MIAMI — It is fair to say the Miami Dolphins put the city and South Florida on the national sports map, but the notion needs explaining. It didn’t happen right away.
The real attention, the real mattering, did not begin until the Dolphins got Don Shula. Then got good. Then great. Then even better than that. And yes it must always be capitalized — Perfect Season — because, well, just because. We get to decide. The accomplishment belongs to us, it is ours alone, and the perfume of it, of 17-0 in 1972, has wafted lovely across time and carried a franchise and a fan base for 50 years.
Joe Robbie, a Minneapolis lawyer and politician, founded an American Football League expansion team in Miami in 1966, but it struggled for four years, losing on the field and hard-pressed to catch on with fans. The AFL was the junior outfit to the mighty NFL, and those early Dolphins seemed minor-league.
