Don Shula was arguably the greatest coach in the 100-year history of the National Football League as measured by his record 347 victories. He won two Super Bowls with the Dolphins, including a perfect season.
Two words, simply scrawled on a blackboard in the corner of a locker room. Amid all the celebrating and champagne and cameras, the message easily could have gone unnoticed, or faded from memory, if not so perfect.
BEST EVER.
An equipment man had written that in honor of the 1973 Miami Dolphins, who had just won their second consecutive Super Bowl. And although a wide smile managed to pierce the stern jaw of Don Shula when he saw it while walking out to pick up the trophy, years would pass before anyone, Shula included, could fully appreciate them.
BEST EVER. That’s Donald Francis Shula, who died Monday at age 90.
Shula was the greatest coach in the 100-year history of the National Football League as measured by his record 347 victories, that beacon of a bottom line he so treasured.
How strange that this morning, his legacy shines even brighter through the prism of the greatest loss that could ever be associated with him — the loss of the man himself.
Gone is an icon, a man who could stand alongside Henry Flagler for the sculpting of a Mount Rushmore for Florida. It’s not simply because he won some football games, or even all of them in that glorious 17-0 season of 1972.
It’s the manner in which he did so: stressing a work ethic, respect and integrity in a way that grabbed Larry Csonka and Dan Marino by the collar just as surely as it did the brick layer in Hialeah and the landscaper in Lantana.
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