A liar? Quitter? A raging fraud? greasy, dishonorable and cowardly, Wow, just for starters

[Tigermike 3,055]

IN MY OPINION

The anti-Shula bails out as a greasy, dishonorable coward

BY DAN LE BATARD

dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com

Angry and embarrassed, Don Shula descended from the high ground where he almost always resides, the king shamed by the slick court jester who had soiled his throne.

''He has run away from the challenge,'' Shula said of Nick $aban.

A liar?

''It's unbelievable,'' Shula said. ``There were four or five direct statements that were blatant lies. That tells you a little bit about the guy.''

Quitter?

''That's obvious,'' Shula said. ``He quit. He left.''

A raging fraud?

''What other conclusion can you draw?'' Shula said. ``The guy likes to hear himself talk and then doesn't follow up on what he says.''

Shula, always a pillar of honor and integrity, watched in horror Wednesday as his beloved franchise was held hostage by a man who has very little of either. The punctuation on the Nick $aban Error is greasy, dishonorable and cowardly. You know what he was as Dolphins coach? A failure. A loser. A gasbag. And one of the worst investments Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga has ever made. There has been nothing in franchise history that came with more expectations and fewer results than this hypocrite who fled at the end to avoid the hard questions one last time.

The tombstone on his Dolphins career reads, ``Talked like a warrior, acted like a weasel.''

Maybe $aban would be better off in college. Because, in the pros the last few days, he looked like an amateur.

He will be remembered in these parts as a quitter and a liar. He leaves the franchise in last place, with what used to be his good name somehow far lower than that. He was, at the end, literally unbelievable. And for this he'll get a raise and more job security in Alabama. Makes you wonder what USC's Pete Carroll or Ohio State's Jim Tressel are worth.

UM's Larry Coker, a decent man, gets fired for his one championship. $aban, a duplicitous one, gets one of the most lucrative jobs in college football, the stacks of cash piled so high that he can't even hear over them as South Florida makes jokes about Nick Satan, Bene-nick Arnold, and the Crimson Lied.

$aban could have fixed his sinking reputation Wednesday if he had that mental toughness he is always sermonizing about. We have the meandering spiel memorized by now. About ''competitive character'' and ''overcoming adversity'' and blah, blah, blah. You preached it, Nick, with the polish of a snake-oil salesman. But you didn't live it. At the end, you ran away and hid.

Miami, 6-10 against an easy schedule, was swept this year by younger teams in its division -- the Jets and Bills. The team isn't better than when $aban arrived, just older. What little winning $aban has done has been with players left for him by Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstedt. What's the best decision $aban has made in two years? Can you name one? His first two years, on average, were exactly the same as the last two that got Wannstedt demoted and then gone.

So it makes sense that he would lack hope. But when his players are losing, he asks them to be proud and fight and overcome, even though what they do hurts a hell of a lot more than what he does. But now he runs away from this fight -- to be a dictator to kids who question less and have less power to challenge him. Of course he'd go. It's a good deal easier. And a new crowd eager for a savior can hear his hot-air speeches about being a gladiator.

$aban made Huizenga look like a public fool with all his condescending recent talk of integrity, reprimanding reporters at every turn while his agent secretly kept taking slimy calls from Alabama in the shadows. Then he left Huizenga to answer the hard questions for him Wednesday. Makes you wonder, too: Huizenga and his lawyers went after Ricky Williams and his money with cutthroat zeal, and Williams is still paying him back. But $aban just broke a contract, too. There are no outs in $aban's contract to go back to the minor leagues. Why no punitive measures for him?

''The best way to disrespect somebody is to just walk away from them,'' $aban once said.

The best way to disrespect somebody is to just walk away from them.

It is one of the many quotes that will come back to haunt him, and stain him permanently.

$aban gave up when things got hard, quit the sidelines in a game in which he's always pushing others to be tougher. He'll file it under ''family'' and ''lifestyle'' today as a diluter, in search of understanding and less volume, but it rings hollow because you can't believe anything the man says about this situation. You think he'd be leaving if he were 13-3?

$aban, infomercial sermonizer, always talked a lot about loyalty and integrity and toughness. But, in the end, these were not his guides.

They were only the kinds of things he demanded of others.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sport...rd/16378669.htm

[Ranger12 46]

Coach Shula just said everything I have been saying about $aban. He quit when faced with a challenge. He is going to handle Tuscaloser just fine.

[saniflush 0]

You shoulda heard Shula Sr. this morning on Mike & Mike in the morning!