Touchdown in the Hall! Don Shula inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame

This column was originally printed on July 27, 1997

In a world where technologists routinely steal each others’ secrets and movies’ popularity rises with each additional obscenity, less and less frequently do achievement and honor travel hand in hand.

They did Saturday when Don Shula entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

In gorgeous symbolism, it came about in the 25th-anniversary year of his Miami Dolphins’ Perfect Season. Never did a single soul with a grain of common sense doubt Shula would make it here. The only question was when.

His astonishing 33-year record of 347 victories, 173 losses and six ties — including the best total record of any pro sports team during his Miami stretch from 1970 through ‘95 — made him a unanimous choice. But the integrity he brought to a game up to its neck in thuggery meant more to me.

Sons David and Mike co-introduced their father. David said, “When his mother told Don Shula he couldn’t play eighth-grade football, he forged his parents’ signature and swore his teammates to secrecy.”

If Don has cheated at anything since, it is the best-kept secret in sport. Some of my closest friends are and have been football coaches, but, in candor, they are not a breed renowned for truth-telling.

Shula might duck a question he didn’t want to answer, but he never, ever lied.

Arrogant?

Often.

Insensitive?

That, too, at times.

But when it came to ethics, Donald Francis Shula unvaryingly did the right thing.

“I am honored just to be in the same room with Shula,” Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Huff remarked here only Friday.

National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue added, “Don Shula was not just great for the Colts and the Dolphins. He was great for the league. The late Pete Rozelle must be very happy up there this weekend.”

Shula was inducted along with another paragon, New York Giants co-owner Wellington Mara, and cornerback Mike Haynes and center Mike Webster.

Straight arrow

Shula’s speech was more businesslike than Churchillian. It was long on history and short on personal sentiment. He does not lightly bare his most private thoughts.

I think he was afraid he might break down if he dwelt overlong on his late and beloved wife Dorothy, or his beloved new wife, Mary Anne.

Break down?

Not Don Shula. Too tough, still, at 67.

“And a man of his word,” son David said. Notably, David seldom referred to his father as “Dad,” for, I believe, the same reason Don didn’t break down. The Shulas are anything but maudlin.

“Don Shula never asked anyone to do what he wouldn’t do,” David said. “He ran sprints right with the players,” at least until knee surgery and a ruptured Achilles’ tendon made it impossible.

Shula’s departure from coaching a year and a half ago was a sad if all too predictable day. Criticism from fans and a few writers and broadcasters helped make it happen earlier than he deserved. He grew to hate talk radio because it gave a forum to every wacko with a telephone. Palookas who wouldn’t know a forward pass from a left hook were calling in knocking the winningest coach of all time. What’s crazier than that?

Yet none of it really changed Shula, or his view of what was most important — “believing in God, hard work and my family.”

Again, Shula carefully avoided touching on things personal in his brief peroration on this gray day turned golden by the occasion. He acknowledged the eight children and eight grandchildren of his extended family. Thanked the nuns who guided him through early school. Thanked the Jesuits who educated him in logic at John Carroll University in Cleveland. Thanked all the players and assistant coaches who studied films until their eyeballs turned square.

First shot

That Jesuit logic stayed with him. “When Weeb Ewbank retired from the Colts after the 1962 season,” Shula recalled, “[Hall of Famer] Gino Marchetti went to the owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, and told Carroll he had to hire me. I was only 33, younger than any other coach, and Rosenbloom asked me if that would keep me from getting the job done.”

Shula told Rosenbloom, “The only way you’ll ever find out is to hire me.”

From then through ‘95 Shula created pro football’s most enduring story line. He spanned explosively diverse eras as no one else could. He won with the rebels of the ‘60s, drug-plagued warriors of the ‘70s, increasingly rich and increasingly uncontrollable mercenaries of the ‘80s, and even against the jolting realities of the salary cap in the ‘90s.

When it was all about football, no one could match Shula’s combination of adaptability and staying power.

“What Don did just blows your mind,” said another Hall of Famer, Mike Ditka. “No one will ever do it again.”

One catch at the end: Shula was never trained as a mathematician. When the salary cap forced coaches to become accountants and allowed not the slightest margin for error in choosing personnel, some of his cachet fell away. There is no harder job than motivating people who are paid millions before they even start the job. Even Wall Street’s infamously bloated bonuses are based on past performance, not future.

No regrets

Of course, Shula refused to mention any of that. He didn’t even mention what was wrenchingly more significant, which is what he brings to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Fetishistic honesty.

Unequalled integrity.

That was why, Saturday, even when Shula refused to break down, a tear or two slid down my cheeks. That never happened to me before in anything to do with sports. It happened this time because Donald Francis Shula was finally where he belonged, a superstar of superstars in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. For all the right reasons.

This story was originally published May 6, 2020 at 3:08 PM.