"On Porpoise" is my not-so humble attempt to shed a little light on the annual quest for football greatness by my favorite NFL team, the Miami Dolphins. I make no claims about having any inside information to regale you with and I don't want you to think that I have any special insight into the goings-on down in Miami. Whatever inside information I may get this year, I will share with you instantly through my news bulletins. And whatever insight I may have comes from a strictly amateur point of view.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a professonal football coach, player or sportswriter. The last time I played tackle football was when I was 12 years old and the last time I was even on the sidelines during a game was in 1972, when I was an athletic trainer for my high school football team.

Nevertheless, I love the game and I enjoy writing about it, so I do. More to the point, I have a fanatical allegiance to the Miami Dolphins that I regard as my only true addiction, ( outside of chocolate and Michelle Pfeiffer, of course) that causes me to live only for the next Dolphins game during the season and to live for the return of the season during the off-season.

I'm sure many of you feel the same way about your favorite team.

This addiction has had a curious effect on me. Because I live in New England and am surrounded by Patriot's fans, it's hard to get into a decent discussion with anyone about the Dolphins. This situation is somewhat lessened by the presence of the newsgroups, but even they have their drawbacks, as any of you regular readers know.

So last season I decided to start writing "On Porpoise". About once a week or whenever the urge strikes me, I put fingers to keyboard and pound away, hoping for something reasonably coherent and perhaps even interesting to appear on the screen.

Sometimes, of course, I succeed better than others.

As a result of my pounding, you can be sure of only two things: First, that "On Porpoise" will be written by me for the Internet community for fun and no profit at intervals that are approximately once a week, although I make no guarantees about the regularity (or irregularity) of the publishing. And second, that the subject matter will be the Miami Dolphins. Anything else that comes out of it will be blind luck.

This is the "zeroth" issue of "On Porpoise" for 1995, the purpose of which is to introduce the readers to it's existence. Very shortly, there will be several more issues, in which I hope to talk about the upcoming season in some detail.

I must apologize for the absence of "On Porpoise" before this late date. I have been very busy this summer with a number of projects, including (but not limited to) working on my personal Dolphins Web Site and trying to help the Dolphin Digest get aquainted with the Internet in anticipation of their establishing a Web Site of their own.

By the way, you can get "On Porpoise" via email by subscribing to the mailing list "dolphins-info". You do this by sending email to dolphins-request@gte.com with the words "subscribe dolphins-info" in the body of the message.

So that about does it for the introductory issue of "On Porpoise". I make no pretense at being "objective" in "On Porpoise", whatever that means to football fans (very little, I presume). But I do assure of one thing - when I do publish my thoughts, feelings and opinions about the Dolphins through this venue, it will not be by accident that I do this. It will be....

... On Porpoise.