In many ways, Nick Buoniconti was a parable of the football culture. He punched above his weight—a low draft choice, theoretically too small to be a pro linebacker, but whose doggedness and toughness landed him in the Hall of Fame. He played hurt, a point of highest praise in his sport, and won two Super Bowl rings. Yet he spent the last four years of his life, before his death at 78 this week, “paying the price,” in his own words—suffering from dementia he believed resulted from more than 500,000 hits to the head during his 14-year professional career.
Yet, to the end, and even having endured the trauma of his son’s paralysis, the result of a college football injury in 1985, Buoniconti insisted that he “always loved” football. “I still do.”
During my six years of covering the NFL, the longest conversation I ever had with Buoniconti was during Super Bowl Week in 1974, when he made clear his realization—and acceptance—of the “athlete’s dilemma,” what author John Weston Parry described in his 2017 book as “sacrificing health for wealth and fame.”
It was five days before the Big Game in Houston, during a post-workout media opportunity on the Dolphins’ practice field as Buoniconti’s Miami Dolphins were preparing to face the Minnesota Vikings. Almost off-handedly, Buoniconti described the pain from three floating chips in his right elbow and how his coach, Don Shula, had just nixed surgery to fix the problem.
“It’s my elbow,” Buoniconti said. “But what can I say? Shula decided that if I had the operation before the Super Bowl, there may have been complications and I wouldn’t be ready to play this week. I’ve learned that it’s a player’s obligation to play.”
His wasn’t the only example that day of football’s split-screen image, a requirement of yeoman strength in juxtaposition to physical disarray. Among Buoniconti’s teammates, safety Jake Scott had five metal screws holding together a broken hand (but joked that the team’s biggest fear was “a lightning storm.”) Guard Bob Kuechenberg had a pin in his right shoulder, cornerback Tim Foley had a pin in his left shoulder and tight end Jim Mandich had a pin in his left hand.
None of them missed the game (won by the Dolphins for a second consecutive Super Bowl title).
Buoniconti had injured his elbow three weeks earlier and aggravated it in the conference title game the following weekend. Because he was having “trouble moving my fingers and there was radiating pain down my arm,” he said, Dolphins’ physician Herbert Virgin agreed to operate immediately.
Except: “Well, after the [conference championship] game that night,” Buoniconti said, “I dropped into King Arthur’s Place [a Miami bar/restaurant] and saw Shula there and he offered to buy me a beer. I said I couldn’t, that I had to be going. Shula asked, ‘Where?’ I said, ‘I’m going over to the hospital to get the bone chips taken out of my elbow.’ Shula said, ‘What?!’”
Shula summoned Virgin, two other physicians and Buoniconti for a consultation that, according to Buoniconti, went like this: “There were five people there and one man, Shula, decided I shouldn’t have the operation. You know, we decided. But we really didn’t. Shula will probably give me hell for saying this stuff.”
Likely, Buoniconti—a two-time all-pro—was protected from discipline over that loose-lips moment for the same reason Shula blocked his medical care: Shula needed Buoniconti in the Super Bowl.
My phone call to Virgin later that day brought the doctor’s refusal to discuss the situation. “I am under strictest orders from the coach not to discuss this unless [Shula] gives permission,” he said. Shula denied any interference. “Did Virgin say he couldn’t discuss this?” Shula said. “Well, anything that’s of a confidential nature within our team, we prefer to keep it that way.”
Virgin later called back to say he in fact had permission to explain that “it’s no big deal. Nick can’t injure himself further. If it bothers him during the game, we’ll just give him some Darvon, and that’s only glorified aspirin.” (Darvon was banned by the FDA in 2010 because of heart risks.)
There are endless examples similar to Shula’s stiff-arm response to prioritizing health over football, and Buoniconti acknowledged as much that day.
“We all know this stuff about having arthritis 20 years from now,” he said then. “But, heck, I understand that football players don’t live past 50, anyway, because of their injuries and because they tend to be overweight as soon as they finish competing. But I’m not thinking of 20 years from now. I’m thinking of Sunday.”
He was 33 at the time and he lived past 50. By 28 years. But there was a football price.