A Sunshine State serenade to Don Shula
Was not only winningest coach in NFL history, but the Father of Florida Football
From the elementary school kid who long ago used to put on a Mercury Morris No. 22 jersey every Sunday and watch my Miami Dolphins march to perfection, I just want to say one final goodbye and one last thank you to Don Shula.
Thank you, Coach, for giving a young boy who grew up in the sticks and scrub oaks of North Florida something to look forward to every weekend.
Thank you for giving us native Floridians a professional sports team we could finally and proudly call our own.
Thank you not just for being the winningest coach in NFL history, but for being the Father of Florida Football.
Actually, Coach Shula, you were more than that.
You weren’t just the Father of Florida Football; you were the Sultan of Sunshine State Sports.
Shula died on Monday at the age of 90 and his former team released a statement calling him, “The Patriarch of the Miami Dolphins for 50 years. He brought the winning edge to our franchise and put the Dolphins and the city of Miami in the national sports scene.”
While that statement is certainly true, it does not come close to doing justice to the impact Shula had not just on South Florida but the entire state of Florida. From Palatka to Pahokee to Possum Bluff; from Spuds to Two Egg to Lone Cabbage; from Weeki Wachee to Yeehaw Junction to Rattlesnake Bend and all the little specks on the map in between, Shula gave old Florida something and somebody to root for.
Before Shula moved to Miami in 1970, Florida had virtually nothing in the way of big-time sports. We had Steve Spurrier winning the Heisman four years earlier. And that was it.
Florida was a geographic swampland — and a sports wasteland. We had three mediocre college football programs — Florida, Florida State and Miami — and nothing else. Oh, sure, the Dolphins existed before Shula, but they were a joke of an expansion franchise that couldn’t draw flies to the Orange Bowl. The Dolphins compiled a 15-39-2 record during their first four seasons before former owner Joe Robbie made Shula an offer he couldn’t refuse in 1970.
And the rest is Florida history. Shula’s Dolphins made the playoffs in his first season and went to the Super Bowl — losing to the Dallas Cowboys — in his second. And then came
1972 when the Dolphins did something no team had ever done before or since — they went 17-0 and completed the immaculate season.
In those days before cable TV and the Red Zone Channel; before the Bucs and the Jaguars; before the NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball flocked to Florida, we had one professional sports team — Shula’s Dolphins. And that one team gave us the greatest season in the history of the greatest sport in our country.
Several years ago, during an interview with Shula, I got a chance to tell the great coach what he and his team meant to those of us who grew up here.
As I finished the story about how me and my boyhood buddies would go out on the dirt road that ran through our neighborhood and pretend to be Larry Csonka and Bob Griese and Mercury Morris and Paul Warfield, Shula knowingly nodded.
“I’m probably more proud of that than anything,” he told me then.
“We brought people in this state together. We were a common thread for transplants from Chicago and New York and Detroit.
They all had different allegiances, but they all became Dolphins fans.”
Over the years, of course, there have been those critical of Shula and his ’72 Dolphins for being fiercely protective of their place in history, popping champagne and celebrating whenever the last undefeated team of any given NFL season gets beaten. One of my most indelible experiences as a Sentinel writer was sitting in a luxury suite at Dolphins Stadium in 2005 and watching my boyhood heroes anxiously trying to remain immortal.
Many of ‘72 Dolphins were attending the Dolphins-Jets game that December day, but were much more closely monitoring the Indianapolis Colts-San Diego Chargers game on the suite TVs. The place went crazy as the Chargers shockingly ended the Colts’ march toward matching the ’72 Dolphins’ season of perfection.
After San Diego won the game, Shula immediately phoned Chargers Coach Marty Schottenheimer to congratulate him on the victory.
“Marty’s a great friend of mine,” Shula said with a smile splashed across his face. “Now he’s become an even better friend.”
A few years later, Shula was in Central Florida for an appearance at one his Shula’s Steakhouses out at Disney as the undefeated New England Patriots were getting ready to take on the New York Giants in Super Box XLII.
“I’m pulling for the New York Giants, and I’m not going to apologize for it,” Shula told me. “We, [the ’72 Dolphins,] are always portrayed as angry old men because we’re proud of what we accomplished. Believe me, I’ll be the first to congratulate the Patriots if they run the table and finish with a perfect record because I know how hard it is to do. But that doesn’t mean I want it to happen.” Neither do I.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.
For selfish reasons, I never want anybody to supplant the ’72 Dolphins in the history books.
Their legacy is our legacy.
For the dwindling few of us sports fans who grew up in this transient, touristy state, the Dolphins are the closest thing we have to a sense of place and purpose and history and heritage.
Don Shula is the reason for that.
God, I wish I still had my Mercury Morris jersey.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel .com. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on FM 96.9 and AM 740.