There’s a lot of optimism surrounding the Miami Dolphins this year. At press time, they had a perfect 3-0 record, despite what many pundits believed was an incredibly difficult opening schedule. They are among seven teams in the NFL that remained perfect through this season’s first three games, meaning that,…

Well, this is it. Except for a dangling make-up game against the Detroit Tigers next Friday, September 27, this is the last home series for the 2013 Miami Marlins. Their baseball season can all be summed up with a single name: Jose Fernandez. The defected Cuban pitcher has been the…

Week three of the Miami Dolphins’ season marks the second home game of a nightmarish first quarter. Though the team’s first game against the Cleveland Browns was a precarious, yet optimistic, glimpse at what the Fins might be able to accomplish this season, have no doubt they are in the…

It’s Monday afternoon, two weeks into the 2013 NFL season, and the Dolphins are 2-0. That record has only applied to a professional football team from Miami one other time in the last decade. It also means the Fins have a 66% chance of making this year’s playoffs. …Is this…

Professional sports has become a foundation for the idolatry of modern-day gladiators, raising men to the heights of worship usually reserved for great conquerors and warriors. But in these modern times, roaring orgies with dancing slave girls and hearths overstuffed with undercooked meats have been replaced by autograph signings and…

Finesse Mitchell’s appearance this Sunday at the Miami Improv (3390 Mary St., Coconut Grove) is oddly appropriate. No, it has nothing to do with the former Saturday Night Live cast member, who’s well known for his character Starkisha or the nearly 30 celebrities he impersonated on the show, closing out…

Sad to say, but there’s less than a month until the Miami Marlins’ season ends. Beginning this Monday, the Fish will have their final meeting of the year against division rivals the Atlanta Braves, and with it will be the final moments for Marlins fans to revel in baseball loserdom…

In-state rivalries define college sports. Their histories run deep due to century-long battles from schools that were established in a time before the internal combustion engine. Attending a really good in-state rivalry game inspires not only caution but also fear. And the state of Florida has been spoiled with three…

The end of August marks the beginning of the most important times of the year: the beginning of football season. This weekend is both the final week of NFL preseason football, and the first week of games for several major college football teams, including our own University of Miami Hurricanes…

After last year’s tragic mistake of starting the season against conference rival Boston College, followed by a matchup against top 12-finishing Kansas State, this season the Miami Hurricanes have renewed their annual season kickoff tradition of “pound the cupcake team.” This year’s victims: Florida Atlantic University, a small program from…

All right, enough of the freakin’ preseason already. This is it, the last of five games that began a month ago. Notoriously, the final game of the preseason features a bunch of nobodies fighting for the last scraps of open roster space. But the final game also tends to be…

Traditionally the third game of the NFL preseason is when teams leave their starters out the longest to measure their preseason progress. As of this writing, the Miami Dolphins have had a contentious start, racking up a 1-1 record with early preseason stand-out moments being Dustin Keller’s 20-yard-plus reception, Lamar…

Sports talk radio, for the most part, is the most irritating form of audio entertainment. Hours are spent arguing and debating the merits of players or teams using hyper-analytical statistical breakdowns that usually involve reading into meaningless details like “body language cues.” Remember the “LeBron shoulder bumping Coach Spoelstra means…

As October inches closer, marking the beginning of Major League Baseball’s postseason, so does the end of another pitiful Miami Marlins season. The Marlins have the worst record in the National League and the third worst in baseball. When team owner Jeffrey Loria fire-sold the team this past offseason, he…

If there were a Mount Rushmore-style monument to offensive black comedians, you’d find Paul Mooney’s disembodied head up there alongside Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, and Bernie Mac. Throughout the years, Mooney has been a head writer for the 1977 TV series The Richard Pryor Show, the head writer for the…

Stand-up comedy is arguably the most challenging art form. It puts one comic with a single microphone in front of an audience that demands freshness in commentary, all under some glaringly bright stage lights. Any comedian will admit those lights can be blinding, especially if their set is bombing. They’ll…

During this past offseason, Jeffrey Loria, David Samson, and the rest of the Miami Marlins ownership staff tried their hardest to ostracize and alienate the fans of the team. They systematically traded away almost every recognizable player in the organization, keeping only the ones who worked for peanuts — specifically,…

Yamil Piedra, better known as the “tall guy” from the now-defunct A Pair of Nuts comedy duo, has been on a tear since breaking out on his own. New Times named him Best Comedian in the 2013 Best of Miami issue for an extremely good reason: “The Pretty Rock Project.”…

“I’m a guido. That’s my shit,” Bret Ernst declared in the movie Wild West Comedy Show, which documents a 30-night, 30-venue comedy tour featuring Ernst and three other comedians. A native of New Jersey with South Florida ties (he graduated from Plantation High), Ernst has gained momentum that’s been easy…

It’s official: the Miami Marlins suck. They suck so bad that this Monday’s opponents, interdivisional rivals the Atlanta Braves, have more than twice the number of home runs as the Fish and are getting really close to having twice the wins. The Marlins trail the second-worst team in the league,…