Alex Trevelyan
Active Roster
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2011
- Messages
- 467
- Reaction score
- 370
The sorry spectacle we are now witnessing may be the nadir as far as futility is concerned, but the Miami Dolphins have, as a franchise, been little better than average for a very, very long time. I read a lot of people pining for the days of Don Shula and the Robbie family, but the truth is this franchise began to decline in the mid-eighties, under the Robbies and Shula. Dan Marino kept this organization competitive and by competitive I mean he gave the team respectability during the season, but that never translated into playoff success. Marino preserved Shula's legacy in many respects. Shula's actions as GM were so egregiously awful, so indefensible, that without Marino top-10 draft picks would have been routine.
Shula the general manager undermined Shula the head coach and he was too stubborn and too arrogant to admit it. The Robbies were too timid and too beholden to the mythology of Shula to do anything about it. Later when Huizenga bought the team, he continued the star-struck adulation, only at that point it wasn't just Shula, it was Marino that had attained god-like status. So what did Huizenga do? He gave Shula carte blanche to make one last desperate push to win it all and when that blew up in his face, as we all knew it would, it blew out the team's salary cap handicapping Jimmy Johnson when he did take over the franchise. Then Huizenga handcuffed Johnson further by forbidding him from trading Marino, so instead of reaping a boatload of draft picks for Marino from a contender desperate for a superstar quarterback, Johnson was stuck with a quarterback that never really fit his blueprint. Preserving icons were more important for the Robbie family and Huizenga then doing what was right for the team.
Then of course Huizenga kept Johnson around a year longer than he should have. Talked the man out of a retiring when his heart wasn't in it anymore. Then made the inexplicable decision to hire Wannstadt as the HC in waiting, going so far as to give Wannstadt, a man with no leverage and no reputation for anything other than incompetence, total control over football operations. I canceled my season tickets after year 2 of the Wannstadt disaster and I will never renew them. Then we had the Saban debacle. Huizenga, star-****er in chief, couldn't resist the temptation of making the big hire, so his jet idled on the tarmac in Baton Rouge, reportedly for nearly 8-hours, as Saban tortured himself over whether or not to take the job. Apparently it never occurred to Huizenga that you can talk a man into something, but if his heart isn't in it, he'll be completely ineffective. The Saban regime yielded to the Cam Cameron/Randy Mueller tenure, perhaps one of the most inept in NFL history, which in turn yielded to Huizenga's coup de grace for the once-mighty Dolphins' franchise--the hiring of Bill Parcells.
Once again, Huizenga sought out the splashy hire, demonstrating once again, such egregiously bad judgment you are left to wonder how he accumulated his stupendous wealth. Parcells was a totem at that point in his career, an expensive relic who hadn't won anything since Scott Norwood went wide right, in fact, Parcells hadn't done anything at all without Belichick on his staff. Two Super Bowl victories with the Giants, a conference championship with the Pats; then a mere conference championship appearance with the Jets, then not even that with the Cowboys. Everyone could see the line of diminishing returns except Huizenga. Parcells stole money, hired a bunch of bums that he could control, had the team succeeded big, Parcells would have showed his face and proclaimed his own genius. If the experiment failed he could slip out the backdoor and blame would fall on Ireland and Sparano and that's what happened. Enter Ross.
Instead of immediately cleaning house, getting rid of everyone involved with Parcells, he pulled a Huizenga and tried to reassure Parcells and make him feel good, when he should have dispassionately evaluated the state of the franchise and pulled the plug. Both Ireland and Sparano should have been fired 2-years ago. There are successful former Dolphins' front office people all over the league and I have never heard that Ross so much as put in a call to any of them, even though 2 of them, Kevin Colbert and Tom Heckert, are considered 2 of the best personnel men in the NFL. Now we have an owner who might conceivably be worse than Huizenga, who for all of his poor judgment, was known to crawl in a hole somewhere and let his football people do their job. Is that what Ross is doing? It doesn't appear so. He seems intimately involved in things that perhaps he shouldn't be involved in. An organization reflects its ownership. It's one of the truest maxims in sports.
There was a reason the LA Clippers were historically bad in the NBA. There was a reason organizations like the Bucs, Falcons, Cards, Lions and Saints were epically bad. They had horrible owners. Is it any coincidence that the Bucs and Falcons improved measurably after they were sold? Or that the Cards and Lions saw their fortunes change to a high degree after patriarchs of those franchises went out to pasture and the younger sons took over? People need to stop apologizing for the franchise. It hasn't been a great franchise since the mid-80s. This ineptitude is not new. It transcends 3 ownership groups and 6 head coaches and counting. Ross has a very real problem on his hands. He has a sizeable investment that no longer has any cache. As a former season ticket owner I can tell you that there is more to this than the competitive aspect, there is a financial aspect to it. Before people would come to the games with that "hope springs eternal" thing. Fans were older and they remembered the glory days. They were there when the Fins ripped the undefeated Bears on MNF. They remember Marino breaking all the single-season records. They remember being one tipped ball in the end zone away from winning Super Bowl 17.
They remembered the epic in the Orange Bowl with the Chargers, the greatest game ever played and they kept coming back for that reason.
Now a generation and a half has gone by and the only thing they know of are embarrassments like 62-7 in the playoffs, or Cam Cameron, or passing on Drew Brees twice. I'm afraid to say that at this point, no one cares. Once you stop going to the games you're not likely to come back. There is no hole in one's life once you turn the NFL off. In fact, it's been my experience that once the NFL goes out of your life in any meaningful way you usually become a more interesting person. I no longer cry when the Dolphins lose. Did Ross or Huizenga ever cry? Of course not, win or lose, they make millions, fly private and drown their sorrows in Krug.
Shula the general manager undermined Shula the head coach and he was too stubborn and too arrogant to admit it. The Robbies were too timid and too beholden to the mythology of Shula to do anything about it. Later when Huizenga bought the team, he continued the star-struck adulation, only at that point it wasn't just Shula, it was Marino that had attained god-like status. So what did Huizenga do? He gave Shula carte blanche to make one last desperate push to win it all and when that blew up in his face, as we all knew it would, it blew out the team's salary cap handicapping Jimmy Johnson when he did take over the franchise. Then Huizenga handcuffed Johnson further by forbidding him from trading Marino, so instead of reaping a boatload of draft picks for Marino from a contender desperate for a superstar quarterback, Johnson was stuck with a quarterback that never really fit his blueprint. Preserving icons were more important for the Robbie family and Huizenga then doing what was right for the team.
Then of course Huizenga kept Johnson around a year longer than he should have. Talked the man out of a retiring when his heart wasn't in it anymore. Then made the inexplicable decision to hire Wannstadt as the HC in waiting, going so far as to give Wannstadt, a man with no leverage and no reputation for anything other than incompetence, total control over football operations. I canceled my season tickets after year 2 of the Wannstadt disaster and I will never renew them. Then we had the Saban debacle. Huizenga, star-****er in chief, couldn't resist the temptation of making the big hire, so his jet idled on the tarmac in Baton Rouge, reportedly for nearly 8-hours, as Saban tortured himself over whether or not to take the job. Apparently it never occurred to Huizenga that you can talk a man into something, but if his heart isn't in it, he'll be completely ineffective. The Saban regime yielded to the Cam Cameron/Randy Mueller tenure, perhaps one of the most inept in NFL history, which in turn yielded to Huizenga's coup de grace for the once-mighty Dolphins' franchise--the hiring of Bill Parcells.
Once again, Huizenga sought out the splashy hire, demonstrating once again, such egregiously bad judgment you are left to wonder how he accumulated his stupendous wealth. Parcells was a totem at that point in his career, an expensive relic who hadn't won anything since Scott Norwood went wide right, in fact, Parcells hadn't done anything at all without Belichick on his staff. Two Super Bowl victories with the Giants, a conference championship with the Pats; then a mere conference championship appearance with the Jets, then not even that with the Cowboys. Everyone could see the line of diminishing returns except Huizenga. Parcells stole money, hired a bunch of bums that he could control, had the team succeeded big, Parcells would have showed his face and proclaimed his own genius. If the experiment failed he could slip out the backdoor and blame would fall on Ireland and Sparano and that's what happened. Enter Ross.
Instead of immediately cleaning house, getting rid of everyone involved with Parcells, he pulled a Huizenga and tried to reassure Parcells and make him feel good, when he should have dispassionately evaluated the state of the franchise and pulled the plug. Both Ireland and Sparano should have been fired 2-years ago. There are successful former Dolphins' front office people all over the league and I have never heard that Ross so much as put in a call to any of them, even though 2 of them, Kevin Colbert and Tom Heckert, are considered 2 of the best personnel men in the NFL. Now we have an owner who might conceivably be worse than Huizenga, who for all of his poor judgment, was known to crawl in a hole somewhere and let his football people do their job. Is that what Ross is doing? It doesn't appear so. He seems intimately involved in things that perhaps he shouldn't be involved in. An organization reflects its ownership. It's one of the truest maxims in sports.
There was a reason the LA Clippers were historically bad in the NBA. There was a reason organizations like the Bucs, Falcons, Cards, Lions and Saints were epically bad. They had horrible owners. Is it any coincidence that the Bucs and Falcons improved measurably after they were sold? Or that the Cards and Lions saw their fortunes change to a high degree after patriarchs of those franchises went out to pasture and the younger sons took over? People need to stop apologizing for the franchise. It hasn't been a great franchise since the mid-80s. This ineptitude is not new. It transcends 3 ownership groups and 6 head coaches and counting. Ross has a very real problem on his hands. He has a sizeable investment that no longer has any cache. As a former season ticket owner I can tell you that there is more to this than the competitive aspect, there is a financial aspect to it. Before people would come to the games with that "hope springs eternal" thing. Fans were older and they remembered the glory days. They were there when the Fins ripped the undefeated Bears on MNF. They remember Marino breaking all the single-season records. They remember being one tipped ball in the end zone away from winning Super Bowl 17.
They remembered the epic in the Orange Bowl with the Chargers, the greatest game ever played and they kept coming back for that reason.
Now a generation and a half has gone by and the only thing they know of are embarrassments like 62-7 in the playoffs, or Cam Cameron, or passing on Drew Brees twice. I'm afraid to say that at this point, no one cares. Once you stop going to the games you're not likely to come back. There is no hole in one's life once you turn the NFL off. In fact, it's been my experience that once the NFL goes out of your life in any meaningful way you usually become a more interesting person. I no longer cry when the Dolphins lose. Did Ross or Huizenga ever cry? Of course not, win or lose, they make millions, fly private and drown their sorrows in Krug.
