Food items featuring Dolphins are rare, but not unknown. A few weeks ago “Rummaging Through the Attic” highlighted Don Shula commemorative Coca Cola cans, and today we feature a Wheaties cereal box featuring Dolphin great Nick Buoniconti and his son, Marc. Unlike the cans of Coke, which are housed in a trophy case on the club level of Sun Life Stadium, the Wheaties box is stored in the team’s private archives area. No, there isn’t a food cupboard down there – it’s kept in a sealed, water-tight box, ready to be displayed as needed.
Dolphin fans certainly remember Nick as one of the greatest linebackers ever to play the game. He was a driving force behind the Dolphins’ No-Name defense that helped the team win back-to-back Super Bowls, starting with the 1972 “Perfect Season.” He joined the Dolphins in 1969 after playing seven stellar seasons with the Patriots and had an immediate impact on the team, winning Miami’s Most Valuable Player Award three times (1969-70, 1973) and making two Pro Bowl teams. In 2001 he was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001, and remains the only Dolphin defensive player ever to be enshrined in Canton.
As great a player as Buoniconti was, what he did as a player by itself probably wouldn’t have qualified him for a spot on a Wheaties box. But as will be illustrated shortly, his contributions off the field were even greater than anything he did on it, making him more than worthy of that iconic recognition.
His son, Marc, was a pretty good football player himself until tragedy struck. He earned a scholarship to The Citadel, where he soon carved out a position as a starter on their team. But in his sophomore season , in a game against East Tennessee State, he sustained a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. That’s where he truly exhibited the same fighting spirit that made his dad such a great player, and that wasn’t the only similarity they shared . In addition to working diligently on his rehabilitation, Marc joined his father to found The Miami Project of Cure Paralysis. Together, the Buonicontis made that organization their focus, gathering the finest minds in neuroscience in one place and raising the large amount of funding necessary to support that group’s effort to find a cure for paralysis.
They have helped raised over $350 million for paralysis research, and have seen the Miami Project become been a world-wide leader in that field. Their work has led to significant breakthroughs in paralysis treatment and rehabilitation, developments that have positively impacted the lives of millions of people around the world. Marc and Nick remain immersed in their support of the organization, as they continue to be an inspiration globally with their courage and dedication.
Recognizing the Buonicontis’ impact in such a critical area, and the hope they have given to so many paralyzed victims and their families, in 1997 General Mills, the maker of Wheaties, announced that it would honor Nick and Marc by putting their pictures on the cover of Wheaties boxes that year. And to go along with that, General Mills also announced that they would donate a part of the proceeds from the sale of that box to the Miami Project.
“Many great athletes have been featured on boxes of Wheaties, but none have shown the same extraordinary spirit, the same commitment to win despite adversity, as Nick and Marc Buoniconti,” said Steve Sanger, chairman of General Mills at the time.
“Me on a Wheaties box is representative of all the people with spinal cord injuries,” said Marc. “It represents hope. It makes me tremendously proud of what we have been able to accomplish.”
The boxes proved to be so popular that they flew off supermarket shelves,, especially in the Southeast, and the one in the Dolphin archives is symbolic of the team’s appreciation for the contributions the two Buonicontis have made to a critical area of medicine.
Nick proved he was a winner on the gridiron, and the Dolphins have long recognized and honored all he did to help make Miami the winningest team in football when he played here. But it goes much further than that. The contributions that he and Marc have made to the medical field as humanitarians transcend anything they accomplished as athletes and the entire Dolphin organization is proud and privileged to count them as members of our family.