Don Shula didn't know that Monday marked his 50th anniversary.

He didn't object to the reminder.

On Feb. 18, 1958, Virginia announced that Shula had joined the staff of new Cavaliers' football coach Dick Voris.

"It was my first coaching job," said Shula, contacted Tuesday through Shula's Steakhouse in Miami Lakes, Fla. "How could I forget?"

Shula was an assistant at UVa for one year before moving to Kentucky, where he joined one of his former NFL coaches, Blanton Collier. After one year at Kentucky, he took a job as a defensive assistant with the Detroit Lions and began an NFL career that ended with a record 347 regular-season victories.

"I was a player for seven years in the NFL," Shula, 78, said. "My last year was with the Redskins in '57 and, after the season, I went to a coaching convention. I saw this guy who used to coach me, Frank Lauterbur.

"He said he was good friends with a guy who had just gotten the job at Virginia, Dick Voris, who was looking to put together a staff. I was near the end of my playing career, so he said, 'I'll have Dick call you.' Dick called me and I took the job over the phone."

Shula was single at the time, but, by the time preseason practice had started, he had married his first wife, Dorothy, with whom he remained until her death in 1991.

"We got married that summer and had everything we owned in a '57 Mercury," Shula said. "Honeymooned, and then went down and moved into a furnished apartment right around the corner from the old [Memorial] gym."

Shula, who had gone to John Carroll University in his native Cleveland, was on the sidelines when Virginia embarked on a 28-game losing streak that lasted from 1958 until 1960.

"We were what, 1-9 [or] 1-10?" said Shula, hailed by associates for his keen memory. "We beat Duke. I remember that. Don't lay a winless season on me."

One of the most memorable players for Virginia during that era was Sonny Randle, a wide receiver who later spent 11 seasons in the NFL and was the head coach at Virginia from 1974-75.

"Now, Sonny," Shula said. "He was my guy."

That's not exactly how Randle remembers it.

"Don was the secondary coach," said Randle, who lives outside Staunton "He couldn't make me a defensive back because I wouldn't hit anybody, but he was the best thing to happen to me. I remember telling people, 'Boy, he'll be a short-timer here.'"

It took one game for Shula to get Randle's attention -- the opening game of the 1958 season, when the Cavaliers lost 20-15 at Clemson.

"They used 100-some players and we used about 15," Randle said. "I was all beat up on Monday and they called for the first team out at practice. I stayed on the sideline because I had a lot of things wrong with me.

"Shula said, 'Where's Randle?' They said, 'He's over there on the sideline.' He yelled over there and said, 'Get your [butt] out there,' and, right in front of everybody, he said, 'What's wrong with you?'

"I thought he wanted me to tell him what was wrong with me and I did. I had an ankle, had a damned knee, had a thigh, had an ankle bruise. I was telling him all that was wrong with me.

"He looked at me and said, 'I'm going to tell you something, son. Anybody can play when there's nothing wrong with them, but you separate the good ones from the bad ones when you can play hurt.' Damned if I didn't get a whole lot better in a hurry."

Shula chuckled at the retelling of his exchange with Randle about playing hurt.

"I used that one a few times over the years," Shula said.

At the time of his departure for Kentucky after the 1958 season, Shula had not decided if his future would be in college or pro football. He had a meteoric rise in the profession and was named head coach of the Baltimore Colts in 1963, when he was 33.

"I just wanted to coach and teach," Shula said. "As a player, I was always interested in the overall scheme, why we were being asked what we were asked to do."

Shula said he's never been back to Charlottesville -- "It's a little bit out of the way," he said -- but he remembers a well-groomed golf course (Farmington Country Club) on the outskirts of town.

"We never got to play there," he said. "The only place we played was a little course with sand greens."

He probably could get a tee time at Farmington now.