In the course of covering the Miami Dolphins for decades I have encountered numerous occasions (just about every day since 1996, actually) when people who work for the team say things to reporters for public consumption. And those things have little veracity.
This never happened with Don Shula.
The man was all about integrity and truth. And because he won more games than anyone and could say just about anything he wanted within the organization he ran, he opted for being fairly transparent in a brilliant sort of way.
If I asked him about a player for a story I was planning and Shoes didn’t think that player had a future with Miami -- or even if the player wasn’t playing well -- he’d pull me off to the side and say something akin to, “You don’t want to do a story on that guy, do you?