SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
The first time I met Don Shula was in Miami after his heavily favored Baltimore Colts had been the victim of one of the biggest upsets in professional football. And when the final seconds ticked down at the Orange Bowl, he made his way to the field to congratulate the joyous New York Jets, with Joe Namath the first one he greeted with a pat on the back and a hand-shake.
It was the last of the National Football League’s games against the American Football League and Namath’s pregameprediction resulted in a 16-7 stunner over the 17-point favored Colts, the best of the NFL and expected to win this final conference encounter before the actual Super Bowl rolled in.
But it wasn’t to be. Namath was so annoyed by the pregame questions passed on to him at the Four Coins Motel where the Jets stayed in Fort Lauderdale, he just settled back into his beach chair and announced that his Jets were going to win this game, and that he guaranteed it. Two days later, at the home of the Miami Dolphins, Don Shula was offering congratulations.
No excuses, just congrats, for he often remarked that this could be a tough game against a tough fired-up opponent.
That was Shula. He never changed. He also gave credit where credit was due, and this was that time. I had covered the Jets at SheaStadium all season, hadn’t seen the Colts at all, but here I was and here was Shula.
“Look,” he said while being interviewed, “I don’t like to lose, no one does, but we had plenty of opportunities to score, but didn’t, and Namath did what he was supposed to do, what he said he would do, and they won.”
This was the finale of the 1968-69 season. Two years later, after the NFL-AFL Merger.Shula left Baltimore to coach Miami, went 10-4 and made the playoffs for the first time before losing in the Super Bowl to the Dallas Cowboys. Next came 1971-72, the perfect season. His Fins won all 17 games, including the 14-7 Super Bowl over the Washington Redskins, and this is a feat that lived on, never before done while he lived on and until he passed away at age 90 Monday.
The following campaign, Miami lost twice in the regular season but turned back the Minnesota Vikings to again win the Super Bowl. But from then to now, the Dolphins have not again won a Super Bowl, winning those two and losing the next four, and in 1983 with Dan Marino in his second season as quarterback, lost handily to quarterback Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers, and Marino never again made the big game, and the Fins won only twice in six Super Bowls.
As for Marino, this always bothered Shula, even spoke of it several weeks before he passed away at his home across Biscayne Bay from downtown Miami. He always said that Marino was as good as anyone else and maybe even better.
Said Dolphins’ owner Stephen Ross: “If there was a Mount Rushmore for the NFL, DonShula would be chiseled into the granite.”
His players, from the 1971 team to when he retired in place of Jimmy Johnson after the 1996 season, would have rallied behind him to do this. He was a players coach, never favored any of them without speaking in fond terms of the others.
Hall of Famer Larry Csonka, the running back from Syracuse who ran the show in the backfield with Mercury Morris and Jim Klick, was among the ’72 Dolphins who threw a surprise party for Shula in December to celebrate his 90th birthday. Csonka was the hard-nosed grinding ball carrier, Morris the swift one, Klick the combination runner-receiver, and Paul Warfield the All-Pro wide receiver.
Csonka said it was the first time in the entire time I’ve known him that he was genuinely surprised. “I think he was very happy.”
Like Shula, they always enjoyed talking about the 17-0 team, and he and his players often drew criticism for the way they savored their unique status each season. But it never bothered Shula.
“People,” he said in 2010, “think we’re a bunch of angry old guys who can’t wait for the next undefeated team to get beat, but we’re very proud of our record, and if someone breaks it, I’m going to call the coach and congratulate them. Until they do, it’s our record, and we’re proud of it.”
No need for that, for as Coach Shula now rests in peace, the record remains. So does his record of 347 overall NFL wins after 33 seasons. In 1997, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, and the ceremony took place only 70 miles from his native Grand River, where he played as a two-way back in football at nearby Harvey High School in Painesville, and then as a running back at John Carroll University in Cleveland.
In seven years as a corner back in the pros, he played for Cleveland, Baltimore and Washington. In 2010, he remarked that there’s such a letdown in adjusting to all kinds of retirement because there’s no way you can fill the time you spent as a coach. Life is great after football, but you don’t have those emotional ups and downs you had on game day.
Sizing up Shula, he was tough, courageous and an authentic leader with great integrity in his pursuit of perfection that he achieved.
My long-time friend, Harvey Greene, has been the Dolphins’ media director since relocating from the same role with the New York Yankees back in 1993. Before that, he served as media director of the NBA’sCleveland Cavaliers, and with all three he was named Media Director of the Year several times. Being around that long in the professional sports world, Greene would probably present Don Shula with five stars now and forever.
And can’t forget plugs for all those Don Shularestaurants, steak houses, bars, with sites at the initial place in Miami Lakes, four different restaurants-steakhouses in Disney World, others in Naples and Tamps, Fla, in Chandler, Ariz., in New York City, in Chicago, and all with five-star ratings in food, services and atmosphere.
Notable members of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins:
Offensive linemen: Larry Little, Dick Anderson, Bob Kuchenberg.
Defensive linemen: Nick Buoniconti, MannyFernandez, Vern Den Herder.
Defensive backs: Jake Scott, Lloyd Mumphord, Curtis Johnson, Dick Anderson.
