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Dan Marino Resigns as Dolphins' Senior Vice President
Dan Marino leaves Miami's front office after only three weeks.
Dan Marino resigned as senior vice president of the Miami Dolphins on Tuesday, only three weeks after accepting a job that brought him back to the team he quarterbacked for 17 seasons.
"I have decided that it would not be in the best interests of either my family or the Dolphins to assume the role as the team's senior vice president of football operations," Marino said in a statement released by the team.
Marino played for the Dolphins from 1983-99 and took them to the 1985 Super Bowl, which they lost to San Francisco. He holds NFL records with 61,361 yards passing and 420 touchdown passes.
Marino and team owner Wayne Huizenga had often discussed the notion of the franchise favorite's return to the Dolphins, and the marquee move of an offseason front-office shake-up seemed to be Marino's hiring.
"I am disappointed in Dan's decision, especially since I think he would have made an outstanding football executive," Huizenga said. "But I understand his reasons, and I support his decision to reorder the priorities in his life."
A telephone message left at Marino's home was not immediately returned. A woman who answered the phone and refused to give her name said Marino was out of town and could not be reached, although Huizenga said he and Marino met Tuesday afternoon in his South Florida office.
The Dolphins created a new position for Marino, who had planned to leave his analyst jobs at CBS Sports and HBO to come back to the Dolphins. Marino is scheduled to tape a Super Bowl wrapup show for HBO's "Inside the NFL" in New York on Wednesday. The show was to be his last as a network commentator before joining the Dolphins.
Huizenga said the Dolphins will begin searching for "a senior executive who has an extensive football background" to join Miami's management team and oversee football operations. It has not been determined if that person would have the same title Marino was given in his short stint as an executive.
The organizational reshuffling came after Huizenga stripped head coach Dave Wannstedt of final say in personnel matters, a move prompted by two straight seasons without a playoff appearance.
After a lengthy search for a general manager, during which at least seven candidates were interviewed, the team chose to promote Rick Spielman from senior vice president to GM. Spielman, though, would report to Marino, who was placed behind only Huizenga and team president Eddie Jones in the Dolphins' executive hierarchy.
Marino said at that same news conference that it had "been a dream" to return to the Dolphins, and that he felt like he was returning home.
"I knew it would involve a significant lifestyle change but after further reflection, it became clear that those adjustments were ones that my family and I are not prepared to make at this time," Marino said in the statement.
Through the team's media relations office, Spielman and Wannstedt both declined requests for comment.
None of the spurned GM candidates will be interviewed to replace Marino in the front office, Huizenga said. Neither will Ron Wolf, the former Green Bay GM who was unsuccessfully wooed by the Dolphins and eventually hired last month as a personnel specialist by the Cleveland Browns.
"We need a football person here," Huizenga said.
At the Jan. 12 news conference announcing Marino's hiring, Huizenga seemed angered by a question about the perception the move was little more than cosmetic and that Marino was moving into a "figurehead" position.
"Here's a guy who's on CBS and HBO and making four jillion dollars a year to work there," Huizenga said. "He's not going to quit a job like that to come here for somebody to say it's just a figurehead job. This is serious business here."
Source: AP
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