Quote of the Day (Mike Ditka, on God, Human Anatomy, and Sports)

“If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us arms.”—National Football League Hall of Fame player, coach, commercial pitchman, and Chicago hero Mike Ditka (1939-2026), quoted by Jason Gay, “Mike Ditka: Da Farewell to Da Coach,” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 10-11, 2026

(The image accompanying this post, of Ditka catching a pass as an end for the University of Pittsburgh football team in 1960, was originally printed in The Owl, the 1961 student yearbook of the University of Pittsburgh.)

This Day in Football History (Dolphins Vanquish Vikings in Super Bowl VIII)

Jan. 13, 1974—Taking its cue from fullback Larry Csonka (pictured), the Miami Dolphins ran roughshod over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl VIII.

The 24-7 final score was not remotely indicative of just how thoroughly Miami dominated Minnesota, which had gone 12-2 in the regular season (and had given the Dolphins one of their most hotly contested victories early in 1972, in a bruising 16-14 come-from-behind win).

Vikings head coach Bud Grant had made front-page news in the run-up to the game with his complaint about sparrows in the locker-room shower at Houston’s Rice Stadium.

When it was all over, he had two more persistent headaches: how the Dolphins’ offense had pushed around his legendary “Purple People Eaters” defense, and how Miami’s “No Name Defense” had, in the words of Miami Herald sports columnist Edwin Pope, “pounded Minnesota's runners into such terror that the Vikings did not get a first down rushing for an astounding 44 minutes and 17 seconds.”

Among head coach Don Shula’s 347 career triumphs, few could have been sweeter than his Super Bowl victory at Rice Stadium.

His Super Bowl win the year before may have capped an undefeated season and at least temporarily quieted complaints that the veteran coach couldn’t win The Big One.

But this one proved that the earlier success was no fluke. It also put Shula among the elite circle of coaches who have won two consecutive Super Bowls, along with Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Jimmy Johnson, Mike Shanahan, and Bill Belichick—giving the Dolphin coach a fair claim to have forged the closest thing that the National Football League has to a dynasty.

Dolphins dominate

Over the years, the surviving members of Dolphins have been justly proud of their undefeated 1972 season, particularly when the New England Patriots achieved a perfect 17-0 season in 2007 before falling to the New York Giants in Super Bowl LXII.

But, even though the Dolphins’ 12-2 record-season record in 1973 might suggest a slight falloff from their prior magical year, some observers believed that the team was stronger than the undefeated squad.

Unlike the year before, with the Dolphins’ 14-7 win over the Washington Redskins (an outcome suddenly threatened a few minutes before the end when placekicker Garo Yepremian’s inept pass on a broken play led to a Redskin touchdown), the Dolphins never loosened their choke hold over their opponents. Their advantage in time of possession (33:45 versus 26:15) tells only part of the tale.

On both sides of the ball, the Dolphins set the pace early, capitalizing on the Vikings’ inability to get momentum. Miami scored twice in the first quarter on touchdowns by Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick, a rushing pair that, like the Green Bay Packers’ Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung (“Thunder and Lightning”), had earned their own nicknames—in this case, the more colorful (and given their close friendship, more appropriate) catchphrase, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

A Yepremian field goal in the second quarter put Shula’s squad up 17-0 by halftime.

On the other side of the ball, the “No Name Defense” was throttling the Vikings. The major hope that Minnesota had to get within striking distance was crushed when, with fourth and one with a minute left in the half, Miami middle linebacker Nick Buoniconti knocked the ball loose from Viking running back Oscar Reed and the Dolphins’ Jake Scott recovered (one of two fumble recoveries that the free safety had that day).

Another, two-yard touchdown run by Csonka in the third quarter only added to the Vikings’ woes.

Head On, the title of Csonka’s 2020 memoir, tells you most but not all of what you need to know about the running back’s take-no-prisoners rushing style.

First, his initial pattern of running was even more physically confrontational—with more potential for long-term physical injury—before Shula taught him how to lead with his forearm rather than his head.

Second, “head on” doesn’t convey the sheer futility of trying to tackle Csonka. You’d have a better chance of bringing down a Sherman tank.

The Vikings’ plight in Houston, as he rumbled on 33 carries for 145 yards for a Super Bowl MVP designation, was best expressed by linebacker Jeff Siemon:

“It's not the collision that gets you. It's what happens after you tackle him. His legs are just so strong he keeps moving. He carries you. He's an immovable weight.”

The Vikings’ Fran Tarkenton could take only meager satisfaction in becoming the first quarterback to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl. The score came in the fourth quarter with his team down 24-0. With the running game going nowhere, he was under continual pressure all day, dumping off short passes to tight ends and running backs who were immediately surrounded and stopped by a sea of green uniforms.

My rooting interest in the Dolphins

You might wonder how I became interested in this game and this team.

Well, in the early 1970s, when I started watching pro football on a regular basis, the Green Bay Packers had fallen off the high standard set under Vince Lombardi. My area’s New York Giants were even worse, still less than halfway through a 17-year absence from the playoffs. I abominated their divisional rivals, the Dallas Cowboys.

I ended up gravitating to the up-and-coming Dolphins. Their thrilling double-overtime victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1971 Championship game sealed the deal for me.  Their loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl VI only made me pull all the harder for them to surmount their last hurdle to glory.

I was glad beyond measure when the Dolphins break through against the Redskins, then again against the Vikings. Great times seemed to stretch far into the future.

The Dolphins didn’t have long to enjoy their victory. Less than a month later, Csonka, Kiick, and receiver Paul Warfield announced that they would be jumping to the upstart World Football League for the 1975 season.

That left only one more season when quarterback Bob Griese could count on his chief rushing and receiving threats. The Dolphins’ loss in the divisional playoffs to the Oakland Raiders, on Dec. 31, 1974—the famous “Sea of Hands” game in which Clarence Davis snared a Ken Stabler TD pass in the final seconds—was dismaying and, in terms of their period of dominance, final.

Changes since Super Bowl VIII

Younger readers who come across this post may have no idea what pro football was like a half century ago, while older ones might have forgotten some details. I can tell you that the Super Bowl was far different then from now, both in how it was played and how it was viewed by a mass audience.

Even by 2004, the ambiance of the “ultimate game” as we know it now was set. So here are the major contrasts between Super Bowl VIII and Super Bowl XXXVIII. (God, save me from this plague of Roman numerals!):

*Passing is a more central part of the game. Testifying to the respect in which he was held across the league, Griese was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but in Super Bowl VIII he attempted only seven passes, completing all but one. Bill Walsh’s implementation of the “West Coast offense” with the San Francisco 49ers and NFL rules protecting quarters gave passers more room to operate—and, in parallel fashion, decreased the importance of running backs. The last back to be named Super Bowl MVP was the Denver Broncos’ Terrell Davis, back in January 1998.

*Players grew in size. The biggest man on the Dolphins’ offensive line, Hall of Famer Larry Little, weighed 265 pounds. Thirty years later, the heaviest offensive lineman for the Patriots, Wilbert Brown, tipped the scales at 320 pounds.

*The game occurs later in the year. With 17 regular-season games starting in 2003 versus 14 in 1973, along with an additional round in the playoffs, the season is longer. The 2004 Super Bowl, featuring the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers, was the first to take place in February. The additional games increase the possibility of injuries that can affect the outcome.

*The game occurs later in the day. Kickoff time for Super Bowl VIII was 3:30 pm ET; 30 years later, it was 6:25.

*The game has become a de facto secular national holiday. Over time, the NFL has realized that, to increase viewership, the inherent drama of the game would not be enough, so it added entertainment elements. The halftime entertainment at Super Bowl VIII, "A Musical America," featured the University of Texas band, along with Miss Texas Judy Mallett. In contrast, the entertainers at Super Bowl XXXVIII were P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock, and the controversial pair that ended up giving rise to the phrase “wardrobe malfunction,” Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. Even ads from America’s biggest companies made the game “must-see TV” for more casual football fans, and the average cost of these 30-second commercials skyrocketed, from $103,500 in 1974 to $2.3 million in 2004.

There is one other major difference in football—certainly not apparent in 1973, and only starting to surface in 2003: the danger that players faced with concussions. The NFL first released the results of a five-year study on mild traumatic brain injuries in October 2003.

It was already too late for several members of the 1974 Super Bowl champions. Kiick, Scott, Buoniconti, Bob Kuechenberg, Bill Stanfill, and Earl Morrall were identified as having C.T.E. (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). 

These cases, as well as so many others from the era when I watched football avidly week to week, have made me reevaluate how I think about the sport and its ultimate game.

In reading Homer’s Odyssey in college, I don’t think that I properly appreciated the traumas experienced by Odysseus and his comrades in arms as they made their way home after the greatest battle of their lives. 

Now, thinking of them in relation to the Dolphins, it all seems far more understandable to me.

After all, who can bear to watch aging warriors as they prove all too mortal far from the site of their greatest victory?

Quote of the Day (George Plimpton on Alex Karras, With the NFL Great Displaying ‘Theatrical Tendencies’)

“When Alex Karras came onto the club, after his own rookie year, during which he barely spoke a word, he became the unofficial hazing master. But he used the dining room less as a hazing ground than as a stage to display his own theatrical tendencies. He banged the water glass for silence so he could deliver his own speeches, skits, or monologues; even a request for chocolate syrup for his ice cream, which could have been fulfilled by raising a finger to a passing waitress, was given a performance. He would rap his water glass loudly and signal out the dining-room matron. ‘Mrs. Page!’ he would shout. ‘Mrs. Page, having consumed a salad, your salad, with a little shrimp in it, is it too much for me to ask, as a red-blooded American, a voter, with a wife back home, a dog lying by the hearth, a parakeet in a wire cage, is it too much for me to ask for a beaker of chocolate syrup to pour on my ice cream? Mrs. Page, give me chocolate syrup or give me death!’" — American “participatory journalist,” literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman George Plimpton (1927-2003), Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback (1965)

This weekend, the Detroit Lions are in territory sadly unfamiliar to them in recent years: the playoffs, hosting the Los Angeles Rams. The last time they got even to the wild-card round was in January 2017, and their last playoff victory came in January 1992 over the Dallas Cowboys. Their last outright championship was back in 1957.

Or, to put it another way: diehards born in that golden year are now getting ready to retire, if they haven’t already.

Even with a 12-5 record in this past regular season that put them atop the NFC North division, any belief that the team will go much further after this point represents, for pessimists eyeing their prior playoff history, what Oscar Wilde defined as a second marriage: “the triumph of hope over experience.”

Yet that same dismal history makes them a sentimental favorite to go to the Super Bowl, and some even glimpse potential for such a run.

For instance, this post from SportsGrid, a sports betting site for news, analysis, and advice, even has labeled the team “the potential surprise package of the season…. a testament to the unpredictability and thrill of the NFL, where any team can defy the odds and emerge victorious.”

Somewhere in the afterlife, George Plimpton is smiling. In an October 2022 post, I blogged about his penchant for writing about unusual stunts. Perhaps the most famous of these was participating, as a lanky 36-year-old, in preseason training back in 1963 for the Lions, then calling plays in an intra-team scrimmage.

It went about as well as can be expected: disastrously. But at least he came out with a bestseller that got turned into a 1968 movie, starring Alan Alda as the writer.

One of the great characters among the Lion players was Alex Karras, the near-sighted but terrifying defensive lineman, suspended in the 1963 season for betting on NFL games. Accordingly, Karras’ appearances in the book are brief but memorable.

God knows, with what Plimpton called the player’s “untrammeled brain,” I still had material: his offhand remark to the author that “there’s only one man I never really liked at all: Will Rogers,” or his hilarious speculative monologues to teammates about his past fictional lives as aides-de-camp to George Washington and Adolf Hitler.

But the one I selected, I think, provides evidence, early in Plimpton’s account, of this gridiron great’s post-football future before the cameras. Karras was clearly miserable that his suspension kept him away from the game he loved so much, and his off-field activities during that season (wrestling and owning a bar) did little to salve his feelings.

But here, among his teammates in the team dining room, he was demonstrating the ease with performing that would lead him, after he hung up his helmet, into sportscasting and acting. 

As an actor, Karras started by playing himself (based on his monologues, he could have done it better?) in the movie Paper Lion, and later, more conspicuously, on the long-running sitcom Webster and, most memorably, in the film comedies Victor Victoria and Blazing Saddles. (In the latter, who could have been more credible as Mongo punching a horse?)

Quote of the Day (Arthur Kretchmer, on the Outsized Presence of NFL Great Dick Butkus)

“When [Chicago Bears middle linebacker Dick] Butkus finally comes out, his steps are hesitant, like he is trying to walk off a cramp. You notice immediately that he looks even bigger in pads and helmet—bigger than anyone else on the field, bigger than players listed in the program as outweighing him. He has the widest shoulders on earth. His name seems too small for him; the entire alphabet could be printed on the back of his uniform and there'd be room left over.”—American reporter and editor Arthur Kretchmer, “Butkus: One Season and One Injury With the Meanest Man Alive,” originally printed in Playboy, October 1971, reprinted in Football: Great Writing About the National Sport, edited by John Schulian (2014)

Dick Butkus didn’t last as long in the NFL as other Pro Football Hall of Gamers—only nine seasons—but the outsized presence described by Arthur Kretchmer carried over onto the field. A half-century after he retired, he is still considered by many of the game’s observers as the greatest middle linebacker of all time.

Or, as Kretchmer summed up the consensus about Butkus from fans, teammates and opposing players of the time: “He's the meanest, angriest, toughest, dirtiest son of a bitch in football. An animal, a savage, subhuman. But as good at his game as Ty Cobb was at his, or Don Budge at his, or Joe Louis at his.

Early last week, I heard a radio commercial featuring the gridiron giant. His voice reassured me in several different ways: that he was, after all, still around at all; that, unlike so many other retired players, he did not appear to be suffering the effects of multiple concussions; and even that a link to the game that had so fascinated me starting in my tweens continued as a living link to the past. Some things, you could still count on.

That sense of stability didn’t last long. By Friday, the news had come out that Butkus had died at his home in Malibu, Calif. The irony was that someone so ferocious on the field had passed away peacefully in his sleep.

WBEZ sports contributor Cheryl Raye-Stout, talking about him on Texas Public Radio, put matters succinctly on what he meant in Butkus meant in his prime: “He became notorious for being someone that would do anything, anything at all, to make a tackle, to force the ball out of the opposing player's arms, to go after the quarterback. He did things that nobody had done before. He would bite. He would claw. He would scratch. He did anything.”

"You know, his brother Ronnie played for a while with the old Chicago Cardinals. He had to stop because of a knee injury." Then she turns to me and says, "I hope Dick gets well. It's his life."

Told that he had taken his place in the pantheon of great middle linebackers, along with Sam Huff and Ray Nitschke, Butkus said, "Hell, I'm going to make more money this year than those guys ever thought about."

“This year”—and to the end of his life. International Merchandising Corporation (IMC), the company that took sports promotion to a new level by helping Arnold Palmer gain a string of lucrative endorsements and exhibitions, did the same, albeit on a smaller scale, for Butkus.

In the five decades after he hobbled off the field for the last time, Butkus appeared in dozens of television shows and movies, not to mention scores of commercials—notably Miller Lite Beer commercials.

This quote from Butkus, on the Website of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, confirmed his mother’s observation about his single-minded devotion to the sport:

“There’s only one thing I’ve ever wanted to do: Play pro football. Everyone seems to be made for something, and I’ve always felt that playing football was the thing I was supposed to do. I love the game.”

After the string of confirmations on the damage caused by concussions, I can’t share his feelings. But I can’t help but admire his desire to excel, and I’m glad he was able, unlike so many other ex-players, his time away from the game.

This Day in Football History (Death of Tim Mara, A Giant Among Owners)

Feb. 16, 1959—Tim Mara, a bookmaker who parlayed a $500 investment into multigenerational family ownership of the pro New York Giants football team, died in his native New York at age 71.

Himself a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (posthumously elected in the Class of 1963), “Big Tim” (a reference to his 6-ft., solid 205-pound frame) was the father of another Canton inductee, son Wellington. He was a cornerstone of the National Football League, as his payment for the Giants franchise gave the fledgling league a showcase in the nation’s largest city.

Over the years, Mara and the league had to endure several stiff challenges, including bearing the brunt of the fight against rival AFL in 1926; helping to keep the team and league together at all during the Great Depression (when he transferred ownership to sons Jack, 22, and Wellington, 14) and WWII (when some teams, with players off fighting, could not continue in their current form); and enduring another upstart league, the AAFC, from 1946 to 1949.

But Mara built Giants into a perennial powerhouse with three NFL championships and eight divisional titles, And only a few months before his death, the NFL’s first “sudden death” playoff game—between the Giants and the Baltimore Colts—became known as “the greatest game ever played,” finally establishing the league’s popularity.

In a number of ways, Mara’s story resembles that of fellow NFL owner and good friend Art Rooney. Both were devout Irish-Catholics who earned the wherewithal to buy their teams through their bookmaking; both created great franchises (in Rooney’s case, the Pittsburgh Steelers) that have won multiple championships; and both passed on their stake in the teams to their descendants, now in the third generation of ownership.

 

For all the money that Mara amassed by the end of his life, his beginnings were distinctly humble. Growing up in Greenwich Village, he quit school when his policeman father died in order to help his mother and brother survive, according to his friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Arthur Daley.

Mara began running bets when he was a 12-year-old newsboy, since his route—along Broadway, from Wanamakers to Union Square—was filled with bookmaking joints. Fortunately for him, many customers were lower- and middle-echelon Tammany Hall figures who, as they rose, remembered him fondly, including Governor Alfred E. Smith (who incorrectly predicted that pro football would never compete with college football) and Jimmy Walker, the dapper “Night Mayor” in the Roaring Twenties.

Before long, Mara began booking bets himself, becoming a “wagering commissioner” when this was still legal, up to the ‘30s. Never gambling himself, he eventually branched out, with side ventures in bookbinding, coal, liquor, scotch, and boxing promotions.

Success with his NFL venture was hardly assured for a long time. Mara experienced stiff financial losses until Red Grange’s debut in the Polo Grounds for the Chicago Bears on Dec. 6,1925, turned the tide, converting a $40,000 deficit into an $18,000 gain.

By this time, Mara’s childhood associates had drawn him into Tammany Hall’s “Tiger Room” at 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue, where they could relax and help each other out. His loyalty (a trait that evidently still runs in the family) led him to help out these associates, even when it brought unwanted attention.

One was Walker, who in 1930, when the Great Depression was taking hold, got Mara to promote a game benefiting the city’s unemployed. The contest; against the Knute Rockne-led Notre Dame, ended up netting $116,000. (Mara was such a good friend of the mayor’s that, at the latter’s funeral in 1946, he led the entire Giant team en masse into St. Patrick’s Cathedral only moments before the service was to begin, according to Donald I. Miller’s Supreme City.)

While Mara remained friends with Walker to the end, he was not so lucky with Smith. Their falling out stemmed from the 1928 Presidential race. Late in the campaign, the governor’s campaign manager, John J. Raskob, sought to keep his Presidential campaign through loans meant to evade campaign-finance laws. Friends such as Mara were assured they would not be responsible for the loan, but after the election that proved not to be the case. In 1934, he and another member of the Tammany group, Patrick Kenny, became involved in litigation for recovery of the loan.

Overwhelmingly, however, in other areas of his life, Mara managed to avoid such difficulties, in part because of his winning personality. This excerpt from a 1937 profile of him in Turf and Sport Digest conveys quite well the impact of can-do optimism:

“Atop that high stool he is the very picture of beaming good humor. His big, rosy, happy face is topped by a crop of wavy reddish hair. Contrasting with the nervous secretive taciturnity of most of the clubhouse bookmakers Mara’s joyful mien and robust voice, calling out hearty greetings and poking weak fun at all comers, is refreshing. You like the fellow. He looks as though he’d give you a break.”

Quote of the Day (Susan Orlean, on What She Learned During Super Bowl Week, 24 Years Ago)

“I learned that the Super Bowl and the week of revelry leading up to it feels exactly like prom week—if you had happened to go to a high school with seventy-four thousand in the graduating class and your prom had been televised to seven hundred and fifty million people worldwide and your parents had been liberal about your curfew and you had accessorized your prom outfit by wearing on your head a piece of polyurethane foam shaped like a thunderbolt (if you were a Chargers fan), or a miner's pickax (if you were for the 49ers). The only difference--which in the case of most Super Bowls turns out to be a minor one—is that most proms don't feature a football game.”— Susan Orlean, “Super-Duper,” The New Yorker, Feb. 13, 1995, collected in her My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere (2004)

(Photo of Susan Orlean taken at the 2011 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, Oct. 22, 2011, by ©Larry D. Moore.)

Quote of the Day (Don Shula, on Luck and Quarterbacks)

“Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck.”—Former Miami Dolphins coach and Football Hall of Famer Don Shula quoted in Norman R. Augustine, Augustine's Laws (1997)

At first, I read the above quote as a quip from Don Shula. But, given certain events in his career—not to mention this past weekend in the NFL playoffs—I think he might have simply been speaking the brutal truth.

After all, Shula—from all accounts, a religious man—must have been thanking the Almighty for much of his career. I’m not talking about the coach having a young Dan Marino or even two other Hall of Fame quarterbacks in their prime, Johnny Unitas and Bob Griese, but also possessing a journeyman QB who, when called on in an emergency to replace the latter two when they were badly injured, performed superbly: Earl Morrall.

When Johnny U. went down with an injury early in the ’68 season, Morrall guided Shula's Baltimore Colts to a 13-1 record, deservedly taking MVP honors. In Super Bowl V, when Unitas was hurt in the big game itself, Morrall stepped in again, this time becoming the first substitute quarterback to rally his team from a deficit to claim victory in the championship contest.

Finally, in the Dolphins’ 1972 season, Morrall—rejoining his former coach, Shula—stepped in yet again when Griese got hurt, keeping the team on track for an undefeated season, before gracefully stepping aside when Griese was ready to take the reins again. 

If Shula was watching TV on Sunday, he must have groaned over what the Pittsburgh Steelers did to the Dolphins in their playoff matchup. More particularly, he must have winced as his old team’s backup QB, Matt Moore, was pressed into making his first playoff start when regular QB Ryan Tannehill was injured a few games before. Moore gave it his best shot, but was a sitting duck for much of the day in the face of the Steeler defense (including one brutal hit that left many observers fearing he had a concussion). 

The only solace Shula might have taken over the weekend was that, compared with the Dolphins, the luck of the Oakland Raiders was downright catastrophic. Once Derek Carr was felled for the duration with an injury, the Raiders blew their last two regular-season games. The team’s fans, who had not experienced a wild ride to the Super Bowl since 2002, sensed that, unlike Jeff Hostetler with the New York Giants a quarter-century ago or Tom Brady with the New England Patriots a decade later, a backup would not leap off the bench and convey them to the Promised Land.

It was bad enough that Matt McGloin joined Carr among the injured before this weekend’s playoff game against the Houston Texans. Left to pick up the fallen standard was rookie Connor Cook (pictured), third on the depth chart, in his first start. Ever. Let’s just say he looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

By the end of the 27-14 loss, Oakland Raiders head coach Jack Del Rio must have felt afflicted not just with bad luck, but with very bad luck.