Claim: Every season, whenever the last remaining undefeated NFL team lost its first game, all the surviving members of the 1972 Miami Dolphins opened bottles of champagne in celebration.
Example:[Collected on the Internet, 2005]
There is a tradition sometimes reported that every living member of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins team continues to buy a bottle of 1972 champagne and put it on ice at the beginning of every football season. According to the tradition, the very moment time expires in the game that causes the last remaining undefeated team to finally lose, the Dolphins all pop open their bubbly in celebration, content in the knowledge their achievement will remain unmatched for at least one more season.
Origins: In
1972, the National Football League's Miami Dolphins breezed through fourteen regular-season games undefeated, then won two playoff matches and Super Bowl VII to accomplish what no other NFL team had achieved before: a perfect season.
The uniqueness and longevity of the 1972 Dolphins' perfect record has led to the legend of the champagne celebration — that each surviving member of that 1972 squad puts away a bottle of bubbly at the beginning of every NFL season, which they all open in simultaneous toasts the moment the last remaining undefeated team loses its first game of the season.
Lesser versions of the legend have only some of the players reuniting with their former head coach, Don Shula, later in the day to engage in a celebratory toast to the continuation of their record:
By now you know the petty little tradition. On the day the NFL's last remaining unbeaten goes down to defeat, a handful of '72 Dolphins, led by their head coach Don Shula, get together to toast their 17-0 perfect season and thank the football gods that their unique claim to fame has lasted yet another year.
But, according to Don Shula himself, no such organized celebration takes place:
That's probably the most-talked-about thing that just doesn't happen. We've got players scattered all across the country. Nick Buoniconti, Bob Griese and Dick Anderson all live in Coral Gables, and they'll go to a parking lot and open a bottle of champagne, but those three are too cheap to invite the rest of us down there.
Jim Riley, a defensive end on the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins, also noted that the champagne toast rumor merely referenced a one-time gathering of three of his former teammates:
Riley, a member of that unbeaten Miami team, said the toast to perfection never occurs.
"That all got started by three guys, Garo Yepremian, Nick Buonticonti and Dick Anderson," said Riley. "And they only did it one time."
Despite the urban legend to the contrary, the 1972 ’Phins do not gather as a team, but Riley said the players continue to wish for the last-standing undefeated team to go down.
The greatest threats to the Dolphins' 1972 record initially came in 1998 and 2005, when the Denver Broncos and the Indianapolis Colts, respectively, both won their first thirteen games of the season. (The NFL expanded from a 14-game season to a 16-game season in 1978.) Were all the 1972 Miami Dolphins planning to celebrate the Colts' first loss of 2005 with champagne? Not according to Shula:
We've been accused of being angry, old men and just hoping and praying that the last team would lose, and that's not true. If the Colts do it, I'd be the first guy to call [Colts head Coach Tony] Dungy and congratulate him, and I'm sure our players would congratulate their players.
Both the 1998 Broncos and the 2005 Colts teams fell short of perfection after their 13-0 starts, dropping their next two games and ending up 14-2. The New England Patriots, however, bested both of those teams and matched the Dolphins' achievement of a perfect regular season by winning all sixteen of their games in 2007. But the Patriots faltered in their pursuit of maintaining an unblemished record all the way through the post-season when they lost Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants.
Last updated: 3 February 2008
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