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Fellow Dolphins fans,
I found a paper I wrote for a college english class three years ago while digging through my files and thought it would be nice to share. A lot of fans have no idea how the Dolphins started, who worked hard as hell (Joe Robbie, et. al.) to get the franchise started or what the early beginnings were like. This paper tells the history from the very first thought of an expansion franchise up until right before our beloved Shula took the helm. After rereading it myself, it tells the very true story that is intriguing, interesting and reminds us all of our Dolphins' quite humble beginnings. Enjoy! :up:
By: Joe Pizzella (with works cited)
The winningest head coach in NFL history, Don Shula, once said “Usually when you get a group of athletes together, they want to win. If you can guide them along the right paths, you can make winning that much easier for them. You have more friends when you’re a winner than when you’re a loser” (McLemore, 133-134). The Miami Dolphins know about winning, with the highest winning percentage of any team in any professional sport! In addition, the Dolphins are the only NFL franchise with a team (1972) that has gone undefeated in the regular season and playoffs, resulting in a 17-0 undefeated season and a Super Bowl championship. Everyone knows of the Dolphins’ great players, teams and games, but what about the greats it took to get the franchise up and running? The forgotten early history and formation of the Miami Dolphins in 1965 and 1966 securely rooted the professional football franchise for a bright future in southern Florida.
Although the Miami Dolphins are the first successful professional football team to come out of Miami, they are not the first. And in order to fully appreciate the greatness that is the Miami Dolphins, one must understand what came before. “In a major example of overreaction by those seeking normalcy and peacetime happiness in 1946 immediately following World War II, the All-American Conference was born” (McLemore, x). The formation of the conference meant the development of teams like the San Francisco Forty-Niners, Los Angeles Dons, Cleveland Browns, and the lonely Miami Seahawks. The Seahawks would go on to lose their first five games, though it was kept out of the public eye; two of the games were exhibitions and the first three regular games were on the road. The morning of their first home game, a hurricane hit, putting the field at the Orange Bowl underwater. This disaster and the thunderstorms that roared during the next 5 games at home straight on top of the Seahawks were the beginning of the end for the new football club. The Seahawks ended up winning only two games in the season, and never drew more than 7,534 fans at home. “To put it generously, the Seahawks were a disaster” (McLemore, xi). Nineteen years following the blunder of the Seahawks, a group headed by one man would bid for a Miami franchise in the American Football League.
A Minnesota attorney with very little financial means did the impossible when he contacted AFL commissioner Joe Foss, a former classmate at the University of South Dakota, about a client's interest in an American Football League franchise for Philadelphia. Founded in 1960 by Lamar Hunt, the American Football League was a new and up and coming professional football league that drew crowds and fans for its competitiveness; and has become a heavy competitor of the National Football League. Foss immediately rejected Philadelphia “because there is litigation over whether or not the National Football League has exclusive right to use the stadium” but then suggested Miami, saying “If you’re in Miami and want an AFL franchise, apply for it…Hell, it’ll be the best franchise in the league…” (McLemore, 6). After thought, Joe Robbie, the Minnesota attorney and former minority leader in both the House and Senate of South Dakota, decided to give it a shot. His client quickly rejected Miami after learning of the time and money factors that would be involved. Robbie without delay began lobbying the eight owners of the AFL, especially Kansas City owner, AFL founder and chairman of the expansion committee, Lamar Hunt. He had to convince them, mainly Hunt, that Miami was a better choice than the cities currently under consideration—Atlanta, New Orleans and Chicago. And after nearly a month of visiting and meeting with the owners of the league, he knew an AFL franchise in Miami would do well, so he began the search for the $7.5 million investment in the franchise required by the AFL.
Robbie served on the board at St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee with founder Danny Thomas, and during casual conversation, Robbie happened to mentioned the Miami professional football opportunity to Thomas. Thomas jumped at the idea, reminding Robbie of how he tried to purchase the Chicago White Sox a few years earlier. “The AFL owners didn’t know Danny Thomas in person, but they knew no Hollywood name of his stature could afford to blow the image with a shabby business connection so public as a football team,” so Thomas told Robbie to put his name on the application (McLemore, 7). Thomas’ name became a breath of life into the ever-growing possibility of the new franchise being approved. The next priority on Robbie’s agenda was to find a playing venue.
During an entertaining of mayors of major American cities by Vice President Humphrey, a good friend of Joe Robbie, Humphrey happened to mention to then Miami Mayor Robert King High of Robbie’s obtaining of an AFL franchise for Miami and that he would need the Orange Bowl Stadium. High was a politician with a love for football and became instantly interested. High sent Robbie to see Miami City Manager Melvin Reese, who told Robbie that there should be no problem with the new franchise using the Orange Bowl. The team ended up renting the stadium cheaper per event than what it costs the University of Miami and the Orange Bowl Committee. Robbie had to fight to lower the 17½ percent rate the stadium required of the Dolphins because the AFL owners would never agree to such a high rate with a new franchise they wanted to maintain solvent. After six months of countless trips around the country and fifty-thousand dollars of his own money, Robbie along with Danny Thomas were granted the Miami rights in August 1965.
After being granted the rights of a professional football franchise in the American Football League, it needed a name. To name the team, Robbie and then head of public relations at the time, Julian Cole, appeared all over the media to raise interest in the project. Nearly twenty-thousand entries were submitted with over a thousand different names. Names that were considered included the Mariners, Marauders, Mustangs, Missiles, Moons, Sharks, and Suns. Over six-hundred entrants finally submitted the winning name, “Dolphins.” In order to pick a single winner, a contest between the entrants that won was engaged, and “Mrs. Robert Swanson of West Miami won lifetime passes to Dolphin games when her nickname entry successfully predicted the winner and score of the 1965 football game between Notre Dame and the University of Miami, a scoreless tie” (Wikipedia). On October 8, 1965, during the announcement of the team’s new name, Robbie said "The dolphin is one of the fastest and smartest creatures of the sea…Dolphins can attack and kill a shark or a whale. Sailors say bad luck will come to anyone who harms one of them" (Wikipedia). The name caught on very well and Robbie even hired television’s Flipper to perform “live and in color, gamboling in a tank at the east end of the Orange Bowl Stadium during games in the first couple of seasons” (McLemore, 46). Now that there was franchise, and it had a name, it needed players.
To get these players, Commissioner Joe Foss convinced Joe Thomas, a
seasoned talent scout for the NFL and Minnesota Vikings, the AFL was worth the move, so Thomas called Robbie. They made a deal and within two weeks, Thomas was in Miami. When Thomas became the first employee of the Vikings in 1960, he had absolutely no knowledge in the techniques of large-scale talent hunts, so he hit the road for three straight months, visiting ninety-two colleges and establishing a rapport with coaches that would last for years to come. When hired by Robbie, unlike when he was hired by the Vikings, Thomas was a proven hunter with dozens of operatives around the country and an incredible memory full of players’ names and details about every one; but the most valuable thing that he brought to Miami in 1965 was the knowledge of NFL methods and practices in the signing of draftees and free agents.
The NFL had “hand-holding” squads on nearly every college campus in the nation. The commissioner of the NFL would send assistant coaches and staff from every team to swarm the college stars as soon as the coaches would allow them. To get past this, AFL teams would find the stars accompanied by the “baby sitters” and get them alone and agreeable “to the sounds of green money being rubbed together” (McLemore, 23). Also at that time, a college star’s desire to play in the AFL or NFL equaled in importance his speed and physical charms, because it would be a huge mistake to waste a high draft pick on a player who wouldn’t sign with the team. “The ‘skill positions’ are what you’ve got to have first,” Thomas preaches, “The men who handle the ball, who throw and catch it—and those most responsible for stopping the other guys from throwing or catching it.” “This means the positions of quarterback, middle linebacker, running backs, and receivers, in that order or close to it, no matter what else applies” (McLemore, 18). Thomas would fill these ‘skill positions’ first in the AFL college draft of November 1965 and two months later with stock from other AFL teams.
Stocking, as it is called, is a supplemental draft used by the league to help equip a new expansion team with veteran talent so as to be competitive on week one. In stocking Miami, the AFL’s first expansion team, they made sure the rules made were fair, unlike the NFL’s first stocking draft a few years earlier. The AFL rules stated that AFL teams already in business could “freeze” twenty-three players, of which none could be picked by Miami; Thomas then could pick two players from each team. Afterwards, each team could freeze one more player each after assessing the situation in light of the Miami picks and its own necessities, before the Dolphins were allowed to choose two more players per team. Joe Thomas had an undertaking on his hands. And not only did he have to deal with warding off efforts of NFL teams to lure his newly drafted collegians, he had to prepare for the supplemental stocking draft, scheduled for mid-January, of which the majority of the team would be formed.
Thomas immediately began scouting the talent of the eight other AFL teams. He flew to New York to review game films made available by the office of the commissioner from the 1965 season. Thomas watched the films fourteen hours a day for seven days straight, then flew back to Miami with a better understanding of the talent available around the league. It was not until five days before the stocking draft that Thomas received the “freeze” list from the league…decisions had to be made very quickly.
Some of the decisions made in the stocking draft by Thomas proved to be very profitable for years to come. Others just didn’t. They would wake up and play their hearts out for contests against their former teams that didn’t place them on their freeze lists, even if they were severely injured, but wouldn’t maintain that fight throughout the season. “It became a matter of blending experienced veterans, many of whom were approaching the sunset of their careers, with fresh blood already tempered somewhat by a season or two or three in AFL competition” (McLemore, 31). The first Dolphins were as ordinary a team as one can imagine.
“They were good enough to be competitive, but not good enough to threaten any of the big boys more often than once a month,” and they still needed a coach (McLemore, 42). Robbie received calls from coaches looking for work from the day he was named manager of the new franchise. He even spoke a few times with Cleveland’s legendary Paul Brown. Brown wanted complete control of football operations, including player personnel, and was expensive; and at the time, Brown was not worth it to Robbie After Robbie’s first choice and personal favorite, Notre Dame legendary head coach Ara Parseghian, turned him down, Robbie offered the job to former Detroit Lions head coach George Wilson. Wilson was a defensive expert who still let his quarterback throw the ball and won the National Football League Championship in 1957 with Detroit when the game might have attained its pinnacle in quality. And after spending substantial time in Florida between seasons, Wilson was elated with the opportunity to move to Miami. As were Miami fans, since Wilson’s Lions teams played in the Orange Bowl’s Pro Playoff Bowl game three consecutive seasons and won all three times. When he took the helm at head coach in Miami, he inherited the competitive but not so good players and it was up to him to make the Dolphins’ structure presentable. Wilson began hiring assistants immediately and before he knew it, preseason camp was upon him. The Miami Dolphins’ first preseason camp became the “milepost from which all progress by the Dolphins—on the field and off—must be measured for all time to come” (McLemore, 48).
Of the dozen or more sites surveyed by Robbie and the Dolphins within the Miami area, they thought they found a home at St. Andrews Episcopal just south of Boca Raton, but an offer came through that would trump the deal, at least for the time being. In those days, a normal preseason camp would cost generally about thirty-five thousand dollars, probably closer to fifty-thousand. The deal offered to Robbie by a group of St. Petersburg men with good intentions wouldn’t cost him a dime. They offered to fully fund the preseason camp, the only stipulation was the Dolphins would work at St. Petersburg Beach. Robbie made a business decision and accepted the offer.
A carpet of grass had lain over the beach sand with a deceptive firm look. In July 1966, after the cleats of eighty-four players dug deep into the green grass floating above the sand below, the so-called ‘field’ “turned to the finest of beach sand, mixed with chunks of grass roots, coral rock, and slivers of seashells, with an occasional few square yards of sand spurs to break the monotony” (McLemore, 48). It was a disaster and everyone knew it. And with the field conditions being atrocious, the off-field conditions weren’t any better.
The motel down the road being used as the players’ lodging would also serve as their dressing room, equipment storage, dining room, and training facility—all in the players’ rooms. The rooms quickly developed a wretched odor. The food served to the professional football team consisted of soup and sandwiches. The team’s head trainer at the time, Bob Lundy, and helpers used three adjoining motel rooms as a makeshift training facility, seeing to everything from deep abrasions to ankle wraps. The situation continued to worsen and Lundy soon had to educate himself about special infections that arise from cuts by coral rock and seashells. Lundy described it as “a strange and rather terrifying experience” (McLemore, 50). Although the situation certainly was cause for aggravation, Coach Wilson kept it together, keeping a smile on his face.
While the preseason camp from hell was taking place, Joe Robbie was in Minneapolis arranging money matters with bankers and ends up stuck due to a nationwide airline strike, making the easy move of the players in or out of St. Petersburg impossible. At the same time, Joe Thomas is busting his hump working on free agents and taking business calls with Robbie stuck out of town. Coach Wilson later said he “couldn’t spend a hundred dollars without thinking it out very, very carefully…It wasn’t that Robbie was trying to hold up on expenses, it was just that there wasn’t any money for him to send us for the daily operation” (McLemore, 49-50). As respectable men did in those days, Coach Wilson, Joe Thomas and Bob Lundy got by as well as they could without constantly nagging Robbie, and never lost their cool in public.
When Robbie finally arrived in St. Petersburg, he moved his players 125 miles southeast, the weekend of the first exhibition game versus San Diego, back to his original thought—St. Andrews School in Boca Raton. It became the Dolphins’ preseason home for the next three summers, ending the misery of St. Petersburg Beach, and leaving a phrase that “can be said truly and forever by all Dolphins and their fans: ‘Well…at least this ain’t as bad as St. Petersburg’” (McLemore, 51).
Nothing since has been nearly as bad, and the greats that made it all work seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Joe Robbie came to Miami “with the notion of bringing together a group of people he didn’t know, to buy a football team that didn’t exist, with money that wasn’t there” (McLemore, 4). He took on a mission with nothing but loose ends, and made connections; finding the financial help of Hollywood television star Danny Thomas; convincing bankers and investors that his idea was good as gold; and finding the right leaders to make his team a success! And without Joe Robbie, Danny Thomas, Joe Thomas and all of Robbie’s powerful friends, Florida and the Miami Dolphins would not be as they are today.
I found a paper I wrote for a college english class three years ago while digging through my files and thought it would be nice to share. A lot of fans have no idea how the Dolphins started, who worked hard as hell (Joe Robbie, et. al.) to get the franchise started or what the early beginnings were like. This paper tells the history from the very first thought of an expansion franchise up until right before our beloved Shula took the helm. After rereading it myself, it tells the very true story that is intriguing, interesting and reminds us all of our Dolphins' quite humble beginnings. Enjoy! :up:
By: Joe Pizzella (with works cited)
The winningest head coach in NFL history, Don Shula, once said “Usually when you get a group of athletes together, they want to win. If you can guide them along the right paths, you can make winning that much easier for them. You have more friends when you’re a winner than when you’re a loser” (McLemore, 133-134). The Miami Dolphins know about winning, with the highest winning percentage of any team in any professional sport! In addition, the Dolphins are the only NFL franchise with a team (1972) that has gone undefeated in the regular season and playoffs, resulting in a 17-0 undefeated season and a Super Bowl championship. Everyone knows of the Dolphins’ great players, teams and games, but what about the greats it took to get the franchise up and running? The forgotten early history and formation of the Miami Dolphins in 1965 and 1966 securely rooted the professional football franchise for a bright future in southern Florida.
Although the Miami Dolphins are the first successful professional football team to come out of Miami, they are not the first. And in order to fully appreciate the greatness that is the Miami Dolphins, one must understand what came before. “In a major example of overreaction by those seeking normalcy and peacetime happiness in 1946 immediately following World War II, the All-American Conference was born” (McLemore, x). The formation of the conference meant the development of teams like the San Francisco Forty-Niners, Los Angeles Dons, Cleveland Browns, and the lonely Miami Seahawks. The Seahawks would go on to lose their first five games, though it was kept out of the public eye; two of the games were exhibitions and the first three regular games were on the road. The morning of their first home game, a hurricane hit, putting the field at the Orange Bowl underwater. This disaster and the thunderstorms that roared during the next 5 games at home straight on top of the Seahawks were the beginning of the end for the new football club. The Seahawks ended up winning only two games in the season, and never drew more than 7,534 fans at home. “To put it generously, the Seahawks were a disaster” (McLemore, xi). Nineteen years following the blunder of the Seahawks, a group headed by one man would bid for a Miami franchise in the American Football League.
A Minnesota attorney with very little financial means did the impossible when he contacted AFL commissioner Joe Foss, a former classmate at the University of South Dakota, about a client's interest in an American Football League franchise for Philadelphia. Founded in 1960 by Lamar Hunt, the American Football League was a new and up and coming professional football league that drew crowds and fans for its competitiveness; and has become a heavy competitor of the National Football League. Foss immediately rejected Philadelphia “because there is litigation over whether or not the National Football League has exclusive right to use the stadium” but then suggested Miami, saying “If you’re in Miami and want an AFL franchise, apply for it…Hell, it’ll be the best franchise in the league…” (McLemore, 6). After thought, Joe Robbie, the Minnesota attorney and former minority leader in both the House and Senate of South Dakota, decided to give it a shot. His client quickly rejected Miami after learning of the time and money factors that would be involved. Robbie without delay began lobbying the eight owners of the AFL, especially Kansas City owner, AFL founder and chairman of the expansion committee, Lamar Hunt. He had to convince them, mainly Hunt, that Miami was a better choice than the cities currently under consideration—Atlanta, New Orleans and Chicago. And after nearly a month of visiting and meeting with the owners of the league, he knew an AFL franchise in Miami would do well, so he began the search for the $7.5 million investment in the franchise required by the AFL.
Robbie served on the board at St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee with founder Danny Thomas, and during casual conversation, Robbie happened to mentioned the Miami professional football opportunity to Thomas. Thomas jumped at the idea, reminding Robbie of how he tried to purchase the Chicago White Sox a few years earlier. “The AFL owners didn’t know Danny Thomas in person, but they knew no Hollywood name of his stature could afford to blow the image with a shabby business connection so public as a football team,” so Thomas told Robbie to put his name on the application (McLemore, 7). Thomas’ name became a breath of life into the ever-growing possibility of the new franchise being approved. The next priority on Robbie’s agenda was to find a playing venue.
During an entertaining of mayors of major American cities by Vice President Humphrey, a good friend of Joe Robbie, Humphrey happened to mention to then Miami Mayor Robert King High of Robbie’s obtaining of an AFL franchise for Miami and that he would need the Orange Bowl Stadium. High was a politician with a love for football and became instantly interested. High sent Robbie to see Miami City Manager Melvin Reese, who told Robbie that there should be no problem with the new franchise using the Orange Bowl. The team ended up renting the stadium cheaper per event than what it costs the University of Miami and the Orange Bowl Committee. Robbie had to fight to lower the 17½ percent rate the stadium required of the Dolphins because the AFL owners would never agree to such a high rate with a new franchise they wanted to maintain solvent. After six months of countless trips around the country and fifty-thousand dollars of his own money, Robbie along with Danny Thomas were granted the Miami rights in August 1965.
After being granted the rights of a professional football franchise in the American Football League, it needed a name. To name the team, Robbie and then head of public relations at the time, Julian Cole, appeared all over the media to raise interest in the project. Nearly twenty-thousand entries were submitted with over a thousand different names. Names that were considered included the Mariners, Marauders, Mustangs, Missiles, Moons, Sharks, and Suns. Over six-hundred entrants finally submitted the winning name, “Dolphins.” In order to pick a single winner, a contest between the entrants that won was engaged, and “Mrs. Robert Swanson of West Miami won lifetime passes to Dolphin games when her nickname entry successfully predicted the winner and score of the 1965 football game between Notre Dame and the University of Miami, a scoreless tie” (Wikipedia). On October 8, 1965, during the announcement of the team’s new name, Robbie said "The dolphin is one of the fastest and smartest creatures of the sea…Dolphins can attack and kill a shark or a whale. Sailors say bad luck will come to anyone who harms one of them" (Wikipedia). The name caught on very well and Robbie even hired television’s Flipper to perform “live and in color, gamboling in a tank at the east end of the Orange Bowl Stadium during games in the first couple of seasons” (McLemore, 46). Now that there was franchise, and it had a name, it needed players.
To get these players, Commissioner Joe Foss convinced Joe Thomas, a
seasoned talent scout for the NFL and Minnesota Vikings, the AFL was worth the move, so Thomas called Robbie. They made a deal and within two weeks, Thomas was in Miami. When Thomas became the first employee of the Vikings in 1960, he had absolutely no knowledge in the techniques of large-scale talent hunts, so he hit the road for three straight months, visiting ninety-two colleges and establishing a rapport with coaches that would last for years to come. When hired by Robbie, unlike when he was hired by the Vikings, Thomas was a proven hunter with dozens of operatives around the country and an incredible memory full of players’ names and details about every one; but the most valuable thing that he brought to Miami in 1965 was the knowledge of NFL methods and practices in the signing of draftees and free agents.
The NFL had “hand-holding” squads on nearly every college campus in the nation. The commissioner of the NFL would send assistant coaches and staff from every team to swarm the college stars as soon as the coaches would allow them. To get past this, AFL teams would find the stars accompanied by the “baby sitters” and get them alone and agreeable “to the sounds of green money being rubbed together” (McLemore, 23). Also at that time, a college star’s desire to play in the AFL or NFL equaled in importance his speed and physical charms, because it would be a huge mistake to waste a high draft pick on a player who wouldn’t sign with the team. “The ‘skill positions’ are what you’ve got to have first,” Thomas preaches, “The men who handle the ball, who throw and catch it—and those most responsible for stopping the other guys from throwing or catching it.” “This means the positions of quarterback, middle linebacker, running backs, and receivers, in that order or close to it, no matter what else applies” (McLemore, 18). Thomas would fill these ‘skill positions’ first in the AFL college draft of November 1965 and two months later with stock from other AFL teams.
Stocking, as it is called, is a supplemental draft used by the league to help equip a new expansion team with veteran talent so as to be competitive on week one. In stocking Miami, the AFL’s first expansion team, they made sure the rules made were fair, unlike the NFL’s first stocking draft a few years earlier. The AFL rules stated that AFL teams already in business could “freeze” twenty-three players, of which none could be picked by Miami; Thomas then could pick two players from each team. Afterwards, each team could freeze one more player each after assessing the situation in light of the Miami picks and its own necessities, before the Dolphins were allowed to choose two more players per team. Joe Thomas had an undertaking on his hands. And not only did he have to deal with warding off efforts of NFL teams to lure his newly drafted collegians, he had to prepare for the supplemental stocking draft, scheduled for mid-January, of which the majority of the team would be formed.
Thomas immediately began scouting the talent of the eight other AFL teams. He flew to New York to review game films made available by the office of the commissioner from the 1965 season. Thomas watched the films fourteen hours a day for seven days straight, then flew back to Miami with a better understanding of the talent available around the league. It was not until five days before the stocking draft that Thomas received the “freeze” list from the league…decisions had to be made very quickly.
Some of the decisions made in the stocking draft by Thomas proved to be very profitable for years to come. Others just didn’t. They would wake up and play their hearts out for contests against their former teams that didn’t place them on their freeze lists, even if they were severely injured, but wouldn’t maintain that fight throughout the season. “It became a matter of blending experienced veterans, many of whom were approaching the sunset of their careers, with fresh blood already tempered somewhat by a season or two or three in AFL competition” (McLemore, 31). The first Dolphins were as ordinary a team as one can imagine.
“They were good enough to be competitive, but not good enough to threaten any of the big boys more often than once a month,” and they still needed a coach (McLemore, 42). Robbie received calls from coaches looking for work from the day he was named manager of the new franchise. He even spoke a few times with Cleveland’s legendary Paul Brown. Brown wanted complete control of football operations, including player personnel, and was expensive; and at the time, Brown was not worth it to Robbie After Robbie’s first choice and personal favorite, Notre Dame legendary head coach Ara Parseghian, turned him down, Robbie offered the job to former Detroit Lions head coach George Wilson. Wilson was a defensive expert who still let his quarterback throw the ball and won the National Football League Championship in 1957 with Detroit when the game might have attained its pinnacle in quality. And after spending substantial time in Florida between seasons, Wilson was elated with the opportunity to move to Miami. As were Miami fans, since Wilson’s Lions teams played in the Orange Bowl’s Pro Playoff Bowl game three consecutive seasons and won all three times. When he took the helm at head coach in Miami, he inherited the competitive but not so good players and it was up to him to make the Dolphins’ structure presentable. Wilson began hiring assistants immediately and before he knew it, preseason camp was upon him. The Miami Dolphins’ first preseason camp became the “milepost from which all progress by the Dolphins—on the field and off—must be measured for all time to come” (McLemore, 48).
Of the dozen or more sites surveyed by Robbie and the Dolphins within the Miami area, they thought they found a home at St. Andrews Episcopal just south of Boca Raton, but an offer came through that would trump the deal, at least for the time being. In those days, a normal preseason camp would cost generally about thirty-five thousand dollars, probably closer to fifty-thousand. The deal offered to Robbie by a group of St. Petersburg men with good intentions wouldn’t cost him a dime. They offered to fully fund the preseason camp, the only stipulation was the Dolphins would work at St. Petersburg Beach. Robbie made a business decision and accepted the offer.
A carpet of grass had lain over the beach sand with a deceptive firm look. In July 1966, after the cleats of eighty-four players dug deep into the green grass floating above the sand below, the so-called ‘field’ “turned to the finest of beach sand, mixed with chunks of grass roots, coral rock, and slivers of seashells, with an occasional few square yards of sand spurs to break the monotony” (McLemore, 48). It was a disaster and everyone knew it. And with the field conditions being atrocious, the off-field conditions weren’t any better.
The motel down the road being used as the players’ lodging would also serve as their dressing room, equipment storage, dining room, and training facility—all in the players’ rooms. The rooms quickly developed a wretched odor. The food served to the professional football team consisted of soup and sandwiches. The team’s head trainer at the time, Bob Lundy, and helpers used three adjoining motel rooms as a makeshift training facility, seeing to everything from deep abrasions to ankle wraps. The situation continued to worsen and Lundy soon had to educate himself about special infections that arise from cuts by coral rock and seashells. Lundy described it as “a strange and rather terrifying experience” (McLemore, 50). Although the situation certainly was cause for aggravation, Coach Wilson kept it together, keeping a smile on his face.
While the preseason camp from hell was taking place, Joe Robbie was in Minneapolis arranging money matters with bankers and ends up stuck due to a nationwide airline strike, making the easy move of the players in or out of St. Petersburg impossible. At the same time, Joe Thomas is busting his hump working on free agents and taking business calls with Robbie stuck out of town. Coach Wilson later said he “couldn’t spend a hundred dollars without thinking it out very, very carefully…It wasn’t that Robbie was trying to hold up on expenses, it was just that there wasn’t any money for him to send us for the daily operation” (McLemore, 49-50). As respectable men did in those days, Coach Wilson, Joe Thomas and Bob Lundy got by as well as they could without constantly nagging Robbie, and never lost their cool in public.
When Robbie finally arrived in St. Petersburg, he moved his players 125 miles southeast, the weekend of the first exhibition game versus San Diego, back to his original thought—St. Andrews School in Boca Raton. It became the Dolphins’ preseason home for the next three summers, ending the misery of St. Petersburg Beach, and leaving a phrase that “can be said truly and forever by all Dolphins and their fans: ‘Well…at least this ain’t as bad as St. Petersburg’” (McLemore, 51).
Nothing since has been nearly as bad, and the greats that made it all work seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Joe Robbie came to Miami “with the notion of bringing together a group of people he didn’t know, to buy a football team that didn’t exist, with money that wasn’t there” (McLemore, 4). He took on a mission with nothing but loose ends, and made connections; finding the financial help of Hollywood television star Danny Thomas; convincing bankers and investors that his idea was good as gold; and finding the right leaders to make his team a success! And without Joe Robbie, Danny Thomas, Joe Thomas and all of Robbie’s powerful friends, Florida and the Miami Dolphins would not be as they are today.
