http://miamiherald.typepad.com/dolp...popes-all-time-super-bowl-streak-to-end-.html This is really sad. One of the greats.
I feel exceedingly lucky to have grown up when I did, because I got to revel in great journalism and great guys like Pope. He was one of the few guys who really knew Don Shula on a personal level, and we benefited from the insights he brought us about that great man. In doing so, he revealed the great man that he himself was.
People, including yourself, don't understand that when i complain about today's journalism it has precious little to do with homerism or not...it has to do with wishing the profession was filled with uncompromising wordsmiths from a time gone by, like Pope. Back then, the main guys were smarter then us and essentially taught us their knowledge. It upsets me that not only is that not the case anymore but that it never will be again but the masses have not changed their expectations.
It's just not what people want anymore. I used to love getting the paper and letting the world reveal itself to me each morning. Sunday was a treat because: more paper. And the bonus: editors made sure that every word in every story was as it should be; none of this hackery, where professional writers aren't any more erudite than message-board touts. People want the quick hit, they don't want the story. Not really. And then they want loudmouths on the radio and dimwits like Bayless on the tube, yelling over each other. It's why we have a nation of morons; the number of non-book readers increased threefold in the last twenty-thirty years. I read that somewhere.
Much respect for Pope. Didn't have it back then. He was a sports writer and I could have cared less about that back then. After seeing what "journalism" has turned into..... nothing short of a Jerry Springer circus side show with idiots attempting to gain notoriety by promoting drama....... has caused me in recent years to realize what a true professional Pope was. He was the last true "sports journalist" to cover this team and I doubt we'll ever see another one like him.
Not to eulogize the man, but it does seem like the passing of an era. My dad was from Miami, and my grandparents lived there all their lives. Dad went to the U for a couple of years and then graduated from FAU, which I think was a 2-year university at the time (I could be wrong). He got a job in Melbourne where I was born in 1967... and the Dolphins had just sprung into being. I remember when we'd visit my grandparents in Miami when I was a kid - everyone had become Dolphins fans, and I was basically conceived one - and my grandparents would read Edwin Pope articles to me. They loved, loved, loved him. And in later years, they'd mail Dolphins clippings to our family, and there were Edwin Pope articles in those packages. His sports editorials always had a different feel than the other articles I read. Especially when my family moved out of state, Dolphins news was harder to come by, but it was always nice to get a feeling of "home" when we'd get to read some Herald articles. Different times, man, different times.
Edwin had great language skills, had an innate sense of what was ethical, knew how to entertain, dug out the facts and reasons for what he wrote about, and even poked fun at himself as well as others. The Shula of Dolphins writers. The Pope of sports journalists. He's given enough. Stay home and relax, Edwin. Have a few brewskis and a few slices of pizza and watch it on the 80 inch LCD with your grandkids. Tell them what it's been like from '67 to now.
Ill br honest I'm too young to know or appreciate him, but he sounds like a great sports writer and I wish him as many more years as he desires on this Earth living a fulfilling life.
