No, Cote writes for the Herald. I don't dislike Cote or anything, but like Edwin Pope, he has had some truly terrible opinions throughout the years. Edwin Pope gets held up as some kind of amazing sportswriter, even though he wrote some of the dumbest **** on earth in the 1970s. Stuff like "Dolphins need to fire Shula and trade Griese" in '76 because the team had one poor season.
These guys aren't any smarter than any fan.
First of all, sportswriters historically aren't judged based on opinions. Edwin Pope was always an excellent writer and story teller, with a classy relaxed southern style based on his Georgia roots. He was exactly the opposite of the ranting Bar Stool type of sportswriter. That type was relegated to small irrelevant papers. Now somehow that style is preferred. Edwin Pope was always a calming influence if things were going poorly for local teams, and an ideal perspective setter when we were dominating. He was so well respected by local coaches and players that they befriended him. Griese has mentioned many times that he took Pope's advice on family and relationship matters, since Griese's young family came along not much later than Pope had gone through it.
I don't think Edwin Pope called for Shula to be fired and Griese to be traded after the 1976 season. I'm going to estimate it didn't happen. I'm not 100% sure of that, but I'll default to probability. I like the odds in my favor. First of all, I don't remember it. The Dolphins were a huge part of my life as a teenager. Two of my best friends were sons of assistant coaches. If Shula were fired their father's jobs would also be in jeopardy. Secondly, it makes very little sense. Edwin Pope was the guy who recommended Don Shula to Joe Robbie after the 1969 season. After two Super Bowl wins including an unbeaten season, a guy of Pope's stature and caliber would have to completely break tendency to overreact to that extreme. Besides, he was an off-field friend of Griese, as I mentioned. The first semi-doubting column from Pope regarding Griese that I remember was in 1978 when Griese suffered a knee injury and Pope wrote that Griese at age 33 might "find this a toughie" to fully return.
Edwin Pope was huge on loyalty. He savaged Lou Saban for bolting the Canes after two seasons following the 1978 season. Pope would have had zero credibility in the matter if he'd ranted for Robbie to fire Shula and dump Griese just two years earlier.
I'd have to see the column to believe it. Pope might have thrown out a brief mention in a column devoted to multiple possibilities but I'd be shocked if it were a theme he pushed. Maybe somebody else in the local media offered that view. There were out of the box types like Al "Super Fan" Minter who loved to take the most severe angle based on recent outcomes. The difference was, he did it with a grin and playful style, like you knew he was half serious and mostly probing the public for humorous reaction.
If a subsequent book on that Dolphin era makes that claim about a Pope theme from 1976, I still wouldn't be convinced. Those books make factual errors or twist things out of place all the time, like "Cane Mutiny" which asserted that Miami was a 49 point underdog in Jim Kelly's famous upset at Penn State in 1979. Nice try. Some of us were already involved. That spread was 19.5.
Again, I'm not going to 100% guarantee Pope didn't write those themes. I'll say no while weighing all the sensible attachments. Nobody was really crushed after 1976. Surprised, but not calling for heads. We understood the impact of losing Csonka, Kiick and Warfield before they played their final season in 1974. If anybody overreacted to 1976 it might have been from the afternoon Miami News.
