Through the grief of the eulogy, we do not bury merely a winner now ... not merely a leader of champions ... not merely a warrior hero with more successful conquests than anyone in the forever of America's gladiator game. No, we come with respect to bury a historic symbol ... and a different time ... in football, Miami, America.
Don Shula took Miami from black and white to color -- the football team, yes, but the sparkling seaside city, too. Horse racing and jai alai, that's all we had in South Florida before Shula's granite jaw led us somewhere bigger, better. He cleaned us up, classed us up -- the Miami Dolphins, yes, but our city, too.
A pillar of virtuous excellence across the decades, so very dignified, nary a smear on his integrity, rugged and royal. He was part army general, part Papal majesty. He is the very first winner this region ever grew to love in sports, and he dies as its most enduring. We were always proud to have him leading us, as his football teams introduced and showcased tough and brown and glitzy and sunny Miami to the rest of the world, because very few people before or since have represented us as well.
In a different America, preaching family and faith and football, Shula made our city of exiles and transplants feel like a winner, so many nationalities squeezing into the dumpy Orange Bowl to feel a little more together than they did in the fractured surrounding city. Anywhere you find our fertile football roots, stretching through Liberty City and over the bejeweled campus in Coral Gables, those seeds were planted generations back in the garden where Shula manicured his craft. Football, high school and college and pro, wouldn't be what it is in this region without him. Sports in South Florida wouldn't be what they are without him. Hell, Miami itself might not be what it is without him, which is why you'll find a highway bearing his name at its heart.
"I was in awe of him," no less an authority than Miami Heat legend Pat Riley said Monday. There are only four names on the Mount Rushmore of South Florida sports. Shula. Riley. Marino. Wade. When Riley, a fashion icon, arrived in Shula's town a quarter century ago, Sports Illustrated heralded it on its cover by proclaiming that Riley was hot while Shula was not. "I wrote a note to him and apologized for it," Riley says now, the godfather kissing the ring of the king.
For all the winning that came after Shula, as South Florida grew as an international city and a national sports city, as the University of Miami college football team won five championships and the Miami Heat won three and the Florida Marlins won two, our region has still never felt quite as perfect as Shula had us feeling in 1972, at the height of professional sports. He was the pioneer, arriving first with such echoing impact that no one has surpassed him in his sport or this city in the half century since. There is nothing better than perfect. We get to keep that, forever, in his loving memory. In South Florida sports, there has never been and can never be anything better than Shula.
Chris Berman remembers legendary Dolphins head coach Don Shula and his Hall of Fame career.
The Dolphins have spent the past two decades desecrating the empire of excellence Shula entrusted to them, of course, going from a national symbol for class to a regional one for disgrace. They only get in the national news cycle when Richie Incognito is bullying a teammate, or an offensive line coach is snorting something off his desk and sending the video evidence to a Vegas entertainer. The Miami Heat somehow stole this sports city from the Dolphins after Shula left, a new generation of children watching Dwyane Wade do all the winning while the Dolphins did none, and they have never given it back. Shula kept going to Dolphins games until the end, staying by their side, even when they had to wheel him there.
A tribute to how high Shula set the standard: Not even football giants like Bill Parcells, Nick Saban and Jimmy Johnson, coaches of the highest order, could meet it. They all did the Dolphins' job less well than he did. Bill Belichick has done substantive winning in New England, obviously, and had two full decades of the greatest quarterback we've ever known, but he could win all of his games in the upcoming season, and the one after that, and the one after that, and he'd still be falling in Shula's footprints atop the football mountain.
Former ESPN reporter and analyst Hank Goldberg provides some insight into Don Shula's connection with his players, including Johnny Unitas and Dan Marino.
Many years ago, a fat kid from Miramar grew up as the son of working-class Cuban exiles, his world very small. There was no Miami Heat. No Florida Marlins. No Florida Panthers. The University of Miami didn't matter, either. Dad worked a lot and made a little, but every once in a while he would score some tickets no one else at work wanted, to see the stinky Buffalo Bills. So they'd pack lunches and go further south than the kid had ever been, to a magical new world, the Orange Bowl, where the very worst seats in the dump provided the greatest view the kid had ever known.
The kid and his father had never bonded about anything the way they bonded on those Sundays, so the kid grew to love football and sports from there. He would go to school with the autographs of the 1972 Dolphins on it, and collect Dolphins trading cards from the cross guards, and drink Slurpees from a 7-11 cup with the face of kicker Garo Yepremian on it. That's the treasure Shula gave the kid. Made him care about games, in a way that felt so good that he would dedicate his life's work to them.
Thank you, Don Shula, for giving me that treasure of a gift.
It outlives you in a region forever touched by your grace, echoing long beyond the eulogies, reaching places that can only be felt by the heart.