He was a household name in the late 1960s and early 1970s if you knew anything about football, especially the NFL. He was the driving force behind the Miami Dolphins famous "No-Name Defense." Nick Buoniconti was a linebacker with the Miami Dolphins and in 1972 they accomplished something no other team has done before or since...go undefeated. He helped the Dolphins win two Super Bowls and was eventually inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, deservedly so. For years afterward he became a hero off the field and co-hosted one of the most watched sports features on television HBO's NFL highlights show. Nick passed away this week at the age of 78 from a disease that has now been associated with football, CTE, a degenerative brain disorder he'd struggled with in recent years. Nick agreed to donate his brain to science for study after his death. But that's only part of his heroic legacy.
In 1985 Nick's son Marc, while playing football for The Citadel, made a tackle and never got up (without help) a spinal cord injury paralyzed him from the shoulders down. Nick's reaction after the initial sorrow and shock was to--as the old saying goes--took lemons and made lemonade. He got together with old teammates, Coach Don Shula (Miami Dolphins head coach) and business leaders, doctors and others to create The Miami Project. As this project came to fruition, Nick sealed his place in Heaven as a true example of doing God's work. The full name is The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and there's the separate Buoniconti Fund as the major fund raiser.
The project is a spinal cord injury research center and a designated Center of Excellence at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. It is now the world's largest comprehensive spinal cord injury (SCI) research center dedicated to finding more effective treatments, and ultimately, a cure for paralysis. The facility now includes more than 250 scientists, researchers and clinicians. The work is paying off big time. A few seasons back a New York Jets player sustained a severe neck injury and thanks to the new techniques developed, the player's neck was immediately packed in ice to prevent the spinal cord from swelling. The swelling inside the confined space of the neck/spinal bones is what damages the cord and causes paralysis that can be only temporary but in too many cases, permanent. The player, in this case, did not suffer permanent paralysis. Ten years or so earlier that may not have been the case.
The Miami Project follows in the footsteps of great medical projects by men who cared deeply about their fellow human beings like entertainer Danny Thomas who established St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis. Just as an aside, when St. Jude opened children who developed leukemia pretty much were under a death sentence. Mortality rate was in the 90 percentile range or more. Within ten years it was in the 50 percentile and today it's somewhere in the 80 percentile or better. And they both started with basically one man's dream. Thomas died in 1991 and insisted on being buried on the St. Jude campus because he considered it his greatest accomplishment. I have no idea if Nick wants to be buried on the campus of his brainchild but it seems appropriate unless there's a family plot. But wherever it is, we should pay homage to it and to him. Most of us can only dream of leaving a legacy like St. Jude or The Miami Project but thank God we have men or women who do.
To Nick Buoniconti, sir, go with God!