Dolphins' perfect run undiminished

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It wasn't supposed to matter to me, not now, since it certainly did not then. And all these years later being on the periphery of perfection was merely a matter of coincidence and the calendar.I was young and new at this job, and so were they, too, though the Miami Dolphins had been in the Super Bowl a year earlier.We were all of the same age, and we wore those silly wide-collar fake-silk shirts and pants that flared at the bottom like birdcage covers. The 1970s looked as silly then as they do now.I missed one game that season of 1972, the crucial one because the quarterback, Bob Griese, broke his ankle against San Diego in the old Orange Bowl, while I thought it was more important to watch a 17-year-old tennis whiz named Chris Evert beat the pros in Boca Raton. And so she did, turning down $25,000, after taking Kerry Melville in straight sets in the final, her last tournament as an amateur. I felt better about my news judgment on that Sunday because when word came of the injury to Griese and the subsequent replacement by Earl Morrall, who was nearly as old as his coach, Don Shula, I thought the Miami Dolphins' season was finished.As it wore on and proved not to be, none of the jangle and exaggeration accompanied the Dolphins as it has the New England Patriots. It was not skepticism of the challenge so much as simple disregard.I wasn't the only one to not take the Dolphins seriously. The schedule was soft, only two teams with winning records, no teams that made the playoffs.The Dolphins ran the ball, and, at one point in the season, neither Griese nor Morrall was in the quarterback rankings because they did not average 10 passes a game. What a great waste of gifted receiver Paul Warfield.It was all just too fluky, too unremarkable. Strange what details remain in the mind.Shula was on the cover of Time magazine, but the honor got less attention in South Florida, and the nation, than Burt Reynolds as a nude centerfold in Cosmopolitan. I recall a one-point win over Buffalo because Bills quarterback Dennis Shaw handed the ball to Dolphins tackle Manny Fernandez, and Larry Csonka breaking his nose against the Jets, the 10th time in his career. Mercury Morris gained 1,000 yards and then lost it, only to have the Dolphin PR department find exactly 9 yards five days after the season to get it back.The No-Name Defense was named player of the week by The Associated Press after a shutout of the Colts; this I believed because no one knew any of them individually. Middle linebacker Nick Buoniconti had thought up the name, or the no name, a joke in reaction to the likes of Minnesota's Purple People Eaters and Dallas' Doomsday Defense and Pittsburgh's Steel Curtain.And then in the last game, to complete the 14-0 season, I found the big news to be not perfection but John Unitas swearing he would never play again for the Colts.Even the playoffs, with the Dolphins beating Cleveland and the Steelers (and Griese returning at quarterback) to get to the Super Bowl against Washington, are remembered less now for Miami's moments than for the "Immaculate Reception," when Pittsburgh's Franco Harris took a tipped pass to beat Oakland.And what is recalled now of the Super Bowl itself, against the Redskins, to which the Dolphins were underdogs? Two things: first, the most ridiculous play in the history of Super Bowls, and second, the sheer fear in kicker Garo Yepremian's eyes as he tried to throw a pass that was returned for Washington's only score.The other story line was relief from Shula that he had finally won the big game after losing league championship games, failing against Joe Namath's Jets and being trounced by Dallas even though President Richard Nixon helped him draw up the plays.So, 17-0 sort of grew as the years passed, and it became a standard only because no one could meet it.I covered the game in which the Dolphins of Dan Marino whipped the Chicago Bears to save the record, and I had no emotion attached either way.And, yet, even as these old Dolphins, most notably Morris and Jim Mandich, nattered on like old men telling war stories to the point of irritation, and even as Shula suggested an asterisk because of "Spygate," I found myself wishing the Patriots would lose Sunday night.I was only on the edge of it, a skeptic then and a cynic since, maybe because I was young, maybe because I was an eyewitness, but I did not want the achievement to be diminished. How nice that it isn't.(Contact Bernie Lincicome at lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com.)(Bernie Lincicome writes for the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)