Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
BY ANY MEASURE, THE GREATEST DOLPHIN
A hero on and off the field, Hall of Famer tackled bigger accomplishments than football
He’ll never walk beside his son now. That was the first thought when news of Nick Buoniconti’s death came Wednesday morning. That’s what he wanted most in a grand life now gone.
A simple walk together was the Miami Dolphins legend’s singular prayer, even as years of his son confined to a wheelchair became decades, as he turned private tragedy into public benefit, as he built a beacon of hope in The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and then, tragedy layered on tragedy, as he also realized the game that took his son’s
body was also taking his own mind.
“Marc dreams in his sleep of walking,’’ Nick Buoniconti would say. “I dream every waking hour of walking with him.”
We often pretend our games’ greatest are more than sports stars. We pretend they’re real heroes. We pretend they possess the intelligence, toughness and general goodness in their larger life that they show in a simple game.
There was no such pretense about Buoniconti, who died at age 78. He was, by any measure beyond 100 yards, the greatest Miami Dolphin of them all. His career equaled anyone: A Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, two Super Bowl rings and his name in both the Dolphins’ Honor Roll and the New England Patriots’ Hall of Fame.
Here’s what set Buoniconti apart from most sports stars: He had a second act. And his second act dwarfed his football success. It started with the phone call in 1985 that every parent fears.
“Your son was paralyzed in a football game and won’t survive,’’ a doctor told him.
There was no father’s manual for what to do. No playbook to follow. Buoniconti flew to his the hospital bedside of his son, Marc and uttered the oath. That oath created The Miami Project, it raised more than a half-billion dollars to make it an international research center and consumed his time and energy for all the following years until his mind gave out, and then, finally, his great heart did.
“I’ll do everything to help you walk again,’’ the father told his son at that hospital.
Buoniconti already was a success story beyond football then, running a Fortune 500 and then another AMEX-listed corporation as president and CEO after retiring from football. Well, after retiring for good.
The first time he retired was when the Patriots traded him to the Dolphins in 1969. He demanded a three-year contract of $42,000, $45,000 and $49,000. Dolphins owner Joe Robbie hung up the phone.
So Buoniconti dug in. He quit football. He already had a law degree that he’d later use an assistant district attorney and then as a sports agent for the likes of baseball greats Andre Dawson and Mickey Rivers and the Dolphins’ Joe Rose.
But when Robbie relented on the deal, it merely affirmed the attributes Buoniconti carried through the years at the middle of the Dolphins defense. Smarts. Toughness. Determination. And an ability to win at everything.
Buoniconti forever fought labels he was too small, too slow, just too ill-equipped for football. His Notre Dame coach, Joe Kuharich, told pro scouts Buoniconti would run through a wall — “He’ll just make a small hole.”
He was drafted in the 13th round by the Patriots in the old AFL. He led the Patriots in tackles as a rookie. He was named to the AFL’s All-Time team. That narrative kept repeating itself, too.
After the Dolphins lost to Dallas in the 1971 Super Bowl, Cowboys center Dave Manders said Buoniconti was, “5-10 and 220 pounds — what we call a reject in the Cowboys system.”
Never mind Dallas built its blocking scheme around handling Buoniconti. Never mind he led the league’s top defense to the next two Super Bowls. Never mind he’d huddle with defensive coordinator Bill Arnsparger each Sunday and decide on the five schemes they’d run that day — their genius was their simplicity — and he was named the Dolphins’ Most Valuable Player three times in six years.
Never mind all that, because eventually Buoniconti moved on to bigger mountains. Even on his day of football days, when his fellow Hall of Fame inductees spoke in Canton, Ohio, their life’s dreams come true, Buoniconti had other thoughts.
“I wear the Super Bowl ring which is the only Super Bowl ring produced that says U`ndefeated’ and P`erfect’ for the 1972 Dolphin season,’’ he said. “I’d trade this ring and all my individual accomplishments if one thing could happen in this lifetime. My son dreams that he walks. And, as a father, I would like nothing more than to walk by his side.”
Legacy is an overused word in sports, as if anyone with a good career leaves something everlasting. But even as news spread Wednesday of Buoniconti’s death, his legacy moved on.
The Miami Project continued completing clinical trials approved by the Federal Drug Administration using special nervous system cells called Schwann cells to regenerate sensation and function to paralyzed people.
It is combining that scientific idea with inter-cranial stimulation so the brain interacts with nerves down the body. The Project’s tests with hypothermia show 42 percent of the people who come paralyzed into an emergency room can reduce the effects of it or walk out of the hospital on their own.
“When people say, ‘When are we going to cure paralysis?,’ I say we’re doing so right now,’’ Marc Buoniconti often says. “There are paralyzed people walking because of the work being done.”
He’s not one of them walking. Maybe he never will be. And now his father is gone, after battling dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, so there will be no Disney ending of them walking together as the credits roll.
What a life Buoniconti led, though. What a legacy he left. He didn’t just walk a path few could. He bravely walked one nobody would want to be asked to go down.