Alumnus Larry Csonka – May 4, 2020
Download PDF version
Monday, May 4, 2020
Former Dolphins FB Larry Csonka
(I wanted to ask you the question about the alligator in the shower with Don Shula – tell me that story please.) – “(laughter) Well, Manny Fernandez and I decided to go fishing the day after a game – an exhibition game. We went out and Manny Fernandez, while we were fishing – Manny was a defensive tackle for us – and he said, ‘Csonk, there’s a gator over on the shore with babies,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I don’t want any part of it.’ And he said, ‘You know, I can catch one of those,’ and I said, ‘Manny, I don’t think you can catch a baby alligator. You’re going to lose fingers or a leg or the mama’s going to get you. That’s going to be a bad situation.’ He said, ‘No, I’m telling you. I could do it.’ And with that, Manny jumped over out of the boat, went up on the bank, went into the bushes – it was like something in a movie. There was tumbling and screaming and growling and pretty soon Manny Fernandez came walking out of the bushes with a baby alligator about, I don’t know, two-and-a-half, three feet long. (Manny) walked over, threw it in the boat and I jumped out of the boat. To make a long story short, we took it back to camp. We were going to put it in the pond out front. On the way back to camp, we got the idea that we thought it’d be pretty funny to put it in Shula’s shower. He had a separate shower than the team, devoted to coaches, of course. We thought that would be kind of humorous so we took a vote and (putting it in the shower) Coach Shula won by one vote that we would tape the Gator’s mouth shut just in case it got ahold of him in the shower. We didn’t want to lose him entirely. So we taped its nose shut and put it in the shower, and he came out and saw it and came into the locker room and was raising Cain and headed straight for me, but I saw him coming so I jumped out the side door and Jim Kiick took the brunt of the abuse for the alligator in the shower. (laughter) But the good thing about Shula – the great thing about Shula – was his intensity with anything connected with football; but on a thing like the alligator, he had a great sense of humor, he appreciated that and he had a good laugh about it. So it was kind of a pressure relief, if you will.”
(Please, if you would, put in words what Don Shula’s legacy should be. How should people both in South Florida and around the country who are football fans, how should they remember Don Shula?) – “I think his great marks come in the world of football with the integrity that he showed for the game. Not just the fact that he was a driven coach and concentrated on winning and was willing to make the sacrifices and pay the price to win and take you along with him, but he also had a sense of humor about things, so it was a balance. He was driven and his legacy comes down to the fact that he proved that by being the winningest coach in the history of the league. Now during that time, the pinnacle of his career – if you ask me about the one moment that perhaps most personifies that great career that he had, I would say it was the undefeated season. I would say that the perfect season was the diamond, if you will, in the rough that he honed out as an exemplary moment, where everything that he had learned how to sacrifice and work and put together and orchestrate came together and worked; and we went undefeated, and the game that led to that was the loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl VI. After that game, we were all in the locker room and he threw everyone else out but the coaches and the players, and he said, ‘This moment is a moment we’re going to learn from. You’ve got to remember how you feel right now after just getting your ass kicked in the Super Bowl. You’ve got to remember that because next year, we’re going to open up. In five or six months, we’re going to get together back at camp and we’re going to open up, and we are going to re-dedicate ourselves every week to the task at hand – not look forward to the playoffs or look forward to a winning season or look forward to any of that. We’re going to concentrate one week at a time, one game at a time and we’re going to go every game with the intent of winning every game.’ He said that moments after losing a Super Bowl. He dictated what was going to happen the next year with an undefeated season, and I think that was the pinnacle of his career. If there was one point that he would pull out to judge the entire career by, that would be the high point – that undefeated season. Because what happened was the very essence of what he had alluded to. We went one game at a time and it was close, and any one play could have changed things. I don’t argue the point that it’s just a hair that separates perfection from losing one game. Different people and different times stepped forward and made the difference, but that’s what a team is all about. The essence of that ’72 team is what the entire world of sports is about, that incorporates teamwork and effort. It was all of the people pulling together and playing better than what any individual could play on their own. That’s what it’s about and it takes a great coach to bring that out of players, and I think that was the pinnacle of his success.”
(At a couple birthday parties you’ve said it, ‘I fully expect if I’m lucky enough to still be around to be at his 100th birthday, because can you picture a world without Don Shula in it?’ Not to ask something melodramatic, but what does the world to you look like without Shula in it?) – “To make a statement like that was a little bit prophetic in a sense that I thought I could handle someone telling me that Coach (Don Shula) had passed. I was out cutting brush in a field, and my wife Audrey called me and said Coach had passed. I never really knew until that moment how close that rascal had really got to me, until he was gone. Unfortunately through the course of my life, losing parents and different loved ones, you realize after they’re gone, how much more they meant to you than what you realized when they were here. I hope I can be better at that in the future because I felt a terrible loss. I felt like someone very close to me and my family had passed. Coach Shula was such a rock. He was such a – so exact in his feelings, so totally 100 percent, ‘this is the way it is.’ You drew off that strength when you were around him without even realizing it. Sometimes I resented him for it. More often than not, I resented him for it. I muttered with the rest of the players. ‘This is too much, too long, too hot, too everything,’ but the result was perfection. One time. One time in the course of 100 years, one team made every play it had to make during the course of a season to attain perfection. One time. And we were lucky enough to be with that. Now that doesn’t reflect the entirety of his career obviously, but it is a little microcosm of what he was about – that kind of dedication – and once we learned that in ’72, then I never questioned him again. And to answer your question, I miss him terribly already. Now let me tell you, I don’t know where old NFL players go. I don’t know – Lombardi, coaches, great players … all the great ones – where are they? Where do they go after they die? Well I’d like to believe they go to heaven. But I’ll tell you, if they ship the football players off and the coaches off to a certain place, wherever that place is, tonight there is going to be one hell of a lightning bolt hit it because Shula is going to arrive and things are going to change.”
