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Everything connected to a dollar sign seemed shrunken that first AFL season.

The dozens of players spoken to for this story found myriad ways to point out that original club owner Joe Robbie (the Minneapolis lawyer who’d begged, borrowed and borrowed more for the $7.5 million franchise fee) held onto money as if it held the secret to all eternity.

Once during the season, Auer was asked to pick up the team’s uniforms from a Coral Gables dry cleaner. They hadn’t been prepaid, so he ponied up the $150.

“I had a struggle getting my money back from the Dolphins,” he said.

Once, a National Airlines team charter was held up on the tarmac because Robbie owed the airline $10,000.

Robbie released veteran running back Casares on the spot after three games because of an ankle injury. Casares had just been named Dolphin player of the week in a weekly award.

“Cut me so he wouldn’t have to pay me,” Casares said. “As I rode out of Miami, I looked at the billboard, and my picture was up.”

Claimed Goode, the old center: “On the road for an exhibition game, they told us we couldn’t turn our covers back [on the beds] because they might charge us extra.”

(Sometimes truth and humor arrive at the same point, don’t they?)

Robbie used to party, man. A fawning, drinking entourage would accompany him on team flights. “A bunch of damned people who shouldn’t have been on that plane,” recalled guard Billy Neighbors, the team’s union rep. “Robbie was a damn nut. Just weird as hell.”

With his players, though, frugality reigned. Said receiver Frank Jackson:

“Robbie was concerned about going broke weekly.”

TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

The Originals went every which way, just like the rest of us.

Many have impressive titles now, like Doug Moreau, district attorney of Baton Rouge Parish, and Billy Hunter, director of the NBA Players Association. Most are long out of the spotlight, retired with grandkids.

The Originals carry their 1966 distinction differently.

To a few, it is so distant or was so fleeting as to be nearly inconsequential, half a lifetime later. Former safety Willie West said, “It was a job. It’s a forgotten part of my life. I don’t reflect on it at all. It’s a non-entity.”

Most, by far, feel differently.

Linebacker Tom Emanuel, then the only rookie starter on defense and now 63, appeared on the front of Sports Illustrated – the franchise’s first coverboy.

“That season and team is always in back of my mind. It was a great honor,” he said. “I always tell people, ‘I played with the Dolphins before Don Shula.’ We were very much forgotten. I’m proud to say I’m one of the originals.”

Safety Bob Neff: “When people find out I played ball, first thing I say is that I was on the original Miami Dolphins. It means something to me.”

And Maxie Williams, an original offensive lineman: “I’ve always thought, ‘Hey, I helped start that.’ You always carry a little piece of the franchise.”

LaVerne Torczon, almost 70, is nearly blind from pituitary tumors. But when he