Many are distancing themselves from real estate mogul/combover cautionary tale/presidential candidate Donald Trump these days.
But former Dolphins coach Don Shula found out first hand how hard it was to do business with him in the early 1980s.
During his USFL years, Trump craved attention, and was willing to spend incredible amounts of money and air to keep his name in the papers. (My inner editor just sent the first four words of that sentence back to me as redundant. But they’re already typed. Carry on).
Via Dave George of the Palm Beach Post, it was October 1983 when Trump approached Don Shula — then in the final year of his deal with the Dolphins — about becoming coach of the New Jersey Generals. Trump announced the negotiations, which ultimately broke down (depending on whose version of the story you believe) over an apartment in Trump Plaza on Fifth Avenue. Of course, the fact Trump leaked the talks himself during the middle of Shula’s season didn’t help the process.
Shula quickly declared himself “no longer interested,” and said: “It really has developed into a huge distraction.”
Naturally, Trump interpreted it differently.
“Don is a good man,” he said. “An excellent guy, really. He just called me to say he was no longer interested, but I could not have done the deal. I could not have given him an apartment in Trump Tower.
“Money is one thing. Gold is another. I wasn’t very enthusiastic over the past few days. There was no way I could part with the apartment. I guess he was a little upset that the apartment thing came out. You know he was interested.”
That prompted Dolphins owner Joe Robbie to blast his rival, saying: “This confirms my impression that Donald Trump has been engaged more in ballyhoo for his grand entrance to the U.S. Football League than in a serious effort to build his franchise competitively by sound, professional management. Headlines in the sports pages and network television can be mighty heady to Fifth Avenue tycoons.”
Shula admitted he had discussed the job with Trump, and he had jumped from the Colts to the Dolphins previously, so it’s not as if the idea was unthinkable. But he had just landed a quarterback named Dan Marino, so walking away for the bright lights of the big city would have been hard anyway.
But working for Trump might have been harder.