The NFL has released its 2026 schedule, and to give you an idea of how bad they expect the Miami Dolphins to be, the League and its media partners have scheduled the team for exactly zero primetime games. Neither have they scheduled the team for any of the nine international games nor five holiday day games. The Dolphins will only play on Sunday afternoons between 1 and 4PM, where discriminating viewers can choose to look away.

In addition, the NFL has told Dolphins ownership that their stadium is no longer eligible for future Super Bowls because changes to the area since 2020 do not leave adequate "room for hospitality events around the stadium." Which sounds to me like a polite way of saying they don't want people to have to spend any more time than is strictly necessary participating in NFL football in Miami.

As a longtime Dolphins watcher, let me say: I strongly agree with them.

I have a whole category of posts here on my website under the heading "dolphins quarterbacks suck," but even by 21st-century Dolphins standards, the 2026 squad looks uninspiring. Quinn Ewers, Mark Gronowski, Cam Miller, and Malik Willis: If you recognize two of them, you watch far too much football, and I encourage you to seek professional help. Based on what I've seen so far, I suspect that only Ewers will be memorable, and only then as the answer to the trivia question "Who was the quarterback at Texas before Arch Manning?"

I think it's right kind of the NFL to spare its viewers from the nail-biting contest to find out which of them gets to be the one the Dolphins bench for whomever the team selects in next year's draft. Will I be hate-watching the 2026 Dolphins only to see if Arch replaces Quinn again? Signs point to yes.

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The headline in today's The Athletic begins: "Ted Ginn, Jr, ex-NFL receiver and UFL coach...". Ted Ginn Jr? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.

Ginn, for those of you who haven't wasted the past few decades following the rotting corpse of a once great football team called the Miami Dolphins, was the 9th overall pick in the 2007 draft. He played his college football for Ohio State, where he set a record for scoring on punt returns. I presume that's why GM Randy Mueller (who had been installed as something of a figurehead GM during Nick Saban's head coaching tenure only to find himself in over his head when Saban abruptly skipped town) drafted Ginn as high as he did. Ginn had great foot speed but hands of stone. He was an immediate bust.

I happened to be in the stands when Ginn finally scored his first NFL punt return touchdown following the Eagles' opening drive in week 11. The Dolphins were to that point winless on the season, and I had already soured on Ginn. My brother, an Eagles fan, knew it. So when Ginn scored, he immediately taunted me with "Who's your fav-rit play-er? Ted Gin Jun-ior!" He would repeat that whenever Ginn's name came up in NFL broadcasts in the following years.

Admittedly, the 2007 coach and roster Mueller assembled didn't do Ginn any favors. (Can you name any of the three quarterbacks who started for the Dolphins in 2007? There will be a quiz later.) But after just three years in Miami, he was traded to the 49ers. Thereafter, he spent equally short terms with the Panthers, Cardinals, Panthers (again), Saints, and Bears. That's actually a pretty good career by NFL standards, and he wouldn't be widely considered as a bust if he hadn't been drafted so high by a team that needed so much help.

Anyway, all that is what I think of when I read the rest of that headline: "...arrested on DWI charge in Texas." I have to say that it's nice to know that some things don't change. Nearly twenty years later, Ted Ginn, Jr. continues to disappoint.

Pop quiz, hot shot! The Miami Dolphins 2007 quarterbacks: Trent Green (5 starts), Cleo Lemon (7 starts), John Beck (4 starts). Lemon was the only QB on the roster when Ginn was drafted. Later-career Trent Green was signed in June on a one-year deal to shore up a terrible roster. John Beck was the rookie QB taken after Ginn with the 40th overall pick, after JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, and Kevin Kolb. There's a reason 2007 is considered one of the all time worst QB classes.

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Let's go ahead and put these three together:

6/2576. Francis (1950)
11/2581. Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
18/2588. Francis Goes to West Point (1952)

Once upon a time, one of my grandmothers expressed surprise that I'd never seen the Francis the Talking Mule movies. (Honestly, I don't remember which grandmother, and they're both long gone now so I can't ask. If I had to guess, it was probably Granny; she was a lifelong devoted fan of the "picture shows," even if she thought they got too coarse from the 1970s onward. In hindsight, I think she had a point.)

Thanks to TCM, I finally made the effort to watch the first three. (There are seven in all, but Donald O'Connor and Chill Wills are only in the first six.) I'm happy to report that these three are indeed quite enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed the talking mule providing secret assistance to the West Point football coach. The highest complement I can pay is that they make me want to read the book that inspired them.

More to come.

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"I talked to God, and He told me it’s time to take a new step."

—New LSU Head Football Coach Lane Kiffin
in response to ESPN reporter Marty Smith's question
"Why was LSU the right choice for you?"
while standing in an airfield on his way out of Mississippi
which he abandoned before the 2025 postseason started
November 30, 2025

I'll be the first to admit that I have never been privy to any conversations that Lane Kiffin has had with his God, but I'm skeptical that any god really cares enough about Kiffin's financial situation to give him professional advice.

Kiffin is a football coach, not a preacher. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, it strikes me as no coincidence that Kiffin's new job is paying him $4 million more than the old. If money wasn't an issue, LSU could certainly save some of that cash for the players. Or even their students. Maybe pious Kiffin will share with the less fortunate.

Maybe I'm just jealous. God never tells me which jobs to take. (If God has been giving me career advice and I haven't heard it, whose fault is that?) I suppose it remains possible that Lane Kiffin has been hoarding God for himself. I bet $13 million a season buys a lot of divine advice.

And although this sounds to me like a con man's rhetorical trick to avoid honestly answering a reporter's nosy question, you can't argue with God. That's why there's a whole Commandment instructing not to take the Lord's name in vain. I'm sure Kiffin wouldn't break a Commandment any more than he'd break a contract. (That's probably why he coaches college and not pro ball; gotta keep that Sabbath day holy.)

Whatever the case, I'll just thank God that Lane Kiffin isn't coming to coach Georgia, home of the 2025 SEC Champion Bulldogs and the highest paid college football coach in the country. Go Dawgs!

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Since I usually post about Georgia home football games, I suppose I should mention that the final tickets in my annual season package were for today's home finale against the 1-9 Charlotte 49ers. I did not go. I gave the tickets to the daughter of a high-school friend who went to Georgia Tech (ha-ha!), which means I watched from the comfort of my couch as freshman running back Bo Walker's two-touchdown debut paved the way to a 35-3 route. Good for Bo. I hope he makes a lot of other people's money playing ball.

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I'm pretty sure that tonight's game matching #10 Texas against #5 Georgia was the last game I'm going to see in Sanford Stadium as a season ticket holder.

To ensure we made it this time (after the traffic fiasco that prevented us from seeing Mississippi last month), Mom and I left the house four-and-a-half hours early. For many years, we parked at Clarke Central High School, where parking fees helped fund extracurricular activities, but as the University has driven tailgating farther and farther from expensive campus lots, the high school now fills up extra early. So we parked at the dentist office across the street instead. Mom wanted to walk the old route through the student center into the stadium, which ultimately only served as a reminder that the University has built new barriers to block it. Oh well. We had plenty of time, and were still in our seats 90 minutes before kickoff, even after I was misled by some context clues (temporary stadium seats that looked like the old seat backs replaced earlier this year) and mistakenly accused someone else of being in our seats. Poor Mom. She's usually in bed by 9, but we didn't get home again until after 2AM. (Don't worry about Audrey: the dogsitter got her fed and to bed on time.)

As it happens, the guy I wrongly asked to move has been attending UGA games for decades, even after moving from Covington, GA, to Florida, but he said after a few decades, he canceled his season tickets and now instead spends that money and more buying tickets on the secondary market just for the games he wants to attend (in Athens and in other locations for other teams). It's a sound plan, one I've been contemplating a lot recently in this modern era of pay-for-play college football. Once upon a time, the university told me my donations bought books and meals. Now, my money finances base salaries, freeing big-donor money to outbid other colleges for the best kickers in the transfer portal. Somehow, I don't find that as satisfying.

Which is not to say that I don't think the players should be paid. Since they are the product, they should get the lion's share of whatever the football program takes in. But it's also fair for me to judge whether I think I'm getting my value's worth from my season tickets. Given that I only made it to two games this year (UGA closes its home schedule next week against 1-9 Charlotte at 12:45 PM, and I am definitely not going), I think the math is pretty clear.

As it happens, when I wasn't stuck in my own head thinking about the future, I did notice there was also a football game played in Athens. It was okay, but it certainly did not live up to the hype. (Though I'm probably spoiled by the two spectacular wins UGA put on Texas last season.) Georgia was pretty obviously the better team for most of this game, even if their offensive coordinator was calling predictable plays that made Texas's defensive line look amazing for about half the game. But the imprecision of the Longhorn's youthful quarterback (some kid named Arch Manning) ultimately doomed them. You'll read in the tabloids about fourth down conversions and an onside kick that blew the game open late, but Georgia had 14 points by halftime, more than enough to win what would become a 35-10 blowout. Good Dogs.

I hope that some other team will be nice and give Georgia a chance to play in the SEC title game. If that happens, I'll happily watch that game with my dogs beside me on the couch.

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"Anomaly Detected" reports Google Analytics. It seems Google expected 9 visitors to Wriphe.com on Friday, and I got 38. Can I account for that difference? No. Maybe a whole bunch of people tuned in to read my take on What's New Pussycat? Come to think of it, maybe some 21st-century surveillance AI flagged me for putting the terms "student bodies," "having wonderful crime," and "murderers among us" in the same blog post. If so, whoops, I did it again.

I don't look at the site analytics often, and I would have thought that 38 was a huge aberration. (According to my phone, I literally only ever communicate with about a dozen people, and that includes my dogs' vet and "friend" Keith who said he was going to buy us tickets for today's Dolphins vs Falcons game in Atlanta then didn't and threw a party without inviting me instead. Not that I'm bitter. At least now I don't have to spend time and money on the Dolphins. So thanks, Keith! What a pal!) But looking at the year-to-date snapshots, 38 appears not quite so deviant. It looks very much like I commonly have over 20 visitors a day in 2025. I'm sure I have no idea who most of you are or why you would be interested in any of my pretentious whining about football or my so-called "friends," but you're welcome here

In fact, I had 345 visitors on August 17. I would assume that was the leading edge of a Denial of Service attack, although the day before I did post about my family's Scrabble history, so maybe that showed up in some Google News feeds, and I caught some stray boardgame fan lookie loos by accident. To those people I offer my sincerest apology (13 points).

Huh. Now that I really walk though the dashboard, I find I am getting a surprising amount of traffic (14% of all site hits) from China. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know anyone in China, so that does seem a bit weird. I don't think that I post a bunch about anything Chinese, but a quick search does reveal 32 posts matching the word "China." There are not quite 3000 posts in the history of this site, so that's a healthy 1%. Disproportionate to the number of hits, sure, but also more than I would have expected. In any case, ni hao to my China people!

The real question is whether any of these analytics serve any purpose. I think the answer is no, at least in regards to Wriphe.com. As you probably know if you're reading this, I don't tailor my blog posts to anyone's interests but my own, which is probably why Google thought I should have only 9 visitors. Seems to me that's still 9 more visitors than I deserve. More often than not, I wonder why I bother posting anything at all, and it's rewarding to know that at least 9 of you are paying attention. Or at least clicking through to see if I'm a murderer. Even if you're all just web crawling spiders, thanks for dropping by.

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I had hoped to wake up yesterday to find Stephen Ross had fired the head coach of his Miami Dolphins today. Ross likes to fire coaches on Mondays.

Ross bought majority ownership in the Dolphins in 2009, and even he doesn't like his own choices to lead the team. He fired Tony Sparano with three games remaining in the season (after a 26-10 loss to the Eagles) on December 12, 2011. He fired Joe Philbin with twelve games remaining on the season (after a 27-14 loss to the Jets) on Monday, October 5, 2015. He fired Adam Gase the day after the season ended (with a 42-17 loss to Buffalo) on Monday, December 31, 2018. He fired Brian Flores the day after the season ended (with a 33-24 win over New England) on Monday, January 10, 2022.

Side note: Sparano's mid-season replacement was Todd Bowles, who has gone on to have some success with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Philbin's mid-season replacement was Dan Campbell, who has gone on to have some success the Detroit Lions. I have to wonder who on the current staff, given a chance to be interim head coach, would go on to win elsewhere once they finally get out of Miami?

Side side note: I still think current head coach Mike McDaniel will make someone else a great offensive coordinator, and I wish him well in his future endeavors. He's just amply demonstrated that his skills are not a good fit for a head coach position, especially with the personnel he's been given in Miami.

Back to the matter at hand, the Dolphins disappointed me again. Despite being beaten Sunday 31-6 by Browns, who had managed only one win and never more than 17 points in previous games, the now 1-6 Dolphins did not announce a coach firing today. In fact, the first line of today's ESPN article reads "Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will remain the team's starter, coach Mike McDaniel confirmed Monday, despite the worst statistical two-game stretch of his career." This despite the fact that the Dolphins are currently projected to have the second overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. Sadly, that's the point.

You may have noticed that the only coach Ross has fired after a win was Brian Flores. That was no accident. After Flores was fired, he accused Ross of trying to bribe him to lose games, an accusation the NFL upheld (among other proven charges including that Ross had tried to tamper with other teams to steal their quarterbacks and coaches). As punishment the Dolphins were forced to forfeit draft picks in 2023 and 2024.

So Ross has learned his lesson and will now just leave a bad coach in place to secure the pick. Too bad for us fans. If history is any guide, Ross will ruin that, too.

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In the 23 years I've had season tickets, today's football game was a truly unique experience. And I don't mean because #5 Ole Miss scored touchdowns on their first five possessions and #9 Georgia only won because they scored on every possession until they knelt on the ball to run out the clock at the end of a 43-35 game. (What happened to defense?!?) No, I mean it was unique because we didn't make it to the stadium to watch it.

We tried. Mom and I left the house on schedule (rare for us) at 11:30 with the intention of making it to Athens two hours before the 3:30 kickoff. After almost 40 minutes of travel, on I-285 just past the exit for I-75, traffic stopped. Despite Google continuing to insist that we'd be out of the traffic jam in just "15 minutes," the next 4 miles took 2 hours. Eventually we learned that the source of the trouble was that somehow a box truck had overturned on a straight road and blocked three of four lanes of traffic not more than a half mile before the next exit, Jonesboro Road.

By the time we were finally past the accident, I calculated that even if everything went perfectly for the rest of the route to Athens, there was no way we could arrive, park, and make out way to our seats in Sanford Stadium until very near the end of the first quarter. So we made the decision to cut our losses and turn the car around and watch the whole game at home on TV instead. Somehow, it took almost 40 minutes to get home.

I was disappointed. Mom was disappointed. We were looking forward to the big game environment, where someone hatched a hairbrained plan to "stripe" the stadium in black, white, and red, requiring me to wear white instead of my typical red to a home game for the first time. That's probably why there was an accident. I didn't wear red and it broke the universe. Sorry, universe. (And if you saw the game on TV, you may have noticed the white end zones, but deciding to put the black stripe on the sunny side of an afternoon game? Are you trying to kill those people? Good on them for refusing the assignment.)

Sure, you can't always get what you want, but if you try, you might get what you need, so we made the best of a bad situation with some soft pretzels, Mexican Coke, and Culver's custard (Mom's idea for cushioning the blow) as we watched the Dawgs scratch out a win from our sofa with poodles and a havanese. That's my kind of unique.

(I took a picture of us in in our "Stripe the Stadium" whites in front of the TV showing Sanford Stadium pregame, but Mom looks better in this one in our back yard, so it's the one you get.)

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One

Also: The number of wins the Miami Dolphins have earned in the 2025 season so far.

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