Shula

The Coach of the NFL's Greatest Generation

By: Mark Ribowsky

Narrated by: L.J. Ganser

Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football, but when his parents finally relented, they discovered that their son had an unmatched mind for the game's strategy and a stomach for its brutality.

With rugged determination, the jut-jawed Shula started as a defensive back in the 1950s, later beginning his 32-year coaching career as the then-youngest coach ever with the Baltimore Colts. The Colts had several successful years, but Shula never quite recovered from the historic loss to the upstart New York Jets in Super Bowl III, and when a lucrative job opened in Miami, he took his talents to South Beach, where he led the Dolphins to the first perfect season in NFL history.

Tracing Shula's singular rise from his blue-collar origins to his glory days in the Miami heat, Ribowsky reveals a man of grit and charisma who never lost sight of a simple creed: "All I've ever done is roll up my sleeves, figure out what to do, and start doing it."

©2019 Mark Ribowsky (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Rip and write biography

It's obvious that the author simply pulled up old newspaper and magazine articles and strung this book together. Fact checking is poor. There is little indication that he sought out interviews of friends, family members, associates or former players to provide greater depth to the narrative, The author's insertion of his own political opinions is just plain irritating. He hates Nixon, Reagan and Trump. Good for the author, but it has little to do with the life and legacy of the publicly apolitical, privately conservative Shula, other than the passing effort that Trump made to lure Shula to coach his USFL team, which Shula used to his advantage in contract negotiations with Joe Robbie. Note to author - many of your target readers are Trump supporters, so you might want to make some revisions to your second edition for your publishers sake.
Skip this and read the terrific "Collision of Wills" by Jack Gilden, about the battle of egos between Coach Shula and Johnny Unitas.

Too political

I selected this book to learn about Don Shula. As a life long Dolphins fan the last thing I wanted to listen to was political commentary. Stopped listening not long into the first chapter.