Stubborn optimism

[DolFan619]

http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/Special_Reports/sports/footpreview08/dol2.html

Stubborn optimism

By GREG COTE
gcote@MiamiHerald.com
 
There is that familiar saying meant to inspire, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

If it is true, Dolphins fans by now surely may count themselves among the strongest in the NFL.

We are about to begin the 35th season since Miami last won a Super Bowl, an anniversary for which Hallmark makes no card. An occasion for which the only consolation is the resiliency of faith and hope.

A once-great franchise suffers six consecutive seasons watching the playoffs on TV -- a pro football eternity currently exceeded only by the Cardinals, Lions and Bills -- and sees that bottom out with the embarrassment of last year's 1-15 record.

And yet Dolfans' optimism grows stubborn as the flower rising from the crack in concrete.

Better days are ahead!

We might believe it if only because the days cannot get much worse. We might believe it simply because the law of averages tip ever closer. We might believe it because In Tuna We Trust.

Or we might believe it just because that is what good, loyal fans do. They believe. Like worshippers praying to a god unseen, Dolfans trust that their faith now will see its proof and reward later.

Faith that nomadic Bill "Tuna" Parcells will stick around long enough to see this rebuilding through.

Faith that Tony Sparano, whom most of us had never heard of eight months ago, will be among the league's next wave of great head coaches.

Faith that Chad Pennington will be the best quarterback we've seen since Dan Marino, before handing the ball and the future to (presumably) Chad Henne.

Faith that Henne will then end The Great Quarterback Search for good, or at least for a good 10 years.

Faith, perhaps most of all, that the foundation has finally been set right, that a foundering franchise has found its compass and is aimed straight again.

 
NOTHING NEW

We have thought it before. We thought Jimmy Johnson and then Nick Saban were the answers. Remember how signing Daunte Culpepper seemed cause for a party once?

This time the right track seems more real, somehow. But that's the beauty of it. Faith is renewable.

We got spoiled, didn't we? Those of us old enough watched Don Shula sweep in and deliver back-to-back Super Bowl championships in only the club's seventh and eighth seasons.

We didn't realize then that you cannot do better than perfection; rather, all you can do is worse. We have had such a long time to go from being spoiled to being starved. To have our faith tested.

Shula would go the last 22 seasons of his great career unable to win another Super Bowl ring, his one, lasting regret. Concurrently, the beloved franchise icon Marino would go 0 for 17 seasons in his quest, as the words of the late club founder Joe Robbie echo still.

"We're wasting the Marino years," he used to lament.

Jimmy Johnson, a proven champion, came in full of promise and bluster and gave up trying after four years. Since then, four other head coaches have let fortunes slip for the past eight years. Since Marino, a dozen quarterbacks have tried their hand and generally failed. And 1972 and '73 remain on older fans' mental mantel like cherished, framed photos of loved ones long past, but not forgotten.

We sing that silly jingle after home scores -- "Miami has the Dolphins, the greatest football team . . . " -- almost as if it hasn't been 35 seasons since that was true. We still see Larry Csonka's bandaged, busted nose behind that single facemask bar as he carries a couple of defenders on his back like a rhinoceros on the plain, impervious to the birds perched on his shoulder.

HAPPIER DAYS

It was Jan. 13, 1974, when Miami last won a Super Bowl. Richard Nixon was still fighting the tidal wave called Watergate. O.J. Simpson, back when his name was gold, had just become the first man to rush for 2,000 yards in a season. An Arab oil embargo pushed gas prices to near an outrageous 50 cents a gallon!

Two days after that Super Bowl, ABC's "Happy Days" premiered as Miami's began gradually to wane.

We are not alone. We have abundant company. Fans in 11 other current NFL cities have endured a championship drought predating Miami's. You think the '73 season feels distant? We're still picking confetti out of our hair compared to the league's other long-sufferers.

Pro football champs were last cheered in Detroit in 1957; in Philadelphia in 1960; in San Diego (AFL) in 1963; in Cleveland in 1964; in Buffalo (AFL) in 1965; by New York Jets fans in 1968; and in Kansas City in 1969. Four other clubs founded in the '60s -- Minnesota, Atlanta, New Orleans and Cincinnati -- have yet to treat fans to a title. So in terms of long-suffering, let's not volunteer ourselves for the company of, say, Chicago Cubs fans, or even for the top of the misery index in an NFL context.

Of course, none of that eases a Dolfan's hurt or hunger much as we wait to be reminded what even a wild-card playoff game felt like, let alone a championship parade. We are at that humble point in the franchise timeline when progress is measured not by how good Miami will be in 2008, but by how far the team will advance with small steps from abject embarrassment to something near mediocrity.

If you are optimistic, despite it all, that those small steps will eventually lead this franchise back to championship days at last, you possess the one noble constant that has carried the Dolphins across time and made this South Florida's most loved and loyally held franchise by a long shot.

Belief.

Shula and Marino are long gone. Now Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor are, too. Dolphins ownership and coaching staffs and player rosters turn over. Everything changes here, except fans' resilient faith in better days.