Great article on Don Shula

[Daytona Fin]

I saw this on Deadspin. It is an old article from Esquire magazine on Don Shula, very good read.

Of course, the coaches walking among the players now didn't go back to high school to get comfortable. Most of them played football in the National Football League, including the man himself. You don't have to know anything about football to see who that is. He is smaller than the players, a little heavy in front and back; everybody on the field keeps track of him, and he sees everything that goes on.

His name is Don Shula, and he is the most successful football coach who ever lived. He was not the most successful player who ever lived, but he stayed seven years in the league as a defensive back—at Cleveland, Baltimore, and Washington—in the best company there was without any kind of talent that you'd notice, unless you count brains.

"It hurts when you've got to let go of a player who's been around a while," Shula says. "I had to sit across from Jake Scott when we traded him and tell him he didn't fit in here anymore, thinking about all the things he'd done for me; the ups and downs we'd been through together." Scott was a safety and kick returner on Shula's world championship teams of 1972 and 1973.

"If a kid comes in without the tools, I'll tell him he doesn't have them, or that he doesn't fit in here but he might fit in somewhere else. That doesn't bother me; in the long run it helps him. But the guys who've been through it with me, who've done what I asked …"

He leaves it there.

"You feel like you used them?"

"No," he says, "not used. In football, you have to get it done. No matter what you say you can do, pretty soon you have to prove you belong here, you have to line up and hit and run and think. You find out what people are made of.

"It's more black and white than on the outside, but as you get older you see the grays too. Van Brocklin never made any accommodations. He never got used to the grays."

"He's on his good behavior," the writer said. "After every game, the regulars just wait for somebody to ask something stupid. You know it's going to happen, then it does, and Shula jumps all over them. You've got to admit, though, there's a sense of fairness to it. Shula can be a bully, but he won't pick on somebody helpless. A radio station sends a new kid or some girl over to cover the game, he isn't going to shout at them. He only does that if you ought to know better."

"Does anybody ever shout back?"

"No," he said, "not shout. Joe Robbie [who owns the Dolphins] shouted at him one year at the annual awards banquet, came in front of a hundred people and started yelling."

"How did Shula handle that?" I said. It says something to me when a let's-all-die-together-on-Sunday football coach comes on television after a playoff win and thanks the owner—he will call him "mister"—before he says anything about the players.

The writer shrugged. "He yelled back. He said, 'If you ever shout at me again, I'll knock you on your ass.'"

http://thestacks.deadspin.com/the-t...source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 

[MD]

A coach that was demanding of his players who bitched about what a hard ass he was and will be recognized as the greatest coach in NFL history.

 

[Vaark]

Admittedly prejudiced, IMO he's the best ever NFL HC.. but even for the impartial, it's hard to argue against Shula being one of the top 3 GOATs - although maybe staying around a little too long.