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Perhaps no player took more pride in wearing the Miami Dolphin uniform than Larry Little. He was the only player from South Florida on the Dolphin roster during the team’s championship years of the early 1970s. Little’s journey to the Hall of Fame began in Miami’s Overtown section. He grew up during a time of segregation when blacks and whites were separated by Jim Crow laws. During his childhood, there were no Miami Dolphins or any professional team in Miami. Little wasn’t even considered the best player on the football team at Booker T. Washington High School. His high school coach James “Dean Blue” Everett described Little as a “timid kid” when he first went out for football.
Because Florida’s colleges and universities were segregated in the early 1960s, there were no scholarship offers from Miami, Florida or Florida State. Even the state’s top black college program Florida A&M showed no interest. Instead, Little ended up at Bethune Cookman College, a small school in Daytona Beach. It was at Bethune Cookman where Little grew from a raw talent in high school into a physically and mentally mature college football player. He got bigger, stronger and developed into an All Conference selection. Most importantly, he became more confident and realized he could someday play at the highest level.
Despite a very good college career, Little went undrafted. He signed a free agent contract with the San Diego Chargers in 1967. Little made the team and played 2 seasons in San Diego. Although the Charger coaching staff discovered Little’s talent, they never envisioned the enormous potential he would later display in his career. In 1969, the Chargers traded Little to the Miami Dolphins for defensive back Mack Lamb, who was Little’s teammate at Miami’s Booker T. Washington High School. The trade barely made any headlines in Miami and only received a couple of small paragraphs in the Miami Herald.
The turning point in Little’s career came when the Dolphins hired Don Shula as their new head coach in 1970. One of the key member’s Shula’s staff was offensive line coach Monte Clark, who was a master of developing talent. Under the tutelage of Clark, Little along with his teammates Jim Langer, Bob Kuechenberg, Norm Evans and Wayne Moore went from rejects from other teams into the NFL’s best offensive line. He was a devastating blocker as a pulling guard on sweeps and was equally adept as a pass protector. In 12 seasons with the Dolphins, Little was a 5-time Pro Bowl selection and a member of 3 AFC championship teams, 2 Super Bowl championship teams and the only undefeated team in NFL history. After his football career, he went on to become a longtime employee in the Dade County Public School system. He served as athletic director at Miami Edison High School in the early 1980s. Little later returned to his alma mater as head coach at Bethune-Cookman from 1983 to 1991. He also coached the Ohio Glory of the World League of American Football. Little was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993. To read more article about the Orange Bowl, visit us at https://www.facebook.com/
