Skip to footer

17 stories from 'Undefeated: Inside the 1972 Miami Dolphins’ Perfect Season’

Writer Mike Freeman explores the undefeated season of the Florida team in his book.

17. President Nixon calling

AP

  • By Ross Atkin Staff Writer

President Nixon, who fashioned himself something of a Coach-in-Chief, contacted Miami’s coach, Don Shula, several times over the years. One phone call came before the Dolphins’ first Super Bowl appearance in SB VI – at 1:30 a.m.! Nixon suggested using a slant-in pass play to Miami’s talented wide receiver, Paul Warfield, a play that Shula assured the president was already in the game plan.

After the Dolphins lost that game, Nixon dictated a consoling letter that he sent to Shula. Midway through the 1972 season, after Shula notched his 100th career victory faster than anyone had ever done, Nixon sent a congratulatory telegram. In part it read: “This new milestone is convincing proof of your superior coaching ability and, therefore, I will do my very best to resist suggesting any more plays should you get through the playoffs and into the Super Bowl again.”

17 of 17
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.