Dateline: MIAMI
This is my favorite Don Shula story. Before one of the early Miami Dolphin Super Bowls, VIII if memory and Latin are dependable, Shula was extremely uptight and making everyone around him miserable.
He was even yelling at Paul Warfield, who never made a mistake. Things were too tense, and the Miami players felt they had to do something to loosen Shula up.
Manny Fernandez, the puckish nose tackle, had caught a 4-foot alligator in the Everglades. Fernandez had taped up the alligator’s mouth and brought it to practice in the trunk of his car.
Fernandez and Larry Csonka, in an inspired conspiracy, put the alligator in Shula’s shower stall. After practice, all of the players waited around the locker room to see what would happen.
As expected, they heard a loud scream and furniture crashing in Shula’s office, which is down a hall from the locker room.
“Somebody get that thing out of there!” Shula yelled. By the time Shula got to the locker room, unclothed, unshowered and unhappy, the room was empty, though the parking lot was full of laughter.
The next day at the team meeting, no one breathed. Shula was very stern, very serious. He asked who did it. Who put the alligator in his shower.
Csonka held up his hand.
Shula shouted, “You did that to me, Csonka?” Csonka said, no, Fernandez did. Shula was livid.
“But,” Csonka said innocently, “you won by one vote.”
“One vote?” Shula asked.
“Yes,” said Csonka, “on whether to tape its mouth shut or not.”
ALL THOSE DOLPHINS are gone now, as is, presumably, the alligator. Even the Dolphin training site has changed its name from Biscayne to St. Thomas, but Shula is still showering in the same stall and anticipating another championship football game.
Maybe some things do last forever.
Shula looks at life and finds it good. At age 55, he has his health and his hair, a family and a football team nearly grown, a marvelous quarterback young enough to take him into retirement and to more Super Bowls, five of which already have Shula on file.
“I am blessed,” Shula said. “I am blessed and privileged.”
His oldest son, David, is married and a junior member of the firm, Shula’s Miami Dolphins. His three daughters, Donna, Sharon and Annie, are all in college. His youngest son, Mike, is the starting quarterback for Alabama, and his wife, Dorothy, is happy and busy.
Plus, Shula lives and works in the sunshine of south Florida, no small attraction considering the opportunities and temptations Shula has had to leave.
“Everything,” Shula said, “has worked out for me.”
SHULA’S SUCCESS proves that good things do happen to good people, and Shula’s home and job are testimony to his conviction and his commitment.
His latest edition of Dolphins is not only good, but young. Led by second-year quarterback Dan Marino and the Marks brothers, receivers Duper and Clayton, the Dolphins have only two starters past the age of 30, and they are playing football the new-fashioned way, a very un-Shula-like way.
Earlier Shula teams were built on defense and a relentless ground game. This one throws and throws and throws and plays defense when someone thinks of it; sometimes not.
“Our defense has struggled,” said Shula, who could blame injuries or uncertainty or inexperience or the departure of his lifetime defensive wizard, Bill Arnsparger, for LSU, but would rather not.
“You still have to make the plays,” Shula said.
The point is, the Dolphins have won 15 games and need only to whip the Steelers, which they have already done this season 31-7, to reach Super Bowl XIX, and the defense has been respectable in successively defeating Dallas and Seattle.
“We have the best offense in the league, and we have the defense now,” said end Doug Betters.
MOSTLY THEY have Shula.
In this age of instant cures, disposable dynasties and coaching burnout, Shula endures as he always has, reliably, perpetually, on hard work, discipline, sacrifice and selflessness.
“There are no secrets,” Shula said. “You rely on experience, poise and confidence.”
Only once in 22 years has Shula had a losing season, and that followed the defection of Csonka, Warfield and Jim Kiick, merely three-fourths of his offense, to the old World Football League.
Shula rebuilt, even reclaimed Csonka for a season, then lost his alter ego, quarterback Bob Griese, to age and injury. It took Shula nine years to get back to the Super Bowl, and then in the muddled strike year and with a useful but uninspiring young quarterback named David Woodley.
The Dolphins lost to the Washington Redskins after leading them for three quarters. Shula took the blame and Marino on the 27th pick of the next year’s draft.
He abandoned his power football instincts and began making use of Marino just five games into Marino’s rookie year. Marino has written records that maybe only he can break.
Just one more game from one more Super Bowl, Shula is unarguably the greatest football coach who ever wore a whistle, a distinction for which, at last glance, they still were not giving a Nobel prize.