World Loses Another Sports Blog

It's an incredible feat for a sports blog to remain active in our current climate and economy. Sometimes it feels like the whole world has moved on to other sexier projects, like podcasts and videos and Tik Toks. And although The Big Lead is technically competing with all the others for clicks and eyeballs, there's a certain level of at least one-sided respect for any blogger accessing the CMS to fire off half-baked thoughts about current events. So it's with great sadness, but some bittersweet optimism that we observe the loss of Greg Cote's Random Evidence, which kept on ticking from the Blog 1.0 era to today, a remarkable 18-year run.

The Miami Herald columnist explained his decision in a farewell post.

The blog has been a chapter in my journalism career that I have enjoyed, and hope you have, too. But it's time to close this little chapter in the book of my continuing career.

Times have changed. Other stuff has bumped blogs not to irrelevance, perhaps, but in that general direction.

Social media led by Twitter (which I joined in 2009) became a faster, more easily and broadly accessible platform to say whatever I wanted to say (or promote).

I started my podcast in 2020, the success of which, and the time for it needed, pushed the blog further back on my priority list.

Over time the blog became less a stand-alone creative outlet for me and more just a place to promote the other stuff I was doing like the newest column written or the latest podcast episode. It was fun while it lasted. It was fun while it was fun. We shall remember it fondly but it's time to let it go.

Tough times don't last, tough people do. It's our honest belief that if someone really wanted to, they could create the next good sports blog and benefit from the gatekeepers' one-in, one-out policy. An 18-year existence is a tough mark to beat, but nothing good every comes from something easy.