Larry Little, Anything <i> but</i> Little, Pulled His Weight as Dolphin Guard for 12 Years and Now Coaches, Fittingly, at Little Bethune-Cookman : THE ORIGINAL REFRIGERATOR

Larry Little can’t help but smile a little when someone asks him about the Refrigerator.

If Sid Gillman had followed his hunch, Little, not William Perry, might have been professional football’s original lovable lineman-turned-running back.

Little was a 273-pound tackle when he reported to the San Diego Chargers in 1967 as a free agent from Bethune-Cookman, a small, predominantly black college in downtown Daytona Beach.

“Sid was impressed with my speed,” Little said as he amply filled the chair behind the head football coach’s desk in Bethune-Cookman’s Moore Gymnasium. “I ran a 4.9-second 40 (yards), and he put me at fullback for two days. I told him that was not for me. To tell the truth, I thought that was his way to get me out of there.”

Two years later, Little was traded to the Miami Dolphins, where he spent 12 years as one of the game’s premier offensive guards. He played on three straight Super Bowl teams, in 1971-72-73, the last two of which Miami won when it went 17-0 and 18-2 in successive seasons. Little was named all-NFL on six occasions and captained the Dolphins for 10 years.

“I’ve always been considered the best pulling guard in football,” he said. “But I never thought of myself that way. I considered myself a complete guard, not just a pulling guard.”

He was the 265-pound force--slimmed down by coach Don Shula--who led the sweeps that made household names of Mercury Morris, Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick in the days when the Dolphins averaged more than 2,000 yards a season.

Little retired in 1981 after becoming the first Dolphin inducted into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame.

Now 40, Little is preparing for his fourth year as coach of the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats, the smallest school in the NCAA’s Division I-AA. Enrollment is 1,700. When he took over as coach of his alma mater Jan. 3, 1983, Little had never coached before at any level.

“I knew I would be under a lot of scrutiny but I spent 14 years in the NFL preparing for that day,” he said. “I felt that after 12 years with Don Shula, I had to know a lot about the game. If I hadn’t played under Shula, I would not have been as well prepared, but I had always been a student of the game, and Shula is a teacher. The best.”

In his second season, Little was named Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference coach of the year after the Wildcats went undefeated in league play and finished 7-3 overall. His team posted a 4-4-1 record in 1983 and last season it finished 6-4.

Little would like to be an assistant coach in the National Football League, but he knows how it is to be overlooked. It has happened twice before.

Despite an outstanding high school career as a two-way lineman at Booker T. Washington High in Miami, Little received little attention from recruiters. Only Bethune-Cookman, Florida A&M; and Edward Waters in Jacksonville, all small black colleges, offered him scholarships.

“In 1963, it was rare for a black kid from down south to go to an integrated school,” Little said. “And a 190-pound lineman didn’t attract much attention anywhere. I was a late bloomer in high school, and our team didn’t win many games. We only won 12 games in four years. That all worked against me, so I decided to come up here to B-C.”

At Bethune-Cookman, Little grew, and grew, and grew.

“I was up to 215 my freshman year and over the summer I went to 240,” he said. “I kept getting bigger and bigger. By my senior year I weighed 260.

“I had a heck of a career in college. We never had a losing season and I was the team captain, the MVP, all-conference and on the Ebony Press All-American. I thought sure I would be drafted. One scout told me I might go in the first four rounds.”

Little sat by the phone in his dormitory and waited for the call. And waited. And waited. No one called.

“I was so upset I was actually sick at my stomach after the draft,” he said. “After it was over, I got a call from San Diego and they offered me a $750 bonus. They were in the old AFL.

“If it hadn’t been for the AFL, I might never have had a chance in pro ball. The AFL really started going after athletes from black colleges. At that time, only a very few black college players had made it to the NFL, and mostly they were from Grambling, guys like Tank Younger and Willie Davis.

Two Bethune-Cookman players had played in the NFL before Little--Jack McClairen, an end with the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1955-60 who is now one of Little’s assistants, and Jerry Simmons, an end and running back who was with five teams between 1965 and 1974.

“One NFL coach told me he thought I might have been drafted if I’d been taller,” Little said. “I was 6-1, but they wanted taller guys for the pass rush. Another one said they just didn’t want to take a chance from a school as small as B-C. But I was happy for the opportunity Sid Gillman gave me. I thought $750 was great.”

Miami, another AFL team, contacted Little, but it was too late. He had already signed with the Chargers.

“I would have liked to go back to play in my hometown, but I got there after all,” he said. “It just took a couple of more years.”

In a trade notable for coincidence, Little went to Miami after the 1968 season for cornerback Mark Lamb. Lamb had been Little’s high school teammate at B.T. Washington.

The first thing Shula did was trim 20 pounds off the bulky lineman, getting him down to 265. It wasn’t easy because he enjoyed second and third helpings.

By his second year, though, he was All-Pro as an offensive lineman, a rumbling giant who had become the point guard in the Miami running attack.

“He became a part of the real identity of our team, the good, tough running game,” Shula said. “As time went on, he was a real inspiration for us, not just for the way he always played but also for his influence on our younger players.”

Now Little is attempting to influence younger players to come to Bethune-Cookman and play his type of football.

“All I cared about when I was playing was knocking people off their feet and making them respect me,” he said.

“Now I’m more interested in seeing them get a good education. That’s one reason I took this job, because B-C is a family-oriented school that takes a personal interest in its students. There’s never more than 30 students in a class, so everyone gets personal attention. I sell kids on getting an education.

“I’m a firm believer in getting a degree. I got mine (in sociology) in four years, so I know it can be done. I’m more proud that 14 out of my 16 seniors graduated last year than I am that we had a winning season.”

Little recruits nationally--he even has two players from California--but he concentrates on Florida.

“There are so many good football players in Florida that, if we could keep others out, we’d all be powerhouses.”

Before taking over the task of restoring football prominence to Bethune-Cookman, Little was athletic director at Miami Edison High School, a $25,000 position that also called for teaching classes in global studies and world history.

In 1982, after Bethune-Cookman coach Bobby Frazier was fired when alleged financial irregularities cropped up in the athletic department, Little was chosen from 12 applicants to be his successor.

“It’s been almost 20 years since I came to B-C,” he said at the time. “It’s an honor to be selected at the place I love and feel so close to. I spent four of my greatest years in Daytona Beach.”

Headlines in the Daytona Beach News-Journal read: “The Big Man is Back.”

Little’s biggest concern, as a coach, is not overreacting to player’s mistakes.

“I had to catch myself with the offensive linemen,” he said. “I had done things so many times that I expected kids to do the same thing. I know I was impatient at first, but I think I’ve made the adjustment.

“I’m more critical of mental mistakes than physical. Kids differ in physical abilities so you can excuse them for not being able to do the job sometimes, but there’s no excuse for mental mistakes.”

Little has also made a big impact on Florida with the Gold Coast Summer Camp for underprivileged children he founded in 1970 in Miami. His humanitarian work earned him an honorary degree as doctor of humanities from Biscayne College in 1972.

“I have always wanted to take an active role in my community, a role model if you will, so when I joined the Dolphins I got together with a few teammates to start a summer camp for kids who couldn’t afford the expensive camps in the area.

“We set up a camp for 130 kids on some Boy Scout property in South Beach and were just about out of money when Shula gave us enough to get through the first week. All we had at the time were tents, cots and an idea. Shula also arranged for the Dolphins to hold a scrimmage in the Orange Bowl with the proceeds going to my camp.

“When we got a grant from United Way, we moved off the beach into dormitories at Florida Memorial College, where we’ve been for 13 years. But last year may be the last because United Way dropped out of the program.”

Little doesn’t see many Dolphin games these days, except on TV.

“I hate big crowds,” he said. “I’d rather watch them from my living room.”

And while he watches, he waits . . . for a call from an NFL team that needs an assistant coach.