Don Shula and ‘Beli-cheat’ — it would’ve become increasingly uncomfortable: column

A group of old-time South Florida sports writers and TV types now spread across the country had a Zoom talk Friday about Dolphins Hall of Fame coach Don Shula. Thoughts. Memories. Laughs. A virtual goodbye, of sorts, after his death at 90 years old on Monday.

Amid the storytelling Chuck Dowdle, former host of The Don Shula Show, provided more than a story. He gave the reason why Bill Belichick chasing down Shula’s all-time win total would have been increasingly uncomfortable in one respect. Meaning, Shula’s respect. Meaning, Shula’s disrespect of the New England Patriots coach.

Dowdle didn’t mention this. Nor did anyone else. It wasn’t the point of the story that came on the TV set in the 1980s. During a break Dowdle asked what Shula’s epitaph should read.

“You mean when I die?” Shula said, for this when he was a coach in full stride. Death wasn’t on his 16-game schedule. He thought a second before saying:

“ ‘He played by the rules.’ “

That sums his coaching life. There are hundreds of stories, big and small. Here’s one: Fullback Larry Csonka found an Oakland Raiders playbook in the visiting locker room before a big game. Shula threw it in the trash can, saying looking at it would be cheating.

Belichick, meanwhile, was caught videotaping an opponent’s signals in Spygate in 2007. The Patriots were in the middle of Deflategate. The NFL is reportedly still reviewing a Patriots television crew videotaping Cincinnati Bengals coaches’ signals from last December. Five months isn’t enough?

In his home for an 85th birthday story in 2015, Shula publicly mentioned his pejorative for Belichick the first time. My question wasn’t pointed that way. I asked Shula if he remembered a young Belichick asking for a job in the mid-1970s to break down game film and save assistant coaches time.

“Beli-cheat?” Shula said then.

I was surprised. “Did you say, ‘Beli-cheat?’

“Yeah, it’s Beli-cheat,” he said.

He constantly used that pejorative in his later years. Is it fair to Belichick’s full timeline? That’s a legitimate question. Is it right to quote an aging coach, as some inside the Dolphins asked, who wouldn’t let that idea escape his notorious filter in younger years?

That’s a question, too. Shula was strenuously careful with words. The worst I remember him coming down on a peer was when Buddy Ryan was fired by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1991. Ryan and Shula had a history. The history was of Ryan poking Shula going back to when defensive coordinator Ryan’s New York Jets famously upset Shula’s Baltimore Colts team in the 1969 Super Bowl.

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“I’m normally sympathetic when a coach is fired,” Shula said that day.

That’s as harsh as Shula publicly attacked peers with words. But in his later years, it was different with Belichick. Everyone around him heard to the point it was a topic even in his death.

“He called Belichick ‘Beli-cheat,’” former Miami safety Dick Anderson said on CBS Radio this week in discussing Shula. “He was straightforward. He was, ‘This is how we gotta do it, these are the rules, and this is what we’re going to follow.’ He didn’t like, I think, people that didn’t follow the rules — and he did.”

This would have been a growing topic in coming years as Belichick closes in on Shula’s defining record of 347 wins. Belichick has 304 wins. He’s 67. If he wins 10 games a year … well, you do the math. It’s do-able. The surprise now is if Belichick doesn’t reach it. And if Shula was asked about him?

Shula, to be sure, knew of his win total. The Dolphins great public-relations man, Harvey Greene, noticed as Shula crept closer in 1993 to breaking George Halas’ record of 325 wins that he really had two more wins. His two wins weren’t counted from the NFL’s “Runner-Up Bowl” in the 1960s for teams that lost before the championship game.

Green mentioned it to Shula, who had him notify the league. Joe Browne, the NFL’s communication director, said that for years Shula had mentioned those games. The league treated them like Pro Bowl wins. They didn’t count.

Belichick’s wins count. Everyone will be counting them, too. Shula would have been called about it, too. He wouldn’t have backed down, either. It wouldn’t have simply been awkward for Belichick in some form. It would have come to define Shula to a new generation.

This next line won’t sound right: There’s relief in Shula not watching Belichick break his mark in some form. That we’re not going to have to witness the by-play of “Beli-cheat.” That it doesn’t overtake what Shula accomplished in today’s world.

As it is, everyone remembers Shula for winning. And everyone knows how he won. Chisel it in stone:

He Played By The Rules.