Dan Marino confident and heart felt at his induction

By Hugo Guzman  |   Monday, August 08, 2005  |  Comments( 0 )

Miami Dolphins
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I'm sure that most of you are "Dan Marino"ed out after a week of tributes and festivities. However, I felt the need to touch upon a few key facets of yesterday's induction ceremony, so please bear with me. Oh and by the way, I think there's some preseason game on tonight.

Anyway, from beginning to end, the Dan Marino presentation was impressive. Marino's son was extremely eloquent and seemed focused on sharing with the football world about how his father's life away from the Miami Dolphins is what makes Marino a great man. There was a lot of love and heartfelt admiration in the young man's voice. The son then gave way to the father.

Dan Marino spoke for 18 minutes (8 minutes more than his allotted time). He was funny, confident, humble, and jubilant all at the same time. It looked like he had to choke back tears a couple of times, but I new that big bad Danny boy wasn't going to burst out in tears. He's just too damn tough for that.

What struck me the most about his speech is how his almost intimidating toughness and directness poured through. I've heard many media members and former teammates talk about how they almost feared Dan Marino because of his aura of confidence and strength. That characteristic seemed to shine through on several instances. For example, after taking a moment to thank the less-than-popular current owner of the Miami Dolphins, Wayne Huizinga, he seemed to glare at the audience and said "That's right". It was as if he was letting everyone know that he stood behind Huizinga and that he would be more than happy to have words with anyone who might think differently.

He displayed that confidence and directness at the end of the speech as well. He asked one of his sons to toss him a football, demanded that Mark Clayton get up and run a route right in between the fans, then tossed him a picture perfect pass. There was only way to describe this finale..."freakin awesome".

I was really proud of Dan, and I was really proud of the thousands of fans who saved up their money so that they could overrun Canton (at Dan's request) to cheer Dan Marino into immortality. Way to go "Danny". You made us all proud.
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About Hugo Guzman

Trying to bring an objective approach to NFL analysis.
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