Don Shula

He was born Donald Francis Shula in Grand River, Ohio, on January 4, 1930. The son of Dan and Mary (Miller) Shula, he began playing football while still quite young and at the tender age of eleven was forbidden by his parents to play the game anymore after sustaining a bad facial cut during a neighborhood scrimmage. But Shula was not to be so easily dissuaded. In 1942 he forged his parents' signatures on a permission slip so that he could play football at school but was sidelined by a case of pneumonia just before the season began. Encouraged by an assistant coach to return to the game as soon as possible, a healthy Shula later rejoined the team but kept his football participation a secret from his parents until he was named a starter. As a senior at Thomas W. Harvey High School, Shula was named All-Ohio quarterback in 1946. He went on to become a star player at John Carroll University in Cleveland, gaining 125 yards in a 21-15 upset over Syracuse University. Recruited by a number of professional teams, Shula eventually signed with the Cleveland Browns for whom he played defense for the next couple of years before being traded in 1953 to the Baltimore Colts.

Shula spent three seasons with the Colts before being traded in 1956 to the Washington Redskins. His professional playing career ended in 1957. The following year he married Dorothy Bartish and joined the University of Virginia's football coaching staff as assistant coach. In 1959 he joined the coaching staff at the University of Kentucky and two years later broke into the professional coaching ranks when he signed on as defensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions. Shula spent two years with the Lions and in 1963 became the youngest head coach in NFL history when he agreed to lead the Baltimore Colts. Only thirty-three at the time, Shula wasted little time in making his mark with the Colts. In his second season at the helm of the Colts, he led the team to a 12-2 record and earned for himself the first of six Coach of the Year awards.