In the late summer of 1947, the stolid, intense, sometimes eruptive son of a rayon factory worker began commuting daily to University Heights on the eastern edge of Cleveland, to the school named after America’s first archbishop, who ruled over the Baltimore diocese and founded Georgetown University in the early 1800s—though John Carroll’s pseudo-sainted status took a hit two centuries later, when modern researchers revealed him to have been a slaveholder on his Maryland plantation.1 The school was founded as St. Ignatius College in 1886, but it wasn’t until 1923 that it had a sports program. It took as its nickname the Fighting Irish before quickly bowing to the hegemony of Notre Dame and adopting the less romantic Blue Streaks, its mascot a big, drooling St. Bernard dog.
Carroll’s campus was, and is, a bucolic place to walk through, its stately Gothic architecture highlighted by the central landmark, the Grasselli Tower, which rises a hundred feet into the air over the practice field. But the school had a low-rent college football program. Playing mostly small schools around the Steel Belt, in 1932 the school joined the lower-level Ohio Athletic Conference, which, while the third-oldest conference in America, dating back to 1902, never saw its players get much national attention, nor All-American awards. Carroll played most of its games on a weedy field at Shaw High School, though one game a year was played in Cleveland’s crumbling, 22,500-seat League Park, where the Indians played baseball until 1946 before switching to the cavernous 78,000-seat Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and which was home to the NFL’s Cleveland Rams before they split for Los Angeles that same year.
The school, strapped for players, had suspended football for the duration of the war. When the sport started up again in 1946, it was with 45 war veterans among the 51 players, two of them Purple Heart recipients. The coach, tall and bushy-haired Gene Oberst, had played for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame as one of the “Seven Mules” on the offensive line that sprang holes for the Four Horsemen backfield led by “The Gipper,” George Gipp. He was also the first American ever to win an Olympic medal in the javelin, at the 1924 Games in Paris. He had coached the line for Carroll in the 1930s, and then, after a four-year hitch in the navy, returned to coach basketball and track, and finally, football. Oberst was no Rockne. The Blue Streaks went 1–7, after which he was kicked upstairs, as athletic director. The new coach, Herb Eisele, a bald, beak-nosed Ohioan, had been an All-American at Dayton as a receiver. His first year at Carroll, he turned their fortunes around, finishing 6–3, with Shula on the junior varsity, which was enough to earn the youngster a full ride and a varsity roster spot in ’48.
That year, tired of playing the same small-time rivals, Oberst scheduled matches with bigger attractions including Youngstown, Xavier, Marshall, and Bowling Green, preceding Oberst’s intention to pull Carroll out of the conference and play as an independent in 1949. Shula would mature along with the program, coming to a reckoning about his faith and football. That spring, as he prepared for his varsity debut, he attended a three-day retreat conducted by a popular Jesuit priest named Clark Cook, known for spending time praying with prisoners on death row. Shula remembered Cook as a “very intense person,” and that “I was about ready to follow in his footsteps.”2 But then came the sights and sounds of pads colliding on autumn afternoons; in later years, in memoirs, he made a joke of his inevitable decision that he could not commit himself unconditionally to the divinity and still give his all on those afternoons, deflecting the serious considerations and implications of such a choice to say it was “my inability to carry a tune” that would make him a poor priest. More accurately, it was his ability to carry a football.
Shula chose sociology as his major, adding a minor in math—perfect for a guy with a thirst for broad thinking and a tightly empirical mind. His first roommate was one of those rough-and-tumble vets, Carl Taseff, who had gone to Cleveland East High School before shipping out with the marines to the South Pacific. Two years older than Shula, his own nose had been busted up a few times. Taseff was two inches shorter and no heavier than Shula, but his toughness led Eisele to play him at fullback and defensive back. Taseff liked Shula, but didn’t know which version he would encounter from day to day. Sometimes, Shula seemed to obsess on the meaning of life; other times, he burrowed into the minutiae of a game. All Taseff really knew about the kid was that when he spoke, people had a tendency to listen, because he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
To be sure, college life widened Don Shula’s world view. Off the gridiron, he could be pulled from one academic or social activity to another, such as a debate club’s discussion—as reported by the school paper the Carroll News—of the question, “How can civil liberties be guaranteed to all those living in the United States?” The paper was filled with editorials and reporting about issues contentious even then, one being “socialized medicine and increased social security.” Not overlooking more primal activities, another article cheered that “practically every prewar tradition has been revived,” and that “Hell week” would feature “beer parties and beanies.”
There were, naturally, plenty of stories about the football team. Eisele certainly was a VIP. Like most Ohio-bred coaches, he was a Paul Brown devotee, copying the short-passing, ball-controlling methods some would much later call the “Ohio River Offense,” which produced Brown’s four straight titles in the All-American Football Conference. The third, in ’48, the same year Don Shula made his mark as a collegian, came at the end of pro football’s second unbeaten, untied season. Eisele was so eager to learn from the master that he and his assistants would attend the Browns’ practices and games, taking copious notes. Those notes, Shula would say long in the future, would form “the basis of my football training.”
Shula was a keen observer of Eisele’s play calling and would spend time with backfield coach Dan “Zip” Mormile, who had been captain and quarterback at Carroll in the mid-1930s and said of the still-unproven Shula, “I think he’s going to rate with the best we’ve ever had.”3 That was saying something, since the roster was well stocked, mainly with tough-edged sons of immigrants with names like Harcsarik, Holowenko, Janiak, Kowalczyk, Kubancik, and Zupke. Shula would play each home game with his own immigrant parents in the grandstand. The Blue Streaks began the ’48 season against their coach’s alma mater, Dayton, in a sparsely attended Municipal Stadium, where Oberst booked three contests that season.
Shula played well, and also got in at halfback, spelling senior starters Jim Moran and Lenny Soeder, banging out 85 yards on 10 carries. Taseff ran for 109 yards on 14 carries, earning the sobriquet “King Carl” in the school paper. However, Dayton controlled the ball for most of the game and had a 75-yard touchdown run and a 100-yard kickoff return. That set the stage for Shula to make the game’s biggest play. In the fourth quarter, he floated out of the backfield for a short pass. When it came to him, a Dayton defender seemed to get his hands on it for an interception, but Shula tore it out of his grip, righted himself, and ran it all the way for a touchdown, making the score 26–18, which is how the game ended. That got Shula’s picture and a short bio in the paper, under MEET SHULA, which the world was just now doing.
Shula indeed began to make a name for himself. Against Youngstown, broadcast to a few well-heeled souls in Cleveland on the brand new medium of television, Shula replaced the injured Moran at halfback. As sportswriter Charles Heaton wrote in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Shula “proceeded to take advantage with vengeance, scoring both of Carroll’s touchdowns and blasting through the line for 179 yards from scrimmage,” sewing up a 13–6 victory behind the team’s season-high 396 rushing yards. That week, he was the talk of the campus, and again in the big-city paper, with another headline on October 14 that read: SHULA, CARROLL’S SOPHOMORE FIND, STARTS AGAINST B.-W. SATURDAY, followed by the subhead SPEEDSTER WILL SUB FOR MORAN. He actually was a speedster then, and the story contained a quite dashing photo of him from the team’s program, his chiseled face and dark hair cropped into a crewcut, assuming what would become commonly known as the “Heisman pose,” imitating the form of the trophy that had been launched in 1935. Moran’s absence, reported Heaton, “is causing little consternation in University Heights. The reason for this unusual state of affairs is a 175-pound rookie halfback—Don Shula of Painseville Harvey High School [who] a week ago . . . was just another substitute on the Blue Streak squad [until] his brilliant performance against Youngstown College.”
By the tail end of the season, injuries had shriveled the roster to only 30 healthy players. Shula, too, was hurt, with sore ribs. Carroll still routed Niagara 20–6. And while Shula missed the next two games—Eisele practically had to clamp his butt to the bench to keep him out—the Streaks clinched a postseason invitation to the Knights of Columbus Great Lakes Bowl, the first bowl appearance in the school’s history. Though Heidelberg had won the conference at 5–0–0, the bowl was a reward and a high-water mark for the school. In the game, the 7–1–2 Streaks met 7–1 Canisius, the Jesuit college in Buffalo, on December 5 in what the Carroll News called the culmination of “the dreams of 25 years of grid warfare” at Carroll. The teams had a history that left bad blood—the last time they met, in 1925, Carroll trailed 12–0 with three minutes left, but then a near riot broke out and they walked off the field, forfeiting the game. Now, before 17,964 fans on a cold, gray afternoon at Municipal Stadium, they were down 13–7 entering the fourth quarter. Then they moved all the way down the field and Taseff took it over for a touchdown. The extra point made it 14–13, Carroll.
Shula and Taseff racked up some amazing numbers that season. Shula finished far behind Taseff, with 414 rushing yards, but he gained 6.5 yards per rush to Taseff’s 6.1—both among the best in the nation, if anyone cared to notice. And Oberst could now go ahead with his plans to play as an independent. For the ’49 season, Carroll had lost key players, including Moran, and had only five returning seniors. They were huge underdogs on the road against Texas Western, though the Plain Dealer’s headline on September 21 was CARROLL UNAWED BY MENACING TEXANS. That day, in El Paso, they tore onto the field all hopped up—and were dismantled, 33–7. They did regroup to beat Toledo 28–14, but then fell to Youngstown and Xavier.
Thus, they were only 1–3 when they routed Marshall 26–7 and Bowling Green 38–24. In the latter, Heaton reported, “With the ball on the Carroll 30, third down and nine yards to go, Rudy [Schaffer] arched it to Shula, who pulled it down on the Falcons’ 30 and traveled unmolested the remainder of the distance.”4 Shula also caught a 14-yard pass that set up the score that put it out of reach. The next week, the Blue Streaks beat Case Tech 27–0, then Canisius 26–12.
What concerned Eisele was that Shula was playing too hard, that he was always one carry from an injury of some sort; he had missed several games over two seasons with banged-up ribs. Accordingly, the coach put the load on Taseff, who was now the unquestioned star, his two touchdowns in a win over Baldwin-Wallace covered on the front page of the Plain Dealer sports section, right there with Ohio State’s 7–7 tie with Michigan that same day. The Blue Streaks completed the season at 6–3, Shula having rushed for 409 yards. Though Carroll was still a speck on the football map, Shula’s senior year loomed as a last chance to save himself from the factories and fisheries of Ohio, or the collar. Oberst played a key role here, booking a big-time opponent, the Syracuse Orangemen, for the next-to-last game, a November 10 match in Municipal Stadium, which was sure to draw the press and the pro scouts, if mainly to see the Syracuse players.
Shula did well enough during the 1950 season. In the opener against St. Bonaventure, in upstate New York, Taseff broke a 78-yard touchdown run and Shula picked up key first downs, though he also had a key fumble. With six minutes left, Carroll led 19–14, but the Bonnies ran off 14 points to win 28–19. It was the kind of loss that made Shula sick; afterward, he sat at his locker, back turned to the room, staring motionless at the wall for several long minutes. Everyone knew to leave him be, that even putting an arm around his shoulder might ignite a fuse. The next week, they again kept away, after the Streaks lost 24–19 to Xavier. But now came his big push. He went on a rampage against Kent State, gaining 113 yards on just 11 carries in a 41–0 laugher. The headline the next day was SHULA IS LEADER OF GROUND ATTACK.5
He had also caught 6 passes for 122 yards and a touchdown, Heaton praising his “combination of speed—he does the 100 in 10 seconds and was a member of the Carroll track team last spring—and agility make him hard to cover.” And he played defensive back every game. Eisele could only rhapsodize, “I can’t praise the boy enough. We pile the work on him but there’s never any complaining.”
The Streaks blasted Youngstown 27–0, Shula notching a 23-yard touchdown run, then Case Tech 51–14, Marshall 39–2, and Dayton 24–12 in a snowstorm. In that game, covered by the Associated Press, another breakthrough, the wire service reported that “the star for the winners was Don Shula, who accounted for 165 of the Streaks’ 273 yards of gain. Shula scored the really decisive touchdown in the fourth quarter on a one-yard smash.”6 That cued the arrival of the team’s biggest test, Syracuse, under the lights at Municipal Stadium on a Friday night. The Orangemen, a Division I school, came into the game with a 5–2 record, winners of four straight, and giving quotes to the newspaper asking, “Who is John Carroll?” Eisele pasted the clippings on the bulletin board for motivation. But Syracuse already regretted booking the game because, having anticipated a share of receipts from a good crowd in the big stadium, only 16,724 paid their way in.
That was a damn shame, considering that Shula and Taseff put on a show, one that Shula would be able to live off of, and cash in on, for years to come. He amassed 124 yards on 23 rushes, beating Taseff’s 115 yards on 25 carries, a rare instance when he outshone his roomie, though it was “the bandy-legged senior fullback,” wrote Heaton, who put it away, erasing a 16–7 halftime deficit by taking in two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. The second, a one-yard plunge, put Carroll ahead with a minute to go, after which the defense held off a furious Syracuse comeback attempt.
In his memoirs, this exhilarating victory was the only non-pro game Shula wrote anything about, calling it “the biggest highlight of my career at John Carroll” and “the biggest and best game John Carroll ever played.”7 Gilding that lily, he recalled that he had “tremendous anxiety” before the game, and was knocked so silly on one play that “I had to be dragged off the field.” On the sideline, he was given smelling salts and came back in after missing just one play.
His performance bailed out Eisele, who at halftime raged at the players for so long that they were late returning to the field, incurring a penalty. But when the gun sounded, wrote Heaton, Eisele and “his happy warriors were carried to the dressing room on the arms of several thousand jubilant students.” The Plain Dealer played the victory as a titanic event, splashing page one of the sports section with CARROLL’S LAST-MINUTE SCORE GAINS UPSET OVER SYRACUSE. Heaton gushed about “the courageous Streaks” having “crashed through with a major upset and one of the finest triumphs in the school’s 30 years of football.”
Carroll closed out by beating Baldwin-Wallace 33–25 to go 8–2, the best record in school history. Taseff was the nation’s second-leading scorer, and he made the first-team all-Ohio team, while Shula earned honorable mention. And while it meant little within the national college scene—or even the local scene, given that Ohio State halfback Vic Janowicz won the Heisman Trophy—the good timing of the Syracuse game would pay dividends for both Shula and Taseff. That day, Paul Brown and his coaching staff decided to do some scouting of their own. They came to check out Syracuse, but left humming about Shula.
Knowing nothing of this, Shula completed his studies in the spring, earning his degree. On June 11, 1951, Dan and Mary Shula ventured to Cleveland Heights and found seats close to the stage when their son strode across the stage in his cap and gown for his diploma. He would leave Carroll grateful to the school for keeping him out of the factories. He also left behind any notion that he might join the clergy.
Proving how tenaciously competitive he was, that spring he also ran the anchor leg on Carroll’s 880-yard relay team, which won one meet by setting a school record of 1:33.7. But he had faint hope that someone in the pros would give him a shot, not with so many high-quality guys at the bigger schools capturing the scouts’ attention. Yet that game against Syracuse did more than he could have imagined. It put his fate in the hands of a higher authority, one only slightly less elevated than God.