Ireland recalled one colorful exchange between Sparano and Parcells during Parcells’s final preseason game in Dallas.
Parcells: “Tony!”
Sparano: “What!”
Parcells: “Don’t SCREAM at me!”
Sparano: “You’re SCREAMING AT ME!”
Parcells: “Forget about it.”
Sparano counts Parcells as his greatest influence. He credits Parcells with making him a wise guy in a different sense, a football sense. And now, as they embark on Parcells’s latest reclamation project, they do so as the Dolphins’ version of an old married couple.