the NFL.
Bull’s-eyed an outright upset with Giants beating 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, but mistakenly thought Patriots would cover the seven points against the Ravens in the AFC game. If I’m on the mark with the Super Bowl pick, I’ll tie for my second-best playoff record straight up (I went 9-2 in 1997) and tie my best mark against the spread (was 8-3 in 2008). It’s amazing I keep track of all this stuff. Or sad, as the case may be. I think I need to get a real job.
Putting the Dolphins in any sort of Super Bowl context might at a glance seem ludicrous. That’s first because Miami is coming off a 6-10 season, and second, because when the Dolphins last won a Super Bowl, fans wore coonskin caps and rode to the game in cars with engines you cranked to start.
Recruiting against rival football coaches and other schools would have been the easy part. Al Golden was recruiting against rumors and lies, too. Against uncertainty and doubt. Against opponents’ negative recruiting he said “at times entered into the realm of vicious.” He was recruiting against all those dirty headlines wrought by disgraced booster Nevin Shapiro. And against that invisible monster with sharp teeth: The looming, likely NCAA penalties.
Most of us have heard, perhaps from an older relative, the expression, “What am I, chopped liver!?” — the time-tested lament of someone slighted, or forgotten.
Mario Cristobal will get credit now for a nearly heroic sense of loyalty, for sacrificing financially and staying home in a decision based on heart. It makes a nice feel-good story. There are even grains of truth to it.
Sunday christens the official launch of Super Bowl Week. The NFL would appreciate the capital W on that and tell you the event officially commencing the seven-day countdown is the annual all-star game out in Hawaii, the Pro Bore.
The Dolphins picking a new coach was the week’s biggest story down here but the most interesting to me involved the Heat’s Dwyane Wade — who didn’t even play because of his ankle injury.
A man named Joe Philbin is the newest caretaker put in charge of the Miami Dolphins’ deeply tarnished good name. He must chip away a decade of losses and lost luster, and erase years of fan erosion and growing cynicism. He must reestablish the abandoned stature of this team, this brand, in what used to be a “football town.”
Enjoyed a solid NFL playoffs Divisional Round last week, including a bull’s-eye on Niners’ outright upset of New Orleans. Didn’t see Packers losing, although I did have Giants with the points. Only stumble against the spread was investing too much faith in Tim Tebow to keep it close against the Pats. Must always remember: In God we trust first. In Tom Brady we trust next.
No psychology degree is needed to know that January is - unofficially but undeniably - Dolfan Depression Month. If only there were a pill for that. When your team last won a playoff game 11 seasons ago and last won a Super Bowl an ever-dreamlike 38 years ago, the annual NFL postseason is a time for consternation and funk - not George Clinton’s funk, but the bad kind.
Jeff Fisher, as if to underline his credentials for heroically rescuing those in need, stopped his vehicle the other night outside Nashville to lend aid to two teenagers who had been involved in a single-car accident. True story.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around something because, I mean, the two seemed to go so perfectly together. Coach and team seemed made for each, like it was destiny. How can a man named Fisher not pick a team named Dolphins?
The losses keep coming for the poor Miami Dolphins. Lost games, lost seasons, lost fans, lost image, lost stature. The latest loss: Jeff Fisher. Your football franchise has officially tumbled to a heretofore unfound nadir when it cannot even beat the woeful St. Louis Rams.
This is only the second time that the NFL’s last eight teams standing are all division champions, but among all that talent and might, America seems most interested in the least of the surviving teams.
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