The winningest coach in the history of the National Football League started that career in Baltimore.
Don Shula, who died May 4 in Miami Beach, recorded the first 73 of his record 347 wins as a head coach with the Baltimore Colts, whom he guided from 1963 to 1969. Whether it was in Baltimore or Miami, where he coached the only perfect team in NFL history and lived for five decades, Shula was known for his strong Catholic faith.
“What impressed me the most was that he did not lord it over people,” said Father Juan Sosa, pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Miami Beach, where Shula attended the last 10 years of his life. Father Sosa anointed Shula the morning the Hall of Fame coach died at age 90.
When the Colts hired Shula as their coach, he was just 33 years old, the youngest coach in the NFL. His playing career had included four seasons with Baltimore, starting in 1953, when the NFL relocated a team here from Dallas.
According to an article in the Nov. 23, 1956 issue of the Catholic Review, Shula was raised in St. Mary Parish in Painesville, Ohio. Father Sosa told the Florida Catholic that he recalled how Shula told him that the late Detroit Cardinal John Francis Dearden, who had been a priest at the parish, influenced him almost to the point of entering the seminary.
Shula’s football career blossomed at John Carroll University, a Jesuit institution in University Heights, Ohio.
With the Colts, his teammates and players included many fellow Catholics, among them Jim Mutscheller, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, and Johnny Unitas, who came to Baltimore as an unheralded quarterback but led the team to NFL titles in 1958 and 1959.
Cut by the Colts before the 1957 season, Shula spent one season with the Washington Redskins before going into coaching. In 1963 he returned to Baltimore, where his tenure bumped up against the glory days of the Green Bay Packers and being on the wrong side of NFL history.
His 1964 team went 12-2 before being thumped by the Cleveland Browns in the NFL championship game. A few months later, Shula and his wife, Dorothy, were honored as Baltimore’s “Catholic Couple of the Year” by the Chi Rho organization.
The Colts lost just once in 1967, but a quirk in the playoff format kept them from the postseason. A year later, they went 13-1 in the regular season and were heavily favored in Super Bowl III, but were upset by the New York Jets, the first former AFL team to win the title.
A year later, Shula left Baltimore to become the coach of the Miami Dolphins, which he led to victory in Super Bowls VII and VIII. That first titlist went 17-0, the only perfect team in NFL history.
“He was a great symbol for Miami, but he didn’t overdo it. He knew how much he was respected and loved. But he did not draw from that fame, but rather the love of children and grandchildren and his wife,” Father Sosa told the Florida Catholic.
After retiring as head coach, Shula served as a vice president in the Dolphins’ organization until 2016. He is survived by wife Mary Anne (married in 1993); sons David and Mike; and daughters Donna, Sharon and Anna. His first wife died of breast cancer in 1991.
Father Sosa and several others recalled how Shula would attend Mass every day. The priest said Shula also would lend his presence to several galas to raise funds for St. Joseph projects, including a scholarship for students going to an archdiocesan high school.
Jan Bell, director of St. Thomas University’s Sports Administration Program from 1985 to 2016, recalled Shula’s faith and presence on campus, where the Dolphins trained from 1970 to 1992. She said that while Shula was a bigger-than-life figure, he would walk the campus in an unassuming way.
“If you didn’t know who he was, you’d never have known he was an undefeated coach,” Bell said. “He was like a regular person.”
One benefit of the Dolphins practicing at St. Thomas was that Shula could attend daily Mass at the nearby Marian Center with the Sisters of St. Joseph Benedict Cottolengo.
Sean Clancy, a Dolphins linebacker from 1978 to 1979, said that Sister Lucia Ceccotti at the Marian Center heard that Shula had a fine fund for players who committed various infractions. She asked him what the fund was for; when Shula said it was for charity, she asked that the Marian Center School be the recipient.
Clancy said that whenever the team would travel, the Dolphins had a chaplain with them, and Shula would set up a hotel ballroom for a team Mass on game day.
Shula’s funeral Mass will take place May 8 at St. Joseph Church in Miami Beach, followed by burial at Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery in Doral. Services will be private in keeping with restrictions on large gatherings due to the coronavirus.
Catholic News Service contributed to this story.
