By BOB BARNETT

Reprinted, Courtesy PFRA

 

If you asked the average Pittsburgh Steelers fan to pick the greatest victory in franchise history, the majority of the selections would be either the 1972 AFC playoff win over the Oakland Raiders, which was made possible by Franco Harris’ “Immaculate Reception,” or maybe the 1974 AFC Championship Game, or any one of the Super Bowls.

 

They would be wrong on any of the above.             

 

All of those victories, great as they were, were won when the Steelers were winners and the victory was just one more in an otherwise successful season. It is easy to win when you are already a winner. Great victories are won by underdogs, by outmanned losers who, with the stink of defeat around them, rise up and smite their heavily favored opponent. Kind of the David and Goliath thing.

 

Based on that criteria, for the Pittsburgh Steelers, their greatest victory occurred on a cold Dec. 1 in 1952.

 

You might argue with that. You might even say I’m a little prejudiced because I saw that game as a 9-year-old at his first pro football game. But consider this: all the elements for a great victory were in place. The Steelers certainly did stink and their opponents were truly Goliaths – the Eastern Conference-leading New York Giants.

 

You might argue that the Steelers weren’t actually that bad back in 1952 despite going into the Giants game with a 3-6 record. They had lost twice to the co-conference leading Cleveland Browns by one point each time, and had lost three other games by a total of 15 points. In fact, they might just as easily have been 8-1 – except they were losers.

 

The Steelers were a tough, physical team with a defense led by ends Bill McPeak and George Tarasovic, tackle Ernie Stautner and safety Jack Butler. The offense was led by quarterback Jim Finks, halfbacks Ray Mathews and Lynn Chandnois, fullbacks Ed Modzelewski and Fran Rogel, along with veteran end Elbie Nickel.

 

The Steelers’ coach that year was Joe Bach. Bach had previously coached the Steelers in 1935-1936 but had been fired by owner Art Rooney. Rooney, who had been the best man at Bach’s wedding, rehired Bach just before the 1952 season began. Bach changed the Steelers’ offense from an old-fashioned, hard-nosed, single-wing to a modern passing T-formation.

 

“We always had real great personnel with the Steelers, but lousy coaching,” recalled Chandnois, a halfback on the team from 1950-1956. “Now Bach was a good coach, and he was starting to turn the team around in 1952.”

 

Going into the game with the Steelers, the Giants had a 6-3 record and were in a three-way tie with the Cleveland Browns and Philadelphia Eagles for first place in the Eastern Division. Interestingly enough, that weekend’s games matched the three top teams in the division vs. the three bottom teams. It was Cleveland vs. Washington, Philadelphia vs. Chicago Cardinals and the Steelers vs. Giants.

 

The Giants’ defense was loaded, with tackles Al DeRogatis and Arnie Weinmeister, cornerback Em Tunnell, and someone named Tom Landry also was in the secondary. The offense, which had been the team’s weak link, featured the NFL’s leading ground gainer in fullback Ed Price, plus halfback Kyle Rote and quarterback Charlie Conerly.

 

Despite their overall strength as a team, injuries had been a problem for the Giants that season, and Conerly was a questionable starter for the Steelers game with a bruised shoulder. Rookie halfback Frank Gifford remained behind in New York to nurse a leg injury.

 

During the night of Nov. 30 and on into the early-morning hours of Dec. 1, the first snow of the winter fell. Game day was one of those beautiful early winter days that occur in Western Pennsylvania when the temperature hovers just around the 30 degree mark and the snow is just damp enough to stick to everything.

 

My father woke me early that Sunday morning because the normal one-hour drive from our home in West Virginia’s northern panhandle would double because of the snow. I did not have to worry about my father cancelling the trip; my uncle had given us reserved seat tickets almost on the field at the goal line, and football fever was upon him.

 

The drive to Pittsburgh was fun. My father repeated all his old high school football stories, for about the 10th time. But I loved those stories, and with each story I egged him on, demanding more detail. Lunch at The Clock restaurant, only a short walk from old Forbes Field, completed our pregame ritual.

 

The field looked beautiful. The grounds keepers had carefully removed the tarp with the snow on top and had piled the snow around the edge of the playing surface. The grass looked like an emerald in a snow-white setting.

 

I really can’t remember much about the game, except the opening kickoff, which in fact set the tone for the whole game.

 

Chandnois, however, remembered the game clearly, particularly the opening kickoff. “The trouble with kickoff return men today is that they stand there and wait for the ball to come down. I liked to take the ball on the run. In fact the pitchers mound in Forbes Field was just to the side of the line, and I used to like to stand on the mound to get a good start down hill.”

 

The Giants kicked off, and true to form Chandnois caught the ball on the dead run at the 9-yard line. Not a single Giants player touched him. It was a 91-yard kick-off return for a touchdown. Exactly 17 seconds into the game the Steelers had a 7-0 lead. The Steelers rang up a second touchdown by Chandnois in the first quarter, and they scored twice in the second quarter on passes from Jim Finks to Elbie Nickel (21 yards) and to Ray Mathews (42 yards).

 

The situation looked bad for the Giants.

 

Then disaster struck the visitors from New York. Both Conerly, the starting quarterback, and backup quarterback Fred Benners were injured during the first half. In those days, NFL teams only carried two quarterbacks. Even Kyle Rote, who had served as an insurance quarterback in such emergencies, had been knocked out of the game with a concussion.

 

The second half quarterback duties fell to Tom Landry, who had handled the ball only as a punter and defensive back.

 

The third quarter was played evenly with both teams scoring a touchdown. The Giants score came on a 70-yard flea-flicker pass from Landry.

 

But the final quarter was a nightmare for the Giants. The Steelers scored four unanswered touchdowns: one on a blocked kick, one on a short run following a Landry fumble, and two on passes. Near the end of the game, the Steelers even toyed with the Giants by putting linebacker Jerry Shipkey in at fullback and defensive back Jack Butler in at flanker.

 

The 63-7 final score clearly reflected the devastation of the Giants. Not only were the Steelers an offensive machine that day, but the defense also intercepted seven passes, recovered two fumbles, scored on a blocked punt, and crushed the Giants physically. “We always played the Giants tough,” recalled Chandnois, “but in that game we couldn’t do anything wrong.”

 

At a press conference on Monday, Giants’ coach Steve Owen confessed he would have problems fielding a team for the next game because of injuries inflicted by the Steelers. Owen also told the press he would have to split the quarterback duties between Landry and Kyle Rote.

 

Landry finished the season with 11 completions in 47 attempts for an anemic 23 percent completion rate, and the seven interceptions he threw compounded the problem. He never played quarterback again.

 

For the Giants, the loss to the Steelers ruined their chance to win the Eastern Division championship. The loss to Pittsburgh put them one-game behind the Browns with two to play, and then a Giants loss to the cellar-dwelling Redskins, 27-17, the following week clinched the championship for the Browns.

 

For the Steelers the rout of the Giants was the high point of the 1952 season. They split their last two games to finish the season with a 5-7 record.

 

For my father and me, it was a perfect day. After all, how many times does a person get to see his favorite team’s greatest victory ever.

 Blount set the standard for NFL CBs

 

By DON SMITH

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

Mel Blount joined the Pittsburgh Steelers as a third-round draft selection in 1970. He played for 14 seasons before retiring after the 1983 campaign. During his career, he was hailed as the prototype cornerback of his era and a major reason why the Steelers were the dominant team of the National Football League in the 1970s.

 

Throughout his pro football career, Blount's goals were quite simple. "I didn't want to be second to anyone," he said. "I wanted to set the standards for my position."

 

Proof that Blount accomplished what he set out to do came with his election in his first year of eligibility to the Pro Football Hall of Fame's class of 1989.

 

The 6-foot-3, 205-pound Blount without question was one of the finest athletes on a team loaded with outstanding talent. He could run the 40 in 4.5 and outlast everyone on the treadmill test every day. Olympics hurdling star Renaldo Nehemiah performed an excellent standing vertical jump. Even though he was wearing wing-tipped shoes and a three-piece suit, Blount leaped several inches above Renaldo's mark.

 

"When you create a cornerback, the mold is Mel Blount," Steelers linebacker Jack Ham, a 1988 Hall of Fame enshrinee, marveled. "I played in a lot of Pro Bowls. I never saw a cornerback like him. He was the most incredible athlete I have ever seen. With Mel, you could take one wide receiver and just write him off. He could handle anybody in the league."

 

"Size, speed, quickness, toughness -- that's what Mel had," quarterback Terry Hanratty said. "If you gave Blount free rein to hit you, you were in trouble because, if he missed, he had the speed to catch up. A lot of receivers got short arms when they were in Mel's territory."

 

Success, however, did not come immediately for Blount. He started his rookie campaign returning kickoffs, and he averaged 29.7 yards on 18 returns, but when John Rowser was injured in the fifth game in 1970, Mel was forced into the regular lineup for the rest of the year.

 

He was a semi-regular again in 1971, but his play left much to be desired. Miami's Paul Warfield burned him on touchdown receptions of 12, 86 and 60 yards in a 24-21 Dolphins' victory. Many other receivers were having similar success against Blount. Impatient Steelers fans gave him a hard time, and even Blount admitted: "Yeah, I thought about quitting. I thought a whole lot about it."

 

After the season, Blount went back to the family farm near Vidalia, Ga., where he was born on April 10, 1948. This was the home from which Blount, one of nine children, migrated to Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., to play college football. At Southern, he starred as both a safety and a cornerback and was his team's Most Valuable Player his junior and senior seasons. In 1969, he was named to All-America teams by The Sporting News, Pro Scouts and Pittsburgh Courier.

 

"As I had time to sort things out," Blount remembers, "I realized that the football I had played at Southern hadn't given me the background I needed for pro football. In college, the game was so much less complex, but more physical. It was played on natural ability and very little else."

 

Once Blount recognized the reasons for his slow start in the NFL, his attitude changed. "I had to realize every mistake I made was a lesson," he explained. "Instead of thinking about how many times I had been beaten, I decided to think of how many lessons I had learned."

 

A groin muscle tear limited his playing time in the 1972 preseason but the Steelers' defensive backfield coach, Bud Carson, decided Blount was ready to take over as the starting right cornerback. "I know Mel is an outstanding prospect," Carson said. "He has great ability and speed. He shows all the physical requisites to be as good as anyone in the league."

 

The turnabout in Blount's play was phenomenal. He didn't let a single receiver beat him for a touchdown in 1972.

 

"I owe it all to Bud Carson," Blount acknowledged. "He gave me something no one else on the staff ever did -- he helped me believe in myself."

 

Once he was established on the first team, Blount began to contribute in a major way. In 1975, his fourth year as a starter, he was named the NFL's Most Valuable Defensive Player by Associated Press. He was a consensus All-Pro and selected to play in his first Pro Bowl. Even though he missed all of the 1977 preseason because of a contract dispute, Blount was All-Pro that year and again in 1981. In the seven-season span between 1975 and 1981, Blount played in five Pro Bowls and was All-AFC four times. With two interceptions, he was named the Most Valuable Player in the 1977 Pro Bowl.

 

Blount, who had at least one interception in each of his 14 seasons, wound up with 57 to rank first in franchise history in the category. With 11 interceptions in his banner 1975 campaign, Blount became the first Steelers player to lead the NFL in interceptions since Bill Dudley in 1946. He also recovered 13 opponents' fumbles and scored four touchdowns, two each on interceptions and fumble returns. He saw only sporadic duty on the kickoff return team after his rookie season but wound up with 36 returns for 911 yards.

 

In spite of his rugged, aggressive style, Blount enjoyed a relatively injury-free pro football career. He missed just one regular season game, that in 1974, in 14 seasons and just one playoff contest, the first-round game against Denver in 1977. Altogether, Blount played in 200 regular season games; he also played in six AFC Championship games and in Super Bowls IX, X, XIII and XIV.

 

Statistics, however, tell only part of the Blount saga. When he first entered the NFL, it was legal for a defensive back to maintain contact with a receiver until the pass was thrown. Blount did the job with awesome efficiency. He regularly stymied Oakland's ace receivers, Cliff Branch and Fred Biletnikoff, held off Cincinnati's Isaac Curtis so long his quarterback had to eat the ball and broke the ribs of the Cowboys' Golden Richards.

 

Frustrated by the way Blount and other talented defensive backs were shutting down the offenses, the NFL's competition committee simply changed the rules; it outlawed Blount's favorite "bump-and-run" tactics more than 5 yards beyond the scrimmage line.

 

The rules-makers insisted they were only trying to increase overall scoring all around the league but Coach Chuck Noll disagreed: "They ganged up on us and are trying to win the championship through legislation. But whatever the rules, you have to adjust to them and play with them."

 

Nobody adjusted more quickly or effectively than Blount. No longer able to usher receivers downfield on his terms, he merely played behind them, appearing to be beaten, before swooping in like a starved vulture to deflect the pass or gobble up an interception.

 

Ironically, when the Steelers were steamrolling toward their first Super Bowl appearance in 1974, Blount became briefly embroiled in a heated controversy with Carson, the coach who had provided the breakthrough boost to his career. In the AFC Championship Game against Oakland, Blount was having a bad day against Branch. When the Raiders speedster slipped behind him for a 42-yard touchdown, Carson pulled Blount from the line-up.

 

"I really didn't think a smart coach would do something like that in a championship game," Blount fumed. "The touchdown pass to Branch was only the third I have given up all season and the other two came in one game against Atlanta. Taking me out of the game was the worst thing he could have done."

 

Blount got himself further in the Steelers doghouse by not only criticizing Carson publicly but by insisting several AFC quarterbacks were superior to the Minnesota Vikings' Fran Tarkenton, whom the Steelers were going to face in Super Bowl IX. "I hope to get a lot of action," Mel said. "I went the whole season without much action because they didn't throw to my side that much."

 

The mini-feud died down, however, and in the Super Bowl against the Vikings, Blount intercepted a pass at the goal line to kill the Vikings' most dangerous drive as the Steelers won, 16-6.

 

In the summer of 1975, Blount reported to training camp with his head shaven clean. The reason was that he was going bald anyway and he just wanted to keep cool. Some, however, interpreted it as a ploy to appear more sinister and menacing on the field. Even if that were his purpose, it wouldn't have been necessary. He already was a major headache for every opponent.

 

"A lot of cornerbacks want to be intimidators," Steelers tackle Jon Kolb said. "They go through all kinds of things to be intimidating. Mel could just walk out there, look down on the guy and then run side by side with him. That would be intimidating."

 

By 1975, Blount was at his absolute best. Always superb as a man-to-man defender, he had adapted to zone coverages and he never was shy about attacking the line of scrimmage in run support. When he learned he had been named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year, he was predictably enthused but with some reservations.

 

"I knew I was getting local publicity," he said, "but this is a national award and it makes you feel good about being recognized all over the country. I feel I played just as well the past two or three seasons as I did this year. But to most people those years, I was just another ballplayer."

 

Blount, always confident that he ranked at the very top of his profession as a defensive back, still was never satisfied and he worked tirelessly to improve himself. He was a fierce competitor even in practice, where he had the good fortune to have to work against a pair of the game's premier wide receivers, Lynn Swann and John Stallworth.

 

As the defensive and offensive units lined up, Blount would whisper to Donnie Shell: "Just watch, no one on my side is catching a pass."

 

And no one would catch a pass. By the time Sunday came around, Blount, as well as Swann and Stallworth knew they were in effect playing the "B" team compared to the caliber of their practice opposition.

 

When he was notified of his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Blount reflected on his playing career.

 

"If the scales were balanced, there was nobody I couldn't cover," he said. "That's what motivated me, drove me to be as good as I was. I was in front of 50,000 people in the stands and millions on TV. I didn't want to be embarrassed."

 

He rarely was.

 

 

It was a spectacle so bizarre, so beyond the realm of common sense and ordinary imagination that it might have been the creation of some mad comic production – a cross between Mel Brooks and the Marquis de Sade.”

--William Oscar Johnson in Sports Illustrated

 

By BOB LABRIOLA

Steelers.com

 

What came to a crescendo in July 1977 began on Sept. 13, 1976 in a small room in the offices portion of Three Rivers Stadium. There, Chuck Noll was brought for his regular weekly press conference, and it was there that he would come to utter one of the most well-known phrases in NFL history.

 

The day before, Noll had watched his team give up 24 points in the fourth quarter to blow the game that opened their 1976 season, and if that wasn’t bad enough the loss had been at the hands of arch-nemesis Oakland. Immediately after the loss, Noll’s postgame remarks were gracious toward the victorious Raiders until the subject of George Atkinson’s hit on Lynn Swann was broached.

 

The play in question was a third-and-5 from the Oakland 44-yard line with 1:24 left in the first half. Terry Bradshaw dumped the ball to Franco Harris down the left sideline. Swann was coming across the field from the right side and almost stopped at the 30-yard line as Harris was running down the far sideline. Atkinson came up from behind and slugged Swann in the back of the head with his forearm.

 

Former Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith was doing the color commentary for NBC’s broadcast of the game, and he said on the air as the replay was shown: “I’m telling you, they’re picking on Lynn. I don’t think you’re supposed to do that. I think Atkinson did another no-no – gave him a karate chop across the back of the neck.”

 

Noll’s postgame ire first was pointed at the league office: “There was a lot of discussion about putting a rule in against it this year. It wasn’t done and the reason given was that, although it was illegal, no special rule was needed. There should’ve been a rule against slapping receivers years ago. Maybe they’re waiting for somebody to get killed.”

 

Then Noll turned it toward the Raiders: “They went after Swann again. People that sick shouldn’t be allowed to play this game. Watching something like that clouds the hell out of what their offense did. It seems to come only from their defensive unit. Maybe that’s a reflection on their coaching.”

 

The day after, at his weekly press conference, Noll’s quotes went to the next level. According to the Pittsburgh Press: “Noll was in no mood for subtlety, citing the blows as being applied ‘with the intent to main and not with football in mind. People like that should be kicked out of the game, or out of football … There is a certain criminal element in every aspect of society. Apparently, we have it in the NFL, too.’”

 

The reporters there that day instantly realized this was powerful stuff, and so they pressed forward. Noll offered this: “What I could see was that Swann had his back turned and somebody hit him in the back of the head and neck. That’s why we have officials. That’s why we have a league office.”

 

Then, when reminded that the Steelers also have been accused of dirty play, Noll added, “We usually hit people straight on, nose-to-nose. There’s nothing wrong with hard-hitting football, but not when your back is turned. It’s something that has to be straightened out. I don’t think that’s football … We play football. We don’t want to get involved with criminal actions.”

 

The next day, when the Raiders were asked by reporters for a response, Atkinson said, “It was nothing intentional. The game is a contact sport. It might be different if we had flags in our pockets. I get knocked around; I’ve had concussions. I don’t complain about it. I don’t even think it was that severe a hit. The hit I gave him last year was worse.”

 

Then, Commissioner Pete Rozelle got involved, and two from each team were fined: Atkinson ($1,500) and Jack Tatum ($750 for a different incident in the game) from the Raiders, and Noll ($1,000)  and Ernie Holmes ($200 for a different incident) for the Steelers.

 

After he got news of his fine, Atkinson said, “This may be defamation of character,” and then on Dec. 6, 1976 Atkinson filed a $3 million slander and libel lawsuit against Noll, the Steelers and the Oakland Tribune, whose columnist, Ed Levitt, had written back in September that Atkinson “could’ve killed Swann instead of giving him a concussion. He could be facing a murder rap.”

 

*                                   *                                   *

 

In football, all of the players wear numbered jerseys so fans can identify them. The players in this courtroom competition wore suits without numbers, but it didn’t take long for them to become recognizable to the fans of this bizarre competition.

 

Atkinson’s attorney was Willie Brown, then an assemblyman from San Francisco who spoke at the 1972 Democratic National Convention and who had been instrumental in helping New Jersey get casino gambling. In the two years prior to this trial, Brown had defended Atkinson against charges of embezzlement, larceny and theft in the cashing of $3,000 worth of bank securities.

 

The man heading up the Steelers’ defense team was James MacInnes, who had been the first choice of the Hearst family to represent Patty Hearst in that famous trial.

 

The case was heard before U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, a no-nonsense jurist whose first ruling was that Atkinson only can seek compensatory damages, not punitive damages. During the jury selection process that began on July 11, Conti warned the pool that the trial could take two-to-three weeks, instead of the assumed couple of days.

 

The jury ultimately consisted of five women and one man, whose collective football knowledge was so limited that even rudimentary terms such as linebacker had to be explained to them in detail.

 

Noll was the first witness, and since he had been called by Atkinson’s lawyers, Conti allowed him to be treated as hostile. Dan Mason handled the direct examination of Noll, and some of the exchanges were entertaining.

 

Mason: “Is there anybody else who constitutes ‘Noll’s criminals?’”

 

Noll: “The criminal element is made up of people who break the rules wantonly. I’d have to go back the review the films and find who fits into that category.”

 

Mason: “Come up with another name, other than Atkinson.”

 

Noll: “There have been people who played against us – Tatum.”

 

As Mason continued and the film projector whirred in the courtroom, Noll grudgingly agreed that incidents shown on the screen involving Glen Edwards, Joe Greene and Mel Blount were the type of willful and wanton acts Noll spoke out against. Mason: “Shall I add those names to your list?”

 

Noll: “That’s not my list. That’s your list.”

 

On a play involving Blount hitting Raiders receiver Cliff Branch in the head with a forearm, Noll said, “I think what Blount did was not right or correct. He was talked to after the game. We don’t want that thing to happen. It was an act we do not approve of.”

 

After Noll made similar critiques of plays involving Edwards and Greene, Mason said, “Let’s add them to the list.”

 

Noll: “Go ahead. You have the chalk.”

 

Mason on what Noll had said to draw the $1,500 fine from Rozelle: “Wasn’t that a willful and wanton violation of the rules of the NFL constitution.”

 

Noll: “It was. Go put my name on your list.”

 

Eventually, during his nine hours on the witness stand, Noll was able to make the point that what he said was only in reference to criminal in terms of violating football rules. If he had meant to say Atkinson was a societal criminal, he would have said “thrown in jail” instead of saying “kicked out of the game.”

 

But just because Noll was excused as a witness didn’t mean he was finished with all of the aggravation. On July 15, Blount told reporters he was suing Noll for $5 million in compensatory damages plus $1 million in punitive damages. “There’s no chance at all that I’ll play for the Steelers under Noll.”

 

When contacted by reporters about his name being included on the list, Greene refused to throw gasoline on the fire. “I feel sorry for Chuck. He’s paying a high price for his success. He doesn’t want to be in San Francisco testifying in some courtroom. He wants to be in training camp where he belongs. From here on, I’ll be inclined to think that the Oakland Raiders are using it as a wedge to turn us against Chuck. I’d rather settle any Raiders-Steelers differences on the football field, but then again, I’m pretty old-fashioned. I don’t think football matters belong in a courtroom.”

 

The case went to the jury on July 22, and deliberations began at 9:30 a.m. Just after lunch that day, the jury sent Judge Conti a message asking again for the definition of “actual malice.” Conti’s reply was that Noll’s statements had to “lower Atkinson in the estimation of the community, or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him” to be defamation.

 

Since Atkinson had been signing autographs throughout the trial, his chances to win weren’t good, and four hours after getting the case the jury came back in favor of Noll and the Steelers. Then almost impossibly, the rhetoric went to a whole other level.

 

“The vindication of Chuck Noll and the Steelers is a very good thing for football,” said MacInnes. “It will put a stop to the kind of thing for which he criticized George Atkinson. As for George Atkinson, for whom we have nothing but good wishes, the verdict may be an indication of how he should play, and it may in the end make him a better and more glorious player.”

 

Responded Brown, “The jury has substantially sanctioned Chuck Noll’s right to use that term against anyone he deems it appropriate to do so. They should be ashamed of themselves. I don’t understand how any citizens could sit back and let someone say someone is a criminal element without doing something about it.”

 

Dan Rooney’s reaction was fitting for a man whose family had been committed to furthering the National Football League for over 40 years. “I’m pleased. It has been the most depressing experience of my life. I’m happy.”

 

Blount eventually dropped his suit against Noll and reported to the team after missing 56 days of camp, but as William Oscar Johnson wrote in Sports Illustrated, there really were no winners in this sordid affair.

 

Well, maybe there was one winner. As MacInnes said, “My grandson is the only person in the world with a football that has Lynn Swann’s autograph on one side and George Atkinson’s autograph on the other.”

 

 

By DON SMITH

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

Possibly no pro football superstar ever experienced more absolute highs and lows, more criticism and applause, more disdain and adulation than Terry Bradshaw did during his 14 years with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

 

Bradshaw's career began on the highest possible plane when he was selected as the first player in the entire NFL Draft in 1970. When the 6-foot-3, 210-pound quarterback from Louisiana Tech failed to attain immediate stardom, he suffered the consequences of an impatient fan and media corps. His confidence was shattered and sometimes he didn't know what to do next.

 

Finally, midway into his fifth season in 1974, Bradshaw was given complete control of the Steelers offense for the first time. Almost immediately, Bradshaw developed into an overpowering dynamo who was at his best in the most crucial games, of which there were many. During the Bradshaw reign as the starting quarterback, Pittsburgh won eight AFC Central Division championships and four Super Bowls.

 

Bradshaw's achievements at the height of his career made him one of the most respected players of his time. That universal acclaim reached its zenith with his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility

 

Bradshaw's career statistics are impressive, but his performances in 19 playoff games are awesome. His career records show that he completed 2025 passes for 27,989 yards, 212 touchdowns and a solid 70.7 passing rating, which improves to 78.2 if you delete his five "learning seasons." He also rushed 444 times for 2257 yards and 32 touchdowns.

 

In six AFC Championship games, Bradshaw threw seven touchdown passes. He threw go-ahead scoring passes to defeat Oakland in both 1974 and 1975. In conference championship wins over Houston in 1978 and 1979, Bradshaw contributed two touchdown passes each year.

 

In Super Bowl IX, Bradshaw's fourth-quarter pass to Larry Brown clinched a 16-6 victory over Minnesota. Against Dallas in Super Bowl X, Bradshaw threw to Randy Grossman to forge a tie and then won the game with a spectacular 64-yard pass to Lynn Swann. Bradshaw, who was knocked unconscious just as he released the ball, did not know what happened until after the game.

 

The Pittsburgh field general was at his absolute best in Super Bowl XIII. He almost single-handedly did in the Dallas Cowboys with a 318-yard, four-touchdown passing explosion. In Super Bowl XIV against the Los Angeles Rams, Bradshaw was almost as spectacular with 308 passing yards, a 47-yard scoring shot to Swann and a 73-yard bomb to John Stallworth to clinch the history-making fourth Super Bowl championship for the Steelers. Bradshaw was named the Most Valuable Player in both Super Bowls XIII and XIV.

 

He holds numerous Super Bowl career marks including most yards passing (932) and most touchdown passes (9). His 3,833 yards and 30 touchdowns passing are both records for all post-season games.

 

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Sept. 2, 1948, the second of three sons of Bill and Novis Bradshaw, Terry lived in Clinton, Iowa, for several years before his family returned to Shreveport when he was a teenager. He played junior varsity high school football for two years but showed his tremendous potential when he led the Woodlawn High School varsity to the state finals in his senior season. He also proved the strength of his arm by throwing the javelin farther than any prep athlete in history.

 

When it came to college, Bradshaw chose Louisiana Tech in Reston, 65 miles from home. He also decided he had a better future in football than in track. Bradshaw played briefly as a freshman, shared a starting role as a sophomore and then blossomed into a star of unusual proportions his last two years. He wound up with 7,149 yards and 42 touchdowns passing and became the hottest pro prospect in the college ranks in 1969. He was named to several All-American teams.

 

Since the Chicago Bears and Steelers each finished 1-13 in 1969, the teams had to flip a coin for the drafting rights to Bradshaw. "I can laugh now, but back than I had no idea what it meant to be the No.1 draft choice in the NFL," Bradshaw remembers.

 

For the first few years, Bradshaw had to fight off the challenges of Terry Hanratty, a former Notre Dame star, and later Joe Gilliam. Bradshaw started eight games as a rookie and the Steelers' record improved to 5-9 but his performances fell far below expectations. He completed only 38.1 percent of his passes and had 24 interceptions, the highest total in pro football.

 

"My rookie year was a disaster," Bradshaw agrees. "I was totally unprepared for pro football. I had had no schooling on reading defenses. I had never studied the game films the way a quarterback should. I was an outsider who didn't mingle well. The other players looked on me as a Bible-toting Li'l Abner."

 

Bradshaw was discouraged, but not defeated, and he spent his first offseason plotting his plans for improvement. Fortunately, Coach Chuck Noll still felt Bradshaw was a diamond in the rough. "Terry was always the guy with the talent," Noll said. "There never was a question about that."

 

Both the Steelers and Bradshaw improved in 1971. Bradshaw started all but one game and, in 1972, quarterbacked the Steelers to their first division championship in 40 years of NFL competition. In the first-round playoff game against Oakland, Bradshaw etched his name in pro football lore when he launched the "Immaculate Reception" pass to Frenchy Fuqua that caromed to Franco Harris for a last-second 13-7 victory.

 

"I have had three years now," Bradshaw said in assessing his progress after the season. "One year of frustration, one where I've learned to pass and one of learning how to run. Maybe next year I can learn to do them all together. Then maybe I'll be able to drive them all crazy."

 

Eventually, "driving them crazy" is just what Bradshaw did but that would have to wait a while longer. A separated shoulder cut into his playing time in 1973. In 1974, Noll started the season with Gilliam as his No.1 quarterback.

 

Bradshaw stewed on the bench for six games. Suddenly, even though the Steelers were 4-1-1 under Gilliam, Noll changed and thrust Bradshaw back into the starting lineup, where he could call his own plays and take complete charge of the offense on the field. Except when he was injured, he never had to worry about sitting on the bench again.

 

"When I got the confidence from that man (Noll) was when I became a pro quarterback," Bradshaw said. "Prior to that, I wasn't making any progress. I knew that when I made mistakes, I was going to be benched. But when he said 'Go make your mistakes, we're going to win with you,' that's when I became a quarterback."

 

Although Bradshaw led Pittsburgh to two straight Super Bowl championships after he received Noll's vote of confidence, he received very little respect or recognition for his increasingly outstanding contributions. That situation, however, began to change in 1978, when Bradshaw led the AFC with an 84.6 passing rating and was a runaway winner in the AFC Player of the Year derby. He led the Steelers to a third Super Bowl victory with an MVP performance. He was named All-Pro and selected for the Pro Bowl for the first time, honors that were repeated in 1979.

 

Suddenly, after nine years, Bradshaw was big news. Overnight, his image had changed -- the Steelers were winners, in everyone's mind, because of Bradshaw. Part of the change was brought about by Noll, who decided to put the forward pass more and more into his game plan. Previously, the Steelers were known as a ball-control team with running back Franco Harris being the principal weapon. But in 1978, it became Bradshaw's kind of game and he delivered.

 

He even got help from the NFL rules committee, when it passed new legislation prohibiting defensive backs from employing the "bump and run" tactic on receivers more than 5 yards past the scrimmage line. The rules were specifically designed to put more scoring into pro football. Since Bradshaw was blessed with two superior receivers in Swann and Stallworth as his principal targets, he was a prime beneficiary of the new guidelines.

 

There was perhaps one other reason. "I was more relaxed," Bradshaw reflected. "I decided to just have fun, just go out and play football without putting all of those pressures on myself."

 

Bradshaw continued to excel in the early 1980s but the Steelers, decimated by the retirement or aging of many of its finest players from the Super Bowl years, fell out of contention in 1980 and 1981. In the strike-shortened 1982 season, Pittsburgh entered the AFC playoff tournament with a 6-3 record but lost to the San Diego Chargers, 31-28, in the first round. Bradshaw, however, was still up to his old tricks. He passed for 335 yards and two touchdowns and added a third score on a 1-yard run.

 

In March, 1983, Bradshaw underwent elbow surgery. When he returned to camp in July, he found the zip was gone from his passing arm. Bradshaw did not play until the next-to-last game of the season when he started against the New York Jets in a must- win situation for the Steelers. He carefully pieced together two long drives, both of them capped by his touchdown passes. But after the first 16 minutes, the elbow flared up again and Bradshaw took himself out of the game for the last time. He waited until summer camp began in 1984 to be sure he couldn't play but it was evident he had no choice but to retire.

 

Throughout his career, Bradshaw, a born-again Christian and active member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, became involved in a number of off-the-field pursuits such as country singing, the movies and network television.

 

In the seasons while Bradshaw was struggling to survive in the NFL, he had to endure the bum rap of being a "dumb" quarterback. Of all the various indignities Bradshaw had to endure, those charges irritated him the most.

 

"Sure, I made some mistakes, particularly when I was a rookie," he said. "Like scrambling all around the field and then throwing an interception. So some guy wrote about me being dumb. When things didn't go right for me, it was because I was 'dumb.' I had nobody defend me either. Any time I'd come out and defend myself, I'd just dig my hole deeper, so I finally just said to heck with it."

 

Even after Bradshaw had become an acknowledged superstar and a quarterback who called his own plays in a highly-effective offense, the "dumb" image lingered in some minds. During the pregame hoopla before Super Bowl XIII, Dallas Cowboys' linebacker Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson chortled: "We're going to play against a quarterback who can't even spell c-a-t."

 

When Bradshaw shredded the Dallas defenses with his four- touchdown outburst, it was obvious to all who saw him that day that Bradshaw knew better than anyone how to produce results that spelled v-i-c-t-o-r-y.

By Don Smith

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

The 45-year career of Jim Finks found him at one time or another doing almost everything imaginable in professional foot­ball. While Finks was associated briefly with professional base­ball, his working career centered around the National Football League, first as a player with the Pittsburgh Steelers and later as a highly-regarded executive for the Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints.

 

During that long tenure, Finks developed the reputation of a shrewd operator who specialized in turning struggling National Football League franchises into either Super Bowl champions or consistent contenders. Equally impressive was that each of his three teams continued to thrive with players Finks had acquired long after he had departed. As one executive remarked six months after Finks left Minnesota: "He has us so well organized. We carry on as though he were still here."

 

Finks also gained widespread praise for his contributions on the NFL player management competition committees. When the NFL sought a new commissioner to replace Pete Rozelle in 1989, Finks was the leading candidate who just missed getting the necessary number of votes for election.

 

His ultimate recognition, election into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, came posthumously for Finks, who died of lung cancer on May 8, 1994.

 

First, the Steelers

Although Finks is in the Hall of Famer because of his off-the- field activities in pro football, he was a fine player during his seven-year stint from 1949 to 1955 with the Pittsburgh Steelers. A T-formation quarterback at Tulsa, Finks was the 12th-round pick of Pittsburgh in the 1949 NFL draft. Pittsburgh was using the single-wing offense at the time, so Finks played primarily as a defensive back for three seasons.

 

In 1952, the Steelers converted to the T-formation, the last team in the NFL to do so, and Finks became the starting quarter­back. In his first full season as a regular, Finks tied Cleve­land's Otto Graham for the league lead with 20 touchdown passes. He also earned a Pro Bowl invitation. In seven years, Finks completed 661 passes for 8,622 yards and 55 touchdowns.

 

Finks later joked that his main claim to playing fame was that he beat out Johnny Unitas for the starting quarterback job in 1955. The next year, Unitas launched his legendary career with the Baltimore Colts. However, Steelers founder Art Rooney insisted that "Jimmy was a great quarterback, not just a good one. But we were never big winners and he just didn't get the attention he deserved."

 

Finks retired as an active player after the 1955 season. He served as an assistant coach under Terry Brennan at Notre Dame in 1956 and then moved to the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League where he served first as a player, assistant coach, scout and later as general manager. Finks brought the Stampeders a Grey Cup title -- the CFL equivalent of a Super Bowl championship -- during his eight-year stay in Canada.

 

Chief of the Vikings

In 1964, Finks was named the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings, a team that had entered the NFL in 1961 and had won only 10 games in its first three seasons. Through shrewd use of the draft and a series of beneficial trades, the Finks-led Vikings soon began to take on a new look.

 

Finks' building program began to pay dividends in 1968, when Minnesota won its first NFL Central Division championship. That season marked the start of a dynasty that produced 11 divisional championship teams and four Super Bowl appearances in the next 14 years. In 1969, the Vikings won 12 of 14 games and claimed the NFL championship before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs 23-7 in Super Bowl IV.

 

The Vikings team that Finks put together was powered by a dynamic defensive front four popularly known as "The Purple People Eaters." The first member of the unit, defensive end Jim Marshall, came to the Vikings in a 1961 trade before Finks ar­rived. In 1964, the new general manager added two potential stars to the line -- end Carl Eller as a first-round pick in the draft and tackle Gary Larsen in a trade. He completed his fabled front four in 1967 by picking Alan Page No. 1 in the draft.

 

When inevitable controversies arose, Finks always had the answer. Late in 1966, quarterback Fran Tarkenton became em­broiled in a feud with Coach Norm Van Brocklin. Finks solved the problem by trading the crowd-pleasing scrambler to the New York Giants for two first-round and two second-round draft picks, which he used to add more young, quality talent to the fold.

 

A few months later, Van Brocklin resigned and Finks immediate­ly tapped Bud Grant, a comparative unknown, as his new field leader. Grant had been a successful coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL for 10 seasons. "I saw Bud in good times and bad times in Winnipeg while I was in Calgary," Finks explained. "I know him as a man who knows how to win and how to retain his composure when he loses. And he isn't exactly obscure around here; he was an outstanding college athlete at Minnesota."

 

That same year, Finks brought in a new quarterback, Joe Kapp, from the CFL. Kapp, a rough-and-tumble but charismatic figure, quickly became the Vikings' leader. In the 1969 NFL cham­pionship season, he passed for a record seven touchdowns against Baltimore and was a major contributor to his team's success.

 

But in 1970, Kapp sat out some early games because of a salary dispute. Once again, Finks had the answer. He simply sold Kapp to New England and turned over the quarterbacking chores to Gary Cuozzo, who had come to Minnesota in a 1968 trade with New Or­leans. The Vikings kept right on winning with another 12-2 season and a third straight Central Division championship.

 

In 1972, Finks made another daring trade with the New York Gi­ants, this time to bring back Tarkenton, the quarterback he had dismissed five years earlier. In 1973, they defeated the Dallas Cowboys for the NFC Championship but lost to the Miami Dolphins 24-7 in Super Bowl VIII. It turned out to be the last game with the Vikings for Finks, who that season was named the NFL Execu­tive of the Year.

 

Finks, who had been named a club vice-president in 1972 as a reward for his brilliant work, resigned in May 1974. His depar­ture came as an outgrowth of a dispute among the team's five principal owners over the location of a new stadium in downtown Minneapolis. Finks supported the minority conviction that the stadium should belong to the entire state rather than be just a Minneapolis-oriented operation. "They knew right where I stood," Finks said. "Our fans didn't want the stadium to go downtown."

 

On to Chicago

For a brief period, Finks' future was uncertain, and there was some concern that he might cast his lot with the new World Foot­ball League. That was a needless concern, however, for Finks' loyalty to the NFL was as always, throughout his career, beyond ­question. He soon was named a special consultant to the NFL Management Council in its dealing with the NFL Players Associa­tion.

 

After the dispute was over, Finks reflected: "It was a real growth experience. One of pro football's problems is that it has 1,400 potential salesmen in our players who haven't been sales­men. That is one of the things we have to recognize and remedy."

 

During the spring and summer of 1974, Finks pondered whether he should get involved with potential ownership groups in Seattle or Tampa, both of which were scheduled to get new NFL franchises in 1976. But just before the start of the 1974 season, Finks abandoned those thoughts to join one of the NFL's oldest fran­chises, the Chicago Bears, as general manager and executive vice-president.

 

Finks spent the remainder of the 1974 season studying the Bears player talent as well as opposition players from all around the NFL. The next year, he began employing the same formula he used so well in Minnesota to improve the Bears' talent pool. There was no quick fix to Finks' methods, however. He preferred to build for the long haul, capitalizing on opportunities as they arose. As one Bears' staffer noted: " Jim Finks does not build teams. He builds organizations. Then the good teams follow naturally."

 

Perhaps no pro football executive knew the abilities of as many NFL players so completely as Finks did. He used this knowl­edge to bring Alan Page to the Bears in 1978. When Finks noticed Page's name on the waiver list, he promptly claimed the All-Pro defensive tackle. Finks was aware of Page's problems with Coach Grant and his recent loss of weight. But he also knew he was an experienced winner. Page played as a regular in Chicago for the next four years.

 

The Bears under Finks slowly but surely improved. By 1977, they reached the playoffs for the first time since 1963. They were a playoff team again in 1979 with a 10-6 record, best-ever for the Finks-led Bears. But Finks' tenure in Chicago ended suddenly in 1982 when he resigned because George Halas did not consult him in the hiring of Mike Ditka as coach.

 

Just as he had done in Minnesota, Finks left behind one of the most dominant NFL teams of the 1980s. Nineteen of the 22 players who started in Chicago's 46-10 win over New England in Super Bowl XX were drafted during the Finks regime. That 1985 team went 15-1 in regular season and shut out both the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams in playoff games leading to the Super Bowl.

 

Bears President Mike McCaskey lauded Finks as he departed: "Jim moved us from a family-run business to one that is still a family business but includes a lot more elements of professional management."

 

After leaving the Bears, Finks joined the Chicago Cubs as president and chief executive officer in September 1983. This was not Finks' first journey into baseball because he played minor league baseball in 1949 and 1950 just as he was beginning his pro football career with Pittsburgh. He remained through the 1984 season when the Cubs captured their first title in modern times by winning the National League East Division championship. He resigned from the Cubs when that team and then baseball commis­sioner Peter Ueberroth undercut his promise to Chicago fans regarding lights for night games at Wrigley Field.

 

For a while, Finks worked with the Chicago public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton as a part-time consultant. But he grew restless being away from the professional sports scene and the NFL in particular, and that uneasiness led him to Owner Tom Benson and his Saints.

 

Saints: Preserve Us!

On Jan. 14, 1986, Finks, then 59, took charge of a New Orleans team that never had experienced a winning season in its 19-year history. His first move was to hire a new coach, Jim Mora, who, like the coaches Finks hired in Minnesota and Chicago, had led teams in a different league and had not developed high public profiles. Some questioned whether Finks sought coaches who would not overshadow him, but the bottom line was that his coaches almost always won.

 

Off the field, Finks distanced his new organization as far as possible from the vestiges of the losing past. The Saints of 1986 wore new uniforms with patches of the state of Louisiana on their hips and sleeves. Always acutely aware of the needs and interests of fans, he moved the team training camp closer to New Orleans and invited fans to come out for practice any time. He conducted a good-will tour of players, coaches and front-office personnel around a three-state area to spread the story of the new Saints.

 

Happily, success came more quickly for Finks in New Orleans than it had in either Minnesota and Chicago. In just his second season, the Saints won 12 of 15 games for their first winning season ever. Finks was named NFL Executive of the Year for a second time.

 

In the next five seasons from 1988 to 1992, the Saints went over .500 four times and settled for an 8-8 year in 1990. In their last six seasons under Finks, the Saints were 62-33, a .653 winning percentage. Six players drafted by Finks -- line­backers Sam Mills, Vaughan Johnson and Pat Swilling, running backs Rueben Mayes and Dalton Hilliard and special teams player Bennie Thompson -- made 16 Pro Bowl appearances during that period.

 

When Commissioner Pete Rozelle retired in 1989, Finks was the odds-on choice to replace him. He was unanimously endorsed by the first committee of owners but eventually another ownership group prevailed with their choice of Paul Tagliabue. Finks graciously accepted the defeat: "I am proud that I was voted on by 19 of the 28 NFL teams. That makes me feel good." Tagliabue, in turn, named Finks to the key position of chairman of the league's competition committee.

 

So for the next three seasons, Finks split his time between building the Saints and serving the league that already owed him so much. As the leader of the competition committee, he had a special interest in playing rules. He urged a sensible curbing of prolonged celebrations and made it clear he didn't like the "in the grasp" rules that protected passers when defenders first made contact. "When I see a play blown dead, when some of those great quarterbacks have a chance to break away and make an even more exciting play, I don't like it," he announced.

 

But before Finks' work with the Saints and the competi­tion committee could come to fruition, he was diagnosed with cancer. On July 15, 1993, he stepped down as president and general manager of the Saints. Within a year, he was dead.

 

Meaningful eulogies poured in from the entire sports world but Ed McCaskey, chairman of the board of the Chicago Bears, may have summed it up best: "I know most of the NFL owners rather well. Some are fine men, capable men, rich men and some are lucky men. But for one reason or another, they have all achieved membership in what has proven to be a very exclusive club. Jim Finks stood head and shoulders above them all -- in all areas."

By Jim Campbell

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

Ray Mansfield -- ironman, risk-taker, raconteur, outdoorsman, "historian," adventurer and all-around good guy -- left us much, much too early while hiking the Grand Canyon in the fall of 1998.

 

As tragic as his death was, the former Steelers' center didn't miss much in life -- nor on the field. He played in 182 consecutive game. But now we will miss him. No more voice of reason. No more "Old Ranger" tales. No more cameos on NFL Films' shows. No more friendly tips on immortality to young players.

 

A remnant of the bad, old days of Pittsburgh's SOS (Same old Steelers), Mansfield, and long-suffering teammate Andy Russell, rejoiced in the team's newly-found success under Chuck Noll in the 1970s.

 

The Steelers' first brush with winning, after 40 years of futility, came with an AFC Central Division championship, clinched in San Diego on the last day of the 1972 season. Seizing the moment, if not the day, at the final gun Mansfield turned to young Jim Clack, and said, "Hey, kid, you wanna be immortal? Come with me."

 

Clack, a second-year center/guard out of Wake Forest, heeded the advice. He and Mansfield each took a leg and hoisted a jubilant Noll onto their shoulders for a ride out of San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium. Photographers recorded the historical event. And until the Steelers started winning Super Bowls with regularity, the resulting photo was often used to illustrate Steelers success. Beaming Mansfield and joyful Clack are as evident in that photograph as their Pro Football Hall of Fame coach.

 

Scarcely a week later "history" struck again. Mansfield was up to the moment again.

 

He and a game-day sideline worker were standing by glumly as the clock ticked down on the Dec. 23, 1972 Steelers-Raiders AFC Divisional Playoff game. After leading most of the day on Roy Gerela's two field goals, the Steelers were suddenly Snake-bitten when Ken Stabler broke contain and scored a touchdown. Oakland led, 7-6.

 

Fourth down. Terry Bradshaw rushed. He unloads. John "Frenchy" Fuqua downfield. Jack Tatum unloads. Ball ricochets. Franco Harris reaches, plucks, and rambles into the end zone. Mansfield and others didn't know they had just been eye-witnesses to "the Immaculate Reception." Mansfield, however, knew he had just seen something special.

 

His sideline companion exclaimed, "I (bleeping) saw it, but don't (bleeping) believe it!"

 

Mansfield said, "Me neither," paused, and then said, "Hey, we better get down to the end zone and get in the pictures."

 

Somewhere in Mt. Laurel, N.J., in the vaults of NFL Films exists  footage of a trundling Ray Mansfield making his way down the sideline toward an end zone packed with celebrants, but looking back every so often to see where the cameras are.

 

It was history. It was Mansfield. It was great.

By Joe Horrigan

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

Since its inception in 1933, the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise has been under the watchful leadership of just two men. The first was team founder Art Rooney, who was a guiding light during the early years of the National Football League when teams struggled just to survive. His selfless dedication to the Steelers and the NFL for more than four decades earned him pro football's highest honor, election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

 

However, despite Rooney's never-ending dedication to his team, the Steelers during that period, except for brief respites, suffered through repeated losing seasons. It wasn't until the 1974 season that the team won its first league title, and by that time, "The Chief," as Rooney was respectfully known, had passed the leadership torch to his eldest son, Dan.

 

Dan Rooney, who literally grew up with the Pittsburgh Steelers, blended his father's vision and loyalty with a smart and effective management style. The result was a transformation of the Steelers from perennial basement dwellers to a model organization and 35-plus years of unprecedented prosperity that continues today.

 

Considered one of the most influential voices in team and league operations, Dan Rooney, like his father before him, has been recognized for his lifetime of dedication and unparalleled successes with election to the Hall of Fame.

 

The oldest of five boys, Dan was born in Pittsburgh on July 20, 1932 and grew up on the city's North Side. A good athlete, Rooney played quarterback for North Catholic High School. In his senior year he was chosen as the second-team quarterback for the city's Catholic All-Star team, an honor that at the time left him feeling somewhat slighted. "Some of my teammates told me I was better than that quarterback from St. Justin's who was chosen the first string quarterback on the All-Star team, " he recalled. In retrospect, however, he admits with a smile that the junior from St. Justin's – Johnny Unitas – may have been better.

 

Life with the Steelers

Dan's entire life, it seems, has been involved with the Steelers. Coincidentally, the playground where he and his brothers once played football became a parking lot at Three Rivers Stadium, the team's home from 1970-2000. He began attending training camps when he was 5, and by the time he was 13 he was handing out equipment and running errands. For several years he served as the team's water boy. His first serious job was as training camp manager.

 

Rooney went on to attend Duquesne, graduated in 1955 with a degree in accounting. Following his graduation, he returned to work full-time with the Steelers. Although the son of the owner, Dan did not start out as a senior executive as one might have expected.

 

"When I graduated from college, the first thing I got into was player personnel. But then in 1957, we hired Buddy Parker as our coach. It was a big break for me because Parker didn't want anything to do with the front office," Rooney said. "Because I was in the office every day, the league people would call for me. If they wanted something done, they knew I'd be there, so I got to know the people in the league office and with the other teams. So I just grew into doing more and more things because of the contacts I made."

 

If there was a single event that marks Rooney's ascension to day-to-day manager of the Steelers it was the day in 1965 when he accepted Parker's resignation as coach. "That put me on a new basis," he recalled. "Parker often used to say he was going to quit. I had talked to my father and said that we couldn't be cutting players because Parker was upset with one game's performance, or couldn't be trading players because he was angry with them. We had to deal with some kind of continuity and with a basis of reason."

 

So, when Parker called Rooney after a preseason loss to the San Francisco 49ers, to inform him of a less-than-sensible trade he wanted to make, Rooney drew his line in the sand. He told Parker to calm down and that he would talk to him in the morning about his proposed trade. Parker, upset by Rooney's challenge to his authority, threatened to quit, to which Dan replied that he would also discuss that the next morning. "I called my father and told him that we were going to accept Parker's resignation if he gave it the next morning, and my father agreed. And the next morning, Parker stuck with it." After Parker left, Dan continued to run the front office. Although Art Rooney still retained veto power, the younger Rooney was clearly the man in charge.

 

To the public, however, the low-key Rooney was largely unknown. His years of involvement and intimate understanding of the organization's operations were not a matter of public record. So, as the team with a woeful past continued to frustrate its fans, they began to question whether Dan Rooney, the team's vice president, was the right man for the job or just the benefactor of nepotism. As the public looked for someone to blame for the team's state of affairs, Rooney, quite unfairly, became the target.

 

Not only was Dan being held accountable for the team's present situation, he was being blamed for the past. In a 1971 interview he related an example of the sometimes-ridiculous way in which he was expected to answer for some of the organization's past sins.

 

"A reporter called me yesterday, and the first thing he asked was, 'What happened with Luckman?'" Rooney said. "I told him, 'Just hold on a minute.'" The Steelers had in fact given away the draft rights to Sid Luckman, a future Hall of Fame quarterback, but that was in 1939, the year Rooney started grade school.

 

While there was nothing Dan Rooney could do about the failures of the past, he was determined not to repeat them in the future.

 

Following the departure of Parker, the head coach position was filled first by Mike Nixon, and then by Bill Austin. Rooney dismissed Nixon after one losing season and Austin after three. The message was clear. No longer was the team going to be mired in mediocrity. A new era was about to dawn in Pittsburgh, "The Dan Rooney Era."

 

The Dan Rooney era

In 1970, the Steelers moved into a new home, Three Rivers Stadium. Here Dan demonstrated his wide range of organizational skills as he drew up a complex of offices and team facilities that became a model for new stadiums throughout the league, not to mention the envy of every team owner. "It's enough to give our players an inferiority complex," said then-Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell.

 

Another important element in the Steelers' successful transition was Dan's decision to separate scouting from coaching, recognizing that no coaching staff, no matter how hard-working or competent, has the ability to search out and evaluate college football players. The results were immediate. The Steelers from 1969 to 1974 drafted seven future Hall of Fame players, but perhaps Rooney's most significant move came when he hired Chuck Noll as head coach.

 

"I interviewed Chuck Noll the day after his team, the Baltimore Colts, lost Super Bowl III to the New York Jets," he recalled. "It was right after the game, so there was no way he could have prepared for the interview. It struck me right then. Here is an extremely bright person who has his feet on the ground, knows what he is doing."

 

Noll was immediately put on Rooney's short list. "When I came back to Pittsburgh," he recalled, "I said to my father, 'Chuck Noll is a guy we have to keep on the list. Chuck Noll is a guy you have to meet.'" After meeting Noll, the senior Rooney agreed with his son's assessment and a deal was made. During Noll's 23-year career with the Steelers, the team won four Super Bowls and never went more than four years without making the playoffs.

 

As significant as it was for Rooney to hire Noll, it was equally significant that he was confident enough in his pick that he didn't fire him after he began his tenure with three losing seasons. Rooney had showed no such confidence in either Nixon or Austin.

 

In 1973, after the Steelers posted a 10-4 record and earned a Wild Card berth in the playoffs, Rooney was named The Sporting News NFL Executive of the Year, an honor voted on by the NFL's general managers. Dan's response upon learning of the honor was, "You're kidding," as he thought someone was pulling his leg. Suddenly, the reserved "behind-the-scenes guy" was front and center and being acknowledged by his peers for the near miraculous turnaround of the Steelers' franchise. "I think it was a combination of things, people, and timing," he said. "It was Chuck Noll coming at the right time, Artie's (Art Rooney Jr.) work with personnel, the new stadium. It might have happened with any one of them – but it did happen with that combination."

 

The turnaround continued in 1974 as the Steelers won the first of six consecutive AFC Central titles and the first of four Super Bowls.

 

Elevated to team president

In 1975, after 20 years of working in nearly every conceivable capacity, Dan Rooney was "officially" named president of the Steelers. "When I became president in 1975, not much changed," he claimed, still trying to deflect credit. Rather than accept the responsibility for the team's successes, Dan preferred to remind people of his father's accomplishments.

 

"From day one until this day," he told an interviewer in 1987, "my father set the tone on how the Steelers operate. He is a people person. He has always said that what the people think is important, and that we have to think that way. He very much felt that everyone was his equal and that they should be treated that way -- players, coaches, office staff, everybody. You must treat people with respect. Hopefully, some of that has rubbed off on me and I follow that."

 

At the same time Rooney was using his formidable skills to mold a model sports franchise, he also emerged as one of the most active figures in NFL operations. His league functions have included membership on the board of directors for the NFL Trust Fund, NFL Films, and the Scheduling Committee.

 

In 1973, he was appointed Chairman of the league's Expansion Committee that added Seattle and Tampa Bay to the NFL in 1976. He was named Chairman of the Negotiating Committee in 1976, and in 1982 he contributed to the negotiations for the Collective Bargaining Agreement for NFL owners and the Players Association. Recognized by both sides for his patience and reasonable voice of moderation, he again played a key role in the labor agreement reached in 1993 between the NFL owners and players.

 

"They put him in areas where they need a little leadership, and he seems to have the ability to get people to cooperate," New York Giants general manager George Young once said. "He has great credibility."

 

A humble family man who shies away from attention, Dan Rooney has not let success change him or influence his values. Although he may not be as publicly outgoing as his father, who passed away in 1988, Rooney remains one of Pittsburgh's most involved executives in civic affairs. He serves on the boards of the United Way of America, the American Diabetes Association, the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, Presbyterian University Hospital, Duquesne University, and The American Ireland Fund.

 

Dan Rooney's contributions to pro football, the Steelers, and the city of Pittsburgh are many. Although he is proud of his accomplishments he rarely sites them. Still, his false modesty has not prevented the civic and sports communities and in particular, the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Board of Selectors, from recognizing his innumerable achievements. With his election to the Hall of Fame, Dan Rooney joined not only his father, but also an elite fraternity of men who individually and collectively represent the best the sport has offered.

 

By James Forr

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney called it the worst team in NFL history. Steelers co-owner, Bert Bell, said, "The season couldn't have turned out any worse then this one."

They were referring to the infamously lamentable wartime amalgam known as Card-Pitt.

For the Steelers, joining forces with the Chicago Cardinals was repayment of a debt, of sorts, to the NFL. Pittsburgh found itself in particularly dreadful shape prior to the 1942 season, with the death of all-league guard Bill Simington and the loss of NFL rushing leader Bill Dudley, and a number of others to the armed services. The league assented to the Steelers' request to join forces with the Philadelphia Eagles for the 1943 season. The "Steagles," as they were known, posted a respectable 5-4-1 mark.

The Keystone State teams agreed to go their separate ways following that season. However, NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden had a problem. With the Boston Yanks joining the league, and the Cleveland Rams re-joining the league after finding themselves unable to field a team in 1943, the NFL had 11 teams. The league found it impossible to come up with a schedule that would meet the approval of all teams. So Layden called in his marker with Rooney and Bell and requested that their team merge again in 1944.

Rooney apparently wasn't thrilled with the idea but felt obligated to Layden. He agreed to join forces with another club on the condition that at least half of the team's home games were played in Pittsburgh (during the 1943 season, the Steagles played just two games at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field).

Finding a merger partner proved challenging. Prior to the NFL's annual meetings in April 1944, rumors had Pittsburgh joining up with either Cleveland or the Brooklyn Tigers. Cleveland would have been a logical geographic choice; however Layden didn't think it was fair to the Steelers to ask them to merge with a team that had been defunct a year earlier. Rooney rejected a proposal to team with Brooklyn, and he also was cool to the idea of merging with the new kid on the block, Boston. Finally, on April 22, Rooney agreed to combine his Steelers with the Cardinals, who had gone winless in 1943. The jointure would compete in the tougher Western Division, which included perennial powerhouses Green Bay and the Chicago Bears.

Training camp began Aug. 15 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, under the direction of the team's co-coaches, Walt Kiesling of Pittsburgh and Phil Handler of Chicago. The two men quickly found that they had something in common beyond football—a fondness for playing the horses. Rooney, who was known to place a wager or two himself, sometimes wondered which sport his coaches considered more important. In his later years, Rooney recalled that Kiesling, specifically, "carried the Racing Form more than the playbook."

Prior to the start of camp, the coaching staff made the questionable decision of going with a T-formation offense. Some of the Steelers players had been exposed to the 'T' a year earlier with the Steagles; but the Cardinals had used it very little. Moreover, Card-Pitt lacked a solid quarterback, which the coaches recognized. "We'll sink or swim with the 'T,'" insisted Kiesling, "and if we don't come up with a quarterback soon there's a chance that we might just sink." But, betting men that they were, Kiesling and Handler were willing to take that chance.

Walt Masters, then 37, went into camp as the No. 1 quarterback. Masters was an interesting man. A fine pitcher, Masters enjoyed brief stints in the major leagues with the Washington Senators, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Athletics. His NFL career had consisted of two games with the Eagles in 1936 and seven games with the Bears in 1943. In the interim, he had played and coached both baseball and football in Canada. Oddly, in the offseason between 1943 and 1944, Masters managed to age four years. "No one believed me last year when I said I was 33," joked Masters in training camp, "so I might as well tell the truth."

Despite the unsettled quarterback situation, those close to the team were not without optimism, at least on the surface. Rooney promised a solid, competitive team. Ed Prell of the Chicago Tribune predicted that Card-Pitt's huge line, led by 260-pound Chet Bulger and veteran Conway Baker, would be among the best in the league. And Card-Pitt also boasted a promising young running back named John Grigas from Holy Cross, who had enjoyed a fine rookie season for the Cardinals in 1943.

That optimism lasted until the first quarter of the first exhibition game. In a quagmire at Shibe Park, with Babe Ruth in attendance, the Eagles ripped off three first quarter touchdowns and slogged their way to a 22-0 victory. In the aftermath of the debacle, co-owner Bell must have wondered what he had gotten himself into. Not mincing words, Bell told the press that Card-Pitt was the worst team he had ever seen. The following week, with Steelers veteran Coley McDonough emerging as the team's top quarterback, the new T-formation offense continued to sputter as Card-Pitt lost 3-0 to Washington. However, it was an impressive performance by the Card-Pitt defense against a team that had been favored by nearly three touchdowns.

On the heels of that competitive showing against the Redskins, Card-Pitt opened the regular season portion of its schedule Sept. 24 at Forbes Field against the Cleveland Rams, led by former Steelers coach Buff Donelli. A crowd of nearly 21,000 watched the Rams jump out to an early 16-0 lead. But Card-Pitt struck back in spectacular fashion just before the half. Bobby Thurbon fielded a Cleveland kickoff on his own 20 and raced 65 yards to the Cleveland 15. As he was being tackled, Thurbon lateralled to tackle Eberle Schultz, who was trailing the play. Schultz took it the rest of the way for Card-Pitt's first score of the season.

Those first Card-Pitt points opened the offensive floodgates. As if by magic, the 'T' started to click in the second half. In the third quarter, McDonough fired a 35-yard touchdown pass to Eddie Rucinski to cut the Rams' lead to 16-14. On Cleveland's next possession, Johnny Karrs fumbled on his own 13. That set up a short seven-play drive, capped by a Grigas 1-yard touchdown run to give Card-Pitt its first lead, 21-16.

Early in the fourth, the Rams responded, as Jim Benton (who would finish with 108 yards receiving and three touchdowns) made a tumbling catch of a Tommy Colella pass in the end zone to put Cleveland back on top, 23-21. However, Card-Pitt showed some resilience of its own on the next drive, as McDonough eluded pressure and hit Johnny Butler with a 67-yard touchdown pass for a 28-23 lead. It was a moment to remember—Card-Pitt would hold a lead only once more the rest of the season.

With four minutes left, Card-Pitt's Bernie Semes intercepted a Colella pass at the goal line and fell forward to the 1-yard line. At this point Card-Pitt, seemingly in command of the game, had several options. They simply could have run their offense and taken time off the clock. Or, worried about operating in the shadow of their own goalpost, they could have taken a safety and backed up the Rams with a free kick. However, Handler and Kiesling made the fateful decision to punt immediately, on first down. Apparently, they didn't want to risk a turnover near their own goal line.

But what happened next was just as bad. In what would become a recurring theme of the season, Johnny Martin shanked a 9-yard punt, and the Rams took over first-and-goal. Three plays later Albie Reisz found Benton for the winning score. Cleveland won the game 30-28, and Card-Pitt had blown what would be its best chance all year to win a game.

The next week featured another exhibition game, this time at Forbes Field against the Giants. New York took command early and built a 16-3 lead (one of the Giants' touchdowns was set up by a 12-yard punt by the beleaguered Martin). But Card-Pitt again showed resilience, mounted a comeback, and pulled off a surprise 17-16 victory against the eventual Eastern Division champs.

The win was almost solely attributable to a Herculean effort by John Grigas. He rushed 22 times for 238 yards, which would have set an NFL record had it occurred during a regular season game. With 2:20 to go, he carried Giants tacklers along on a 14-yard run that tied the game. Conway Baker's extra point won it. Nonetheless, with the exception of Grigas, the offense was stagnant. McDonough struggled as Card-Pitt completed just two of 17 passes. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports editor Harry Boyle labeled the Card-Pitt passing game "putrid." He might have been right. But it would get even worse.

On Oct. 6, two days prior to Card-Pitt's second regular season game at Green Bay, McDonough was inducted into the army. Although his performance had been less than stellar, he was the best quarterback Card-Pitt had. According to Kiesling, McDonough was just beginning to master the T-formation. "I'd rather lose two players than McDonough at this point," sulked Kiesling. McDonough was replaced in the lineup by a prematurely gray, pint-sized 155-pound rookie named Johnny McCarthy from St. Francis College near Pittsburgh.

The Pittsburgh Press predicted that Card-Pitt stood "little chance of winning" against the Packers. The accuracy of that forecast quickly became apparent. The Card-Pitt defensive secondary was helpless against one of the greatest receivers of all time, Don Hutson.

Green Bay took a quick 7-0 lead on Irv Comp's 55-yard touchdown pass to Hutson. Soon after, Comp and Hutson hooked up four times on an 83-yard drive, capped by Ben Starrett's one-yard run. Another touchdown pass to Hutson, who leaped over three defenders to make the catch, made it 21-0. Card-Pitt would score a meaningless touchdown late on a 34-yard option pass from Grigas to Butler, although even that play was something of a gift (the Packer defense quit on the play because it expected a motion penalty to be called against the offense).

The 34-7 pasting dropped Card-Pitt to 0-2. Hutson dissected the Card-Pitt defense with seven receptions for 117 yards. McCarthy, however, provided a glimmer of hope, managing at least to keep his head above water at quarterback despite his inexperience. "I thought I'd be so scared I wouldn't be able to throw the ball," McCarthy said. "But I felt so calm I surprised myself." Furthermore, his 35 yard-per-punt average against Green Bay emboldened Card-Pitt to release poor Johnny Martin.

Next was a Wrigley Field showdown against an unlikely fellow-denizen of the Western Division cellar, the defending champion Chicago Bears. Injuries and war had ravaged the Bears' roster by depriving them of MVP quarterback Sid Luckman, not to mention Coach George Halas. Chicago's starting quarterback was 35-year-old Gene Ronzani, who had retired six years earlier. At least the Bears had history on their side. They had never lost to the Steelers and were 34-7-6 versus the Cardinals.

The Bears had superior talent on their side, too, despite their patchwork roster. It was a pitiful showing by Card-Pitt, described by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as twice as bad as their performance against Green Bay. The defense did make some big plays early. It forced a Bob Margarita fumble, which ended a drive deep in the Card-Pitt territory. Later in the first, Bill Perko fell on another Margarita fumble at the Bears 24-yard line, but a holding penalty pushed the offense back, and Marshall Robnett's 43-yard field goal attempt was no good. Still in the first, Johnny Butler picked off a Ronzani pass and returned it to the Chicago 35-yard line. But three penalties and George Wilson's sack of McCarthy ended that threat.

Meanwhile, the Bears took advantage of their opportunities. With McCarthy momentarily shaken up, Walt Masters came in at quarterback and promptly threw an interception, which was returned to the Card-Pitt 36. Moments later, Scooter McLean's 8-yard run put the Bears up 7-0. Then, after a McCarthy fumble, Johnny Long and end Connie Berry hooked up on a 50-yard scoring pass to make it 14-0 late in the first quarter. Following another botched Card-Pitt punt, this one by McCarthy, Ronzani connected with Berry on a 20-yard touchdown, making it 21-0. Card-Pitt was finished. The offense eked out just four first downs and 115 total yards in a 34-7 embarrassment.

Irate over the woeful display in Chicago, Kiesling and Handler fined Butler, Grigas, and Schultz $200 apiece for "indifferent play." The players, already fed up with the coaches' strict, dictatorial style, rallied around their teammates and basically went on strike, refusing to practice on Tuesday until the fined players received a fair hearing. That evening, players and coaches met in the team offices in Pittsburgh. Butler didn't attend, Grigas told his side of the story then left, and Schultz stayed throughout.

Conway Baker, appointed as a team spokesman, argued that the fines were unjust, but Kiesling was having none of it. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he suggested that anyone who didn't want to practice could leave. Some took him up on that offer. Those who remained suggested a meeting with Art Rooney. Six players, including Schultz and Grigas, met with Rooney the following afternoon to air their grievances.

Exactly what was said in that meeting isn't clear, but the upshot was that Grigas and Schultz agreed to pay their fines and returned to practice. The recalcitrant Butler was suspended indefinitely, and eventually waived, to be claimed by Brooklyn. Later, Rooney would agree to rescind those fines (except for Butler's), despite his spirited public statements to the contrary.

That week, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports editor Al Abrams helped slap the team with a fitting, memorable nickname. In his column, Abrams quoted a disgusted fan as writing, "Why don't they call themselves the Car-Pits? I think it's very appropriate as every team in the league walks over them."

In the wake of the off-field chaos, Card-Pitt headed to the Polo Grounds to meet the Giants, whom they had defeated in an exhibition game just three weeks earlier. It was a good game for a while. In the words of the Pittsburgh Press, "For one quarter and almost one half, [Card-Pitt] looked like professionals."

At the half, the Giants led 9-0, thanks to a safety on (what else?) a blocked punt, and a touchdown run by defending NFL rushing champion Bill Paschal. Card-Pitt threatened in the second quarter when Coley McDonough, making a cameo appearance while on furlough from the army, led the offense to the New York 5-yard line. But the Giants' Ward Cuff dashed those hopes when he intercepted a McDonough pass in the end zone.

New York salted it away in the third quarter by recovering a Bernie Semes fumble at the Card-Pitt 4-yard line and scoring on another Paschal scamper. Twice in the second half, Card-Pitt got inside the Giants 35, but they could move no further. The final was 23-0, as Card-Pitt fell to 0-4.

Following the game, the quarterback shuffle continued. McDonough went back to the military, while Walt Masters was given his pink slip, which left McCarthy with no real backup. Days later, the team signed former Pittsburgh-area college standout halfback Johnny Popovich, just back from the army following a medical discharge, and grabbed halfback Frank Martin from Brooklyn. But they were either unable or unwilling to sign another competent passer to back up McCarthy.

Card-Pitt, which had been wearing Chicago Cardinals uniforms for the entire season, inexplicably unveiled blue jerseys for what would be a bizarre and violent Oct. 29 game in Washington. Following the obligatory partially blocked punt on Card-Pitt's opening possession, the Redskins took a 7-0 lead when the NFL's leading passer, Frank Filchock, connected with huge end Joe Aguirre on a 57-yard touchdown.

With McDonough back in the army, Johnny McCarthy was back at quarterback, and he was the central figure in a bizarre first quarter sequence that would typify Card-Pitt's tragicomedy of a season. After the offense marched deep into Redskins territory, McCarthy's pass was intercepted by Wilbur Moore at the 13-yard line.

But on the next play, Cliff "Cactus Face" Duggan blocked Sammy Baugh's quick kick, and suddenly the Card-Pitt offense was again threatening to score. McCarthy promptly dropped back to pass, looked for an open receiver in the end zone -- and fired another interception into the waiting arms of Andy Farkas, who downed it for a touchback.

In the second quarter, McCarthy led the offense deep into Washington territory once again, but again his pass was intercepted, this time at the 3-yard line. At this point, the frustrations of a terrible season perhaps began to boil over. On the ensuing drive, with two minutes left in the first half, Card-Pitt's Duggan brawled with Washington's Jim North. Both players were ejected. Moments later Filchock, undeterred by the mayhem, would come up with another big play when he found a wide-open Aguirre for a 48-yard touchdown and a 14-0 lead.

After Card-Pitt got the ball back, end Tony Bova squared off against the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Aguirre after, Bova claimed, Aguirre tried to sucker punch him. Both Bova and Aguirre were ejected. As the dust was settling from that tussle, McCarthy dropped back to pass, only to be drilled on a brutal hit by Redskins' rookie Doug Turley. The Card-Pitt QB was hauled off the field on a stretcher with what were thought to be two broken ribs.

Although McCarthy's numbers on the day were nothing terribly special (7 of 14 for 81 yards and three interceptions), he was the only remaining player on the Card-Pitt roster with significant quarterbacking experience. Card-Pitt pressed Grigas into service at quarterback for the remainder of the game.

With five seconds left in the half, Moore intercepted a Grigas pass and was hit out of bounds along the Washington bench. Moore's irate Redskin teammates immediately began to beat on the handful of Card-Pitt players who were in the vicinity, prompting the Card-Pitt bench to race across the field in an attempt to protect their teammates.

Soon, Washington D.C., police stormed the field to break up what had become a near-riot. Coaches Kiesling and Handler found themselves in the middle of the brawl, while Rooney (who had made the U.S. Olympic boxing team as a younger man), dashed about halfway across the field, apparently ready to mix it up, before it dawned on him that for an NFL owner to get into a fight with opposing players would be a breach of protocol, not to mention potentially hazardous to his health.

With decorum finally restored, Card-Pitt attempted to mount a third quarter comeback. They recovered Moore's fumble of the second half kickoff, leading to a 1-yard touchdown run by Grigas, which cut the Redskins lead to 14-7. But Moore would make amends a bit later. On third-and-17, he took a handoff from Filchock, shed several tacklers, and raced 75 yards to the end zone (a run described by Washington Post scribe Al Costello as "scrumptious") to put Washington back up by two touchdowns at the end of the third quarter.

Card-Pitt blew another great chance when it lost the ball on downs at the Washington 4-yard-line, but they would regain possession and cut into the lead when Grigas passed 10 yards to Don Currivan for a touchdown. Conway Baker's extra point was no good, and Card-Pitt was within 21-13. But that was as close as they would get. Despite another Grigas touchdown run late, Washington would win, 42-20. The final scoring play came when Sammy Baugh came off the bench and threw a 35-yard touchdown pass to Turley with two seconds left.

Not only did that play rub salt in the Card-Pitt wound, but also it likely made some gamblers happy (the betting line on the game ranged from 18-20 points). The seemingly tireless Grigas ended the day with 100 yards rushing on 30 carries. He also completed 6 of 16 passes for 99 yards, with three interceptions. On the day, the Redskins would pick off six Card-Pitt aerials. Card-Pitt actually out-gained Washington, 367-359, and also had the advantage in first downs, 19-8. But the turnovers were more than they could overcome.

NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden fined Duggan a hefty $200 for his role in the first fight. But Rooney, irate at the officials he claimed had lost control of the game, volunteered to pay Duggan's fine for him. Far from being disappointed with his team's loss of composure, Rooney believed the brawls augured well for his team and said, "If we display that spirit next Sunday we will lick the Detroit Lions for sure."

Wishful thinking. With McCarthy on the sidelines and no other competent passing quarterbacks on the roster, the coaches opted for a radical midseason overhaul of the offense. The T-formation was out. The Notre Dame Box was in.

"McCarthy was coming along fine…so we figured the 'T' was finally going to click," said Kiesling. "But when he got those ribs broken, there was nothing to do but make a change." In the new offense, the ball would be snapped directly to halfback Grigas. Walt Rankin took over the quarterback position, but he would merely serve as a blocker for Grigas.

Almost 18,000 fans attended the Nov. 5 game against Detroit at Forbes Field, a game the Pittsburgh Press called "Chapter Number 6 in the not-too-thrilling saga of How to Lose Football Games." While the Press was acerbic, the Chicago Tribune barely even noticed; it devoted a mere two paragraphs to the game in the Monday edition.

The Lions' main weapon was Frank Sinkwich, the NFL's leading rusher [at that moment], who had been excused from military service because of his flat feet. But it was the Lions' air attack that quickly put the game out of reach, as Card-Pitt took what Kiesling called "a nine-minute nap" in the first quarter.

Art Van Tone made a one-handed grab of a Bob Westfall 19-yard pass to stake Detroit to a 7-0 lead. After Van Tone intercepted Grigas, Westfall was on the receiving end of a touchdown pass, a 19-yarder from Sinkwich, which made it 14-0. The Card-Pitt special teams woes continued when Dave Diehl blocked a Bobby Thurbon punt to give the Lions possession on the Card-Pitt 18. Sinkwich took it into the end zone from 2 yards out, and Detroit took a 21-0 lead after the first quarter.

Card-Pitt was competitive the rest of the way, again out-gaining the Lions, 384-277. Grigas rushed for 117 yards to move into second place in the league ahead of Sinkwich, who was held to just 30 yards. But that first quarter "nap" was too much to overcome. Despite a Grigas touchdown pass to Bova in the fourth quarter, the Lions would win, 27-6.

In a scheduling quirk, that was the first of back-to-back games against the Lions. Card-Pitt got some good news on the eve of the following week's game, when Thurbon was rejected for military service, which enabled Kiesling and Handler to hold on to one of their few offensive weapons. The Nov.11 game at Briggs Stadium was one that, with a couple of fortuitous bounces, could have gone Card-Pitt's way. But as would be the case all season, Card-Pitt was to get no breaks of any kind.

Detroit took a 7-0 lead on a 1-yard Van Tone touchdown run. In the second quarter, a Grigas pass caromed off the hands of Thurbon and into the waiting arms of Bob Westfall, who returned the interception 31 yards to the Card-Pitt 9-yard line. Moments later, Sinkwich's touchdown made it 14-0.

In the second quarter, Card-Pitt drove to the Detroit 28, and again to their 15, but lost the ball on downs each time. They also thought they had scored when Bova scooped up a blocked punt and lateralled to Bill Perko, who took it 15 yards into the end zone. But, they were ruled offside.

Card-Pitt finally broke through in the third quarter when Thurbon's 1-yard run, on the heels of a 70-yard drive, cut the lead to 14-7. But on their possession, Sunny Liles intercepted a pass deep in Card-Pitt territory to set up another Sinkwich touchdown run. Final score: Detroit 21, Card-Pitt 7.

It was a big game for Grigas, though. He rushed 25 times for 123 yards to take over the league rushing lead. He also was 13-for-30 as a passer for 177 yards and accounted for all but 38 of Card-Pitt's yards. The Card-Pitt defense held Detroit to just 119 total yards, but again the turnovers (five of them) did them in.

Although McCarthy returned to action against Detroit (his ribs weren't broken, after all), a return to the T-formation was apparently out of the question. After the game, Card-Pitt sent Frank Martin (who had been injured since joining the team) back to Brooklyn, which left the team with 23 players, just one over the NFL minimum. An assistant coach named Buddy Parker, then 31, reportedly was prepared to suit up in an emergency.

Next, Card-Pitt took its 0-7 record to Chicago for one of its two Comiskey Park home games. Against the Rams, as Carl Hughes of the Pittsburgh Press put it, Card-Pitt "abandoned the one thing they had been doing right—running." The Rams jumped out to a 6-0 advantage courtesy of a 46-yard touchdown pass from Mike Kabealo to Tom Colella. Then the Card-Pitt punting game suffered yet another meltdown, when McCarthy shanked one that gave the Rams possession on the Card-Pitt 21. Lou Zontini would run it in to make the score 12-0 at the half.

Card-Pitt mounted a nice drive in the third quarter, but Zontini thwarted it when he picked off a Grigas pass. That led to a 35-yard touchdown pass from Kabealo to Steve Pritko, and a 19-0 advantage. Card-Pitt would cut it to 19-6 on a 54-yard scoring pass from Grigas to Bova, but a 58-yard touchdown run by Jim Gillette put the game out of reach. The Rams, who survived a close call against Card-Pitt early in the season, won comfortably, 33-6.

Grigas was awful. He completed only 10 of 31 passes with five interceptions. He was also limited to 35 yards rushing on 17 carries (which included 40 yards lost on sacks).

Card-Pitt looked much better during a Thanksgiving weekend game against division-leading Green Bay at Comiskey, played before just 7,158 fans, the NFL's smallest crowd of the season.

For the first time in two months, Card-Pitt held a brief lead. Lineman Marshall Robnett intercepted an Irv Comp pass and returned it 48 yards to the Packer 2. Three plays later, Bobby Thurbon sneaked into the end zone, and Card-Pitt was up, 7-0, early.

But Green Bay wasted little time asserting itself. Later in the first quarter, Hutson picked off Grigas' pass at the Card-Pitt 45 and took it back to the 2-yard line. Paul Duhart's touchdown run tied the game at 7-7. In the second quarter, Duhart dashed 11 yards to give the Packers a 14-7 lead. Then just before halftime, after taking over on downs in Green Bay territory, Grigas would loft a 37-yard scoring pass to Thurbon. However, Conway Baker misfired on the extra point, so Card-Pitt had to settle for a 14-13 deficit at the intermission.

In the third quarter, Comp and Hutson teamed up on a short touchdown pass (a familiar refrain from Week 2 of the regular season), which made Green Bay's lead 21-13. The Packers' Don Perkins put it out of reach when, on the first play of the fourth quarter, he intercepted Grigas and returned it 40 yards for a touchdown. Card-Pitt would strike again on a 72-yard pass play from Grigas to Don Currivan, but another Comp-to-Hutson touchdown set the final at 35-20.

Although his team was headed for a winless year, John Grigas nonetheless had a lot at stake during the season finale against the Chicago Bears. He still had an outside shot at winning the league rushing title. He trailed New York's Bill Paschal, 625-610; however, Paschal still had two games to play.

But the taciturn, insular Grigas apparently had a lot more than the rushing title on his mind. This was a man who had gone 0-for-two years in the NFL, and the losing had taken its toll. Early in the week prior to the Bears game he told teammates Baker and Lou Marotti that if the Forbes Field turf was frozen on Sunday morning, he wasn't going to play. Baker and Marotti figured Grigas was just joking, so they didn't bother reporting his comments to the coaches.

On the eve of the Bears game, Grigas and roommate Currivan had plans to attend a hockey game, but Grigas said he didn't feel like it. When Currivan got back to their room at the Webster Hall Hotel later that night, Grigas met him and told him that he was going to leave the team and go home to Massachusetts. Currivan tried to talk Grigas out of it, then encouraged him to sleep on it and make a decision in the morning. But Grigas already had crossed the Rubicon. Currivan awoke Sunday morning to this farewell note from his roommate, quoted in the Pittsburgh Press:

Dear Don:

Did not want to wake you up.

Funny thing, everything seems so mixed up. I'm gone now. Can't change my plans. Take care of my bags.

Best of luck,

Johnny

Grigas also left Currivan with a vague, rambling letter to be delivered to the Card-Pitt management.

Dear Management and Coaches:

My action, for what I just did, may not be the best in regard to good, ethical business. Think what you may of me, but I sincerely believe in all justice that it is for the best.

           

I had that desire which you so often mentioned in your lectures but how long a person can have any desire depends upon the frame of mind under which he plays. The human mind is the faculty of the soul, which is influenced by the human body. When your mind is changed because of the physical beating, week in and week out, your soul isn't in the game. My mind has been influenced this past week and I tried to stick it out but it has reached the stage where the mind is stronger than the will. In all justice to the management and myself I am leaving because I couldn't play the whole game.

           

I played every game from start to finish and never said a word because it was my job to justify my salary. Money was not my primary aim, but to play ball as a sport and have a little fun in a succ

By JOE HORRIGAN

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

In 1974, the Pittsburgh Steelers recorded the most successful talent grab in the history of the National Football League's annual college draft. With four picks over the first five rounds, the Steelers chose four players who went on to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, including fourth-round pick, wide receiver John Stallworth.

 

Joining Stallworth were wide receiver Lynn Swann, selected in the first round, linebacker Jack Lambert, a second-round pick, and center Mike Webster, who was tapped in the fifth.

 

"I'd like to say the draft was the result of horse sense and intelligence," joked Art Rooney Jr., then the head of the team's scouting department. "But it was just good luck. We got some great players."

Rooney's humility aside, the Steelers had done their homework, particularly as it pertained to Stallworth. The Pittsburgh scouting department knew that Stallworth was a blue-chip prospect worthy of being selected in the first round. But the Steelers scouting department was willing to gamble that certain circumstances would cause other teams to overlook the talented receiver.

 

It was a gamble that Coach Chuck Noll had to be convinced to take. Noll and his staff actually considered selecting Stallworth in the first round. The "circumstances" the Steelers felt might work in their favor began with the belief that some scouts had failed to recognize Stallworth's talents since he played at a small school, Alabama A&M.

 

Add to that, scouting combines had timed him at a somewhat unimpressive 4.8 in the 40-yard dash. And finally, the coaches in the 1974 Senior Bowl played him at defensive back, rather than at wide receiver.

"We got real lucky when Stallworth came to the Senior Bowl and they put him at defensive back," recalled Rooney.

 

"We knew we were going to take Lambert in the second round, and we had no third-round pick," remembered Bill Nunn, then the Steelers' assistant director of player personnel. "So we discussed Stallworth strongly in the first round. We also knew you either took Lynn Swann in the first round, or you wouldn't get him. So now it gets down to Chuck (Noll). He asked if we thought Stallworth might last. Lionel Taylor, our receivers coach at the time, and I both said yes."

Nunn knew Stallworth's scouting combine times were misleading. He had timed Stallworth prior to his junior season and the slender receiver ran the 40 in 4.5 seconds. A painful hip pointer, it turns out, was the cause of the discrepancy. Taylor, who agreed that Stallworth might be available in a later round, also felt that the scouts overlooked Stallworth's "soft hands."

Whether it was good scouting, luck, or more likely a combination of the two, John Stallworth went on to become the most prolific receiver in Pittsburgh Steelers history. Fourteen years after his retirement, he still leads the team in receptions over a career.

 

A native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Stallworth was born on July 15, 1952. Like every kid at Tuscaloosa High, he dreamed of playing college football at the University of Alabama. So in 1970, when he learned that a member of the Alabama football staff had asked his high school coach for some game films he was understandably excited.

"I would defy any boy to grow up in Tuscaloosa and not want to play for Alabama," he told a Sports Illustrated reporter in 1986. Unfortunately, Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant was unimpressed with the tall, lanky running back who hit the holes standing too upright.

 

Stallworth hadn't planned on being a running back. Simply put, his high school team just didn't have a quarterback who could throw the ball with any consistency. Thus, Stallworth, with his coach's encouragement, opted to play running back.

Even before his high school days, however, Stallworth knew his hands, not his feet, were his greatest asset. "I was small, playing with a big group of kids," he said of his youth. "And the only way I could play was because I could catch the football. At that time, in pick-up games, it was three passes for a first down. A lot of times, I'd catch all three passes. "It just came natural. I would reach out to catch the ball, and it would just stick. It's always been a God-given talent that I possess."

After being overlooked by Alabama, Stallworth took his "God-given" talents to Alabama A&M, the Division II school near the state's northern border. "Looking back, I wouldn't change a thing," he said of his college experience. "Hindsight is always 20-20, but I could have been lost in the shuffle at Alabama. They weren't throwing the ball a whole lot in those days. They had just gone to the wishbone offense. Anything could have happened. Anyway, I met my wife at A&M. There was a lack of publicity, but it just made me a stronger individual."

That personal strength would serve Stallworth well in the coming years. He knew that when he reported to Steelers training camp, he would not only be measured against the incumbent receiver corps, but against the production of fellow rookie Swann. Stallworth, who arrived in camp with none of the fanfare of the flashy first-round pick, wasn't intimidated by Swann's résumé that included Rose Bowls and a national championship.

 

"I hadn't seen that many pro football players," Stallworth told The Sporting News in 1979. "I wanted to compare their speed and hands. Once I saw Lynn, I thought I could play with him."

"Those two (Stallworth and Swann) came to me and told me they would start," recalled Lionel Taylor. "They told me."

 

Although neither earned a permanent starting berth as a rookie, both impressed their position coach. Stallworth played in 13 games that season, starting two, before an illness sidelined him. Nonetheless, his rookie performance earned him a starter's role the following season, but again a series of injuries kept him from permanently locking down the job. However, starting in 1976, he began a streak in which he started all but three games in which he played.

Stallworth had flashes of brilliance during his first three seasons in Pittsburgh. In 1975, for instance, he started nine games and tied Isaac Curtis for the AFC lead with a 21.2-yard average per reception. But just as it seemed that his time had arrived, he was again sidelined by a series of foot and leg injuries.

"It was a really tough time for me," he recalled. "It was psychologically damaging. If it hadn't been for my wife and friends, I couldn't have gotten through it." Though frustrated, Stallworth never doubted that he had the necessary tools to be a star in the NFL. His strength of character, mental toughness, and competitive nature kept him focused.

With impressive back-to-back seasons in 1977 and 1978, Stallworth's career finally seemed to have turned the corner. In Super Bowl XIII, he dazzled a national television audience with a remarkable first half act in which he snagged three Terry Bradshaw passes for 115 yards, including 75- and 28-yard touchdowns. As it turned out, it was just a prelude of things to come.

Stallworth could no longer be viewed as an emerging star. He had arrived. And in 1979, his star shined brightly when he set a team record with 70 receptions for 1,183 yards. As if to add an exclamation point on the season, he again capped it off with playoff heroics.

 

In Super Bowl XIV he caught three passes for 121 yards and a touchdown. The touchdown - a 73-yard beauty in which he picked the ball off his facemask while falling backwards - proved to be the game-winning score. His outstanding season-long performance earned him All-Pro and All-AFC honors and the first of four Pro Bowl berths. It also earned him the ultimate recognition from his teammates as they selected him their Most Valuable Player.

 

In addition to finally earning well-deserved national recognition, Stallworth had also clearly earned the respect and confidence of his teammates, including Bradshaw. Early on, while Stallworth was sharing time at wide receiver with Frank Lewis, Bradshaw tended to look more often in Swann's direction. But that all changed as Stallworth emerged from the shadows of both Lewis and Swann. His emergence, however, inevitably caused observers to compare Swann and Stallworth.

While competitive, the two receivers developed a good rapport with each other. "The rivalry doesn't get to the point where it's a jealousy type thing," Stallworth explained in 1979. "I think we both have big egos, but we're able to subdue them a little bit for the team effort."

But the two definitely competed. "A lot of times we weren't competing against the opposing team," he once confessed. "We were competing against each other to see who'd catch the most passes. To see who'd make the great move to get open, that we could look at later (on film) and say 'Oooooh'."

 

Getting open was something Stallworth seemed to do with ease. The Bradshaw-to-Stallworth combination grew as the two All-Pro performers developed a strong comfort zone. Stallworth's blend of deceiving speed, soft hands, and perfect pass patterns made him a Bradshaw favorite. He even perfected a new move - the hook slide catch - a move he used frequently in pressure situations.

 "It's my own invention," Stallworth told a reporter. "I don't know why I started to do it, it just sort of happened." As rewarding as the 1979 season was for Stallworth, the 1980 season brought only angst and disappointment when injuries (a cracked fibula and later a broken bone in his foot) limited his play to just three games.

Still hobbling at the start of the 1981 season, there was some question as to how effective he might be. When he opened the season with a three-catch, 82-yard performance that included a 56-yard grab and a 5-yard touchdown reception, Noll was all smiles. "He's good," laughed Noll. "Even when he limps." Stallworth finished the season with 63 receptions for 1,098 yards.

Just as Stallworth had emerged an elite receiver in the NFL, his peers recognized him for his leadership and dedication to the game. At times, his on-the-field accomplishments were overshadowed by his inspirational hard-fought comeback battles from nagging leg injuries. His most impressive demonstration of his work ethic and determination to succeed came in 1984.

 

After missing much of the 1983 season due to injury, some observers began to suggest that Stallworth's most productive days were behind him. "A remnant of an empire, an artifact from kingdoms past," was how one writer described him prior to the start of the 1984 season.

 

"I knew better than that," Stallworth said. "I knew that I could come back and have a very good season if I was healthy."

 

That year, at age 32, he had his greatest season, with 80 catches for an AFC-leading 1,395 yards and 11 touchdowns - and all without Bradshaw, who had retired. It was a banner year, one in which he shattered five team records and was named the NFL Comeback Player of the Year.

Stallworth's performance may have been a surprise to some observers, but not for the future Hall of Famer. "I felt I had the talent and could still play the game," he professed. "As you get older you have to do more things to maintain your health. The key to returning to form was good health."

 

For Stallworth, returning to good health meant altering his workouts, concentrating on leg strength. It was an adjustment that worked, and he ran the fastest 40 time since his rookie year.

Stallworth's "comeback" continued for three more seasons, during which he averaged 50 receptions per year. Finally, following the 1987 season, the soft-spoken former fourth-round pick out of Alabama A&M announced his retirement.

 

"My goal when I came to the NFL was to gain the respect of my peers and a certain amount of self respect," he once remarked. "I was never really interested in publicity."

 

By Jack Ziegler

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

Arthur Daley, famed "Sports of the Times" columnist, called him "one of the greatest coaches who ever lived." Art Rooney, the Steelers' owner, credited him with putting "Pittsburgh on the professional football map." Pop Warner, legendary coach from the early part of this century, said simply: "He was one of the best I ever coached."

 

Largely forgotten today, John Bain "Jock" Sutherland was, from 1919 to 1948, a coaching colossus who bestrode the college and professional football worlds. Born in desperate poverty in 1889 in Cooper-Angus, Scotland, Sutherland emigrated to America in his early teens. In a young manhood reminiscent of an Horatio Alger story, Sutherland worked his way through Oberlin Academy waiting tables and shoveling snow. In 1914 he entered the University of Pittsburgh's School of Dentistry. Unfamiliar with American football (he'd played soccer in Scotland) until he saw it played at Pitt, Sutherland quickly took to the game. At 6-foot-1, 200 pounds, Sutherland became an All-American guard at Pitt under the tutelage of Pop Warner. He also found time to excel as a collegiate heavyweight boxer and hammer thrower.

 

World War I found Sutherland an officer in the Army and coaching his first football team at Camp Greenleaf. With the end of the war, Sutherland briefly opened a dental practice in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, but then accepted a head coaching post at Lafayette College. From 1919 to 1923 Sutherland directed Lafayette to a 33-8-2 record, including an undefeated season in 1921. When Warner left Pitt in 1923, Sutherland seemed the obvious replacement (perhaps many on the Pitt campus remembered that Sutherland's Lafayette squads twice had shut out strong Panthers teams).

 

At Pitt, Sutherland earned a reputation as one of the country's great college coaches. Against tough opposition from 1924 to 1938, Sutherland compiled an astounding 111-20-12 record. Sutherland produced four unbeaten teams, two national championships, and four trips to the Rose Bowl (the Panthers only defeated Washington, 21-0, in 1937). Recruiting mainly from the mines and mill towns of Western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and northern West Virginia, Sutherland acquired tough, physical players well suited to his driving single-wing offense.

 

Twenty-four of his players became All-Americans. But in the late 1930s, Pitt de-emphasized football and Sutherland felt pressured into leaving the university he loved and saw as symbolic of his success in America. Years later Sutherland revealed his frustration to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist AI Abrams: "Why, why [didn't] they want me? Everything was done to make things unpleasant for me. I could do little else but resign."

 

Sutherland spent 1939 out of football. Despite offers from Navy, Ohio State, and Yale, Sutherland went to the pros in 1940 and signed with the lackluster Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers, who had finished 4-6-1 under Potsy Clark in 1939, became new men under Sutherland's leadership.

 

As a result of Sutherland's authoritarian direction, rigorous conditioning routines and blackboard drills, the Dodgers challenged Washington for the 1940 Eastern Division title. Brooklyn finished 8-3-0, just one game behind Hall of Fame coach Ray Flaherty's Redskins.

 

Especially effective for Sutherland was league MVP Ace Parker at tailback, who rushed for 306 yards and passed for 817 more (Parker's 10 touchdown passes were second only to Sammy Baugh's 12). Other Dodgers stars included Pug Manders and Banks McFadden in the backfield, Bruiser Kinard on the line, and All-Pro Perry Schwartz at end.

 

Football fans in Flatbush hoped that 1941 finally would be their year. But alas, as so often in Brooklyn sports, it was not to be. The Dodgers almost beat the championship Bears in preseason, but stumbled when the bell rang by losing three of their first five games. Though Brooklyn played well over the last half of the season by winning five of their last six, including both games with Steve Owen's New York Giants, they still wound up one game behind, in second place.

 

One bright spot for the Dodgers was Pug Manders winning the league's rushing title with 486 yards. Sutherland spent World War II in the Navy, not returning to pro football until 1946 when he signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Sutherland performed miracles in transforming a club that was 2-8 in 1945 into a respectable 5-5-1 in 1946.

 

Aside from a better on-field performance, owner Art Rooney was further cheered by increased attendance as fans flocked to Forbes Field in homage to the popular Sutherland. The one sour note in Steelers fortunes was Sutherland's deteriorating relationship with star tailback Bill Dudley, who rushed for a league leading 604 yards. Dudley proved too headstrong and independent for Sutherland, and the coach responded with whip-like sarcasm. Dudley especially was angered by Sutherland's insistence that he play the last four games of the season despite his injured ribs.

 

The following season, 1947, proved the finest year in Steelers history to that point. Dudley had been traded to Detroit and Sutherland molded the remaining players into an 8-4 club. The "starless Steelers" were led by tailback Johnny "Zero" Clement (670 yards rushing, 1,004 yards passing), end Val Jansante (35 catches, 599 yards, five touchdowns) and linemen like Ralph Calacagri, Bill Moore, and Paul Stenn.

 

The Steelers appeared to have the Eastern division locked up but late season losses to the Eagles and Bears forced a playoff with Philadelphia. In an uncharacteristic act of rebellion for a Sutherland-coached team, the Steelers "struck." The players demanded extra pay for the additional week of practice before the playoff game. Sutherland exploded, differences were not smoothed over, and a demoralized Pittsburgh team lost to Greasy Neale's Eagles, 21-0.

 

Hopes ran high in the Steel City in the spring of 1948. At last the Steelers seemed poised on the edge of greatness. Things began smoothly enough when Sutherland left in March for his annual vacation/scouting trip through the South. After visiting coach Wallace Wade of Duke over Easter, Sutherland dropped out of sight for 11 days. He finally surfaced near the small western Kentucky town of Bandanna, mumbling that he had come south to attend his son's wedding (Sutherland never married).

 

At first, doctors in Cairo, Illinois, diagnosed Sutherland as suffering from nervous exhaustion. Flown back to Pittsburgh by private plane, the Steelers' coach was examined by doctors at West Penn hospital. Exploratory surgery revealed two brain tumors. Sutherland died at 4:15 a.m. on April 11, 1948.

 

The city's shock at the apparently healthy Sutherland's sudden illness and death was best summed up by a Pittsburgh Press headline: "CITY'S FOOTBALL HEART, SOUL DIE WITH JACK SUTHERLAND." Over 3,200 mourners filed by Sutherland's casket at Sampson's funeral home while several hundred crowded the services at Calvary Episcopal Church in East Liberty.

 

On a windy, rainy April 13, a day much like autumnal days when Sutherland-coached teams ran roughshod over opponents: Dr. John Bain Sutherland was buried in Homewood Cemetery as a Highland piper skirled a last farewell. His pallbearers, fittingly enough, were eight members of the 1947 Steelers: Chuck Cherundolo, Bill Moore, Jack Wiley, Val Jansante, Ralph Calacagri, Charlie Mehelich, Steve Lach and John Mastrangelo.

 

In tributes to Sutherland, Arthur Daley and Al Abrams penetrated to the essence of the man. Both writers noted that it took them over 15 years to break down Suther­land's glacial aloofness. Once past what Abrams called Sutherland's "iron mask of reserve," both writers found Sutherland extremely sensitive, a man cut to the quick by his forced resignation at Pitt and the "player vs. coach" controversy with Bill Dudley.

 

Sutherland found the more independent players emerging after World War II difficult to understand and manage. By 1947 Abrams noted that Sutherland felt "bewildered and unhappy." In an off-the-record conversation with Abrams, Sutherland confided that "I've felt like quitting. I'm too old to take this any more. All I demand from my players is respect to their coaches and to play their best on the field." Sutherland's relationship with Dudley and the "striking" Steelers of 1947 proved much different than his own relationship as a player with Pop Warner back in 1916.

 

An extremely self-contained man, Sutherland's idea of warmth was to shake each player's hand in the locker room after a hard-fought victory. Once, after Johnny Clement had played exceptionally well in a close game, Sutherland actually spoke to him: "There was a lot of football played out there today. Eh, Johnny?" From Sutherland, this qualifies as an emotional outpouring.

 

In some ways, Sutherland was a dinosaur and his legacy proved reactionary (Johnny Michelosen, a Sutherland protégé and his successor, kept the single-wing in Pittsburgh until 1951). Sutherland believed in fundamentals – hard-blocking, hard tackling, precise execution – and almost won a division championship in 1947 with single-wing basics while most other pro teams were converting to the T-formation. Perhaps Arthur Daley best summed up Sutherland's thinking: "His football was almost exclusively power football. He'd rather knock a man down than throw a pass over him."

 

Seemingly gruff, conservative and demanding, the "Silent Scot" still commanded respect and admiration. When Sutherland died, flags all over Pittsburgh flew at half-mast. Even Hall of Fame tailback Bill Dudley, who had feuded so bitterly with him just two years before, had high words of praise for Jock Sutherland: "He was the best coach I ever played for."

By Joe Horrigan

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

Lynn Swann was more than a great athlete. He was a performing artist whose stage was a football field. His weekly Sunday recitals were showstoppers that left audiences awestruck and cheering for more. His leaping fingertip catches were made with the grace of a ballet dancer. His pass patterns across the middle were run with the fearlessness of a circus high wire walker. And, like other great entertainers, his finest performances often came in the final act, when he had everyone's attention.

 

Although truly a performing artist, Swann's performances didn't earn him Oscars or Emmys; he was instead rewarded with his profession's equivalent – All-Pro, Pro Bowl, and Most Valuable Player accolades. And topping the list of his career honors, one bestowed upon him in January 2001 – election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

 

Born on March 7, 1952, in Alcoa, Tennessee, Swann grew up in San Mateo, California. His father, Willie, was an aircraft maintenance worker and his mother, Mildred, worked as a dental hygienist.

 

It was Mildred Swann who encouraged "Lynn the performer," who as a youngster had a seemingly endless source of energy. His mother enrolled him in dance classes in an effort to harness some of his exuberance.

 

"When I was in grammar school," he recalled, "I felt more comfortable on the dance floor than the football field." From the age of 4 until his senior year in high school Swann studied various forms of dance including ballet, modern dance, and tap.

 

While it was his mother who introduced him to dance, it was older brother Calvin that nurtured Lynn's interests in sports. Always willing to try whatever sport his older brother was playing, Swann was invariably one of the smallest participants. He quickly learned, however, not to be intimidated by his smallish size.

 

"I was always smaller and younger than the other kids," he remembered. "My game had to be a mental one. I had to out-smart and out-quick the other kids and take advantage of mistakes." He later realized it was that attitude combined with many of the skills he learned from dance and then gymnastics that helped develop "Lynn Swann the athlete."

 

Swann, a Baptist, won an academic scholarship to the Catholic all-boys Serra High School. There, Swann set a school record for the long jump, played on the basketball team, and starred on the football team as a wide receiver for two seasons and as a quarterback in his senior year.

 

While Swann had many good experiences in high school, not all were pleasant. As one of just nine African-Americans in a school of 900, he found some white classmates treated him differently outside of athletics. At the same time, some of his black friends ostracized him for attending a white school and for taking on what they considered white airs. It was a perplexing situation for the good-natured Swann. "I learned very young the games people play," he said in a 1979 Sports Illustrated interview.

 

Swann earned high school All-America honors and was recruited by several colleges and universities. He even visited Notre Dame, where Coach Ara Parseghian talked about making him a quarterback. His first choice, however, was UCLA, but unfortunately, it wasn't one of the schools that called. When UCLA didn't offer a scholarship, Swann decided on the school's cross-town rival, USC.

 

UCLA's oversight was a blessing for USC because the slender wide receiver went on to set a then-school record of 96 receptions and was second in receiving yardage with 1,562 and finished as the third leading punt returner in the school's history. He also played in two Rose Bowls, on a national championship team, and in 1973 was a unanimous first-team All-America choice.

 

Still, even with all his successes, Swann really didn't consider the pros until after his junior season when the Trojans won the 1972 national championship. When it became apparent to him that he was going to be a high draft pick, he hoped to be selected by a West Coast team. He thought at the time that the Oakland Raiders might call his name. "I figured they were going to have to replace Fred Biletnikoff eventually," he said.

 

But Oakland took offensive tackle Henry Lawrence as the nineteenth choice of the first round. The Pittsburgh Steelers chose two picks later and grabbed Swann, the first wide receiver selected. About the only thing he knew about Pittsburgh was that "they had a guy named Franco (Harris), and how cold it would be."

 

When Swann joined the Steelers, he joined a team that was already well into its transformation from cellar-dweller to one of the NFL's dynasties. Already in place were defensive stars and future Hall of Fame members Joe Greene, Mel Blount, and Jack Ham, as well as Terry Bradshaw, Mike Webster and Harris on offense. What the team seemed to lack was a true game-breaker at the wide receiver slot. Swann was the answer to their prayers.

 

By most accounts, Swann had a great rookie season. His gutsy play, particularly as a punt returner, established him as a tough competitor. He led the NFL in punt returns with 577 yards on 41 returns, which at that time was a club record and fourth best in league history. He called for a fair catch just three times, and his 64-yard return against the New Orleans Saints was the Steelers' longest scoring play of the season.

 

As a receiver, he shared playing time with veteran Ron Shanklin, but did earn a starter's berth in two games. In the AFC Championship Game against the Oakland Raiders the rookie receiver scored the go-ahead touchdown as the Steelers advanced to their first Super Bowl.

 

"I didn't catch a pass that day as a wide receiver," Swann recalled of Super Bowl IX. "But late in the game, Terry Bradshaw called a reverse with me as the ball carrier. Franco Harris was on his way to rushing for 158 yards … as a team we had already set a rushing record. When the reverse was called, Franco stared at me. 'Don't lose any yards,' he said. When we broke the huddle and lined up, an official stopped play momentarily to change the ball. Standing there, I heard Carl Eller of the Vikings yell, 'Look out for the reverse.' Franco and Terry looked at me and laughed. Somehow I got back to the line of scrimmage."

 

The next year, Shanklin was traded and Swann was inserted into the starting lineup. Even though the Steelers were a running team, Swann managed 49 catches for 781 yards and a league-high 11 touchdown receptions.

 

In the 1975 AFC Championship Game, a rematch against the Raiders, Swann suffered a concussion after being whacked by Raiders' safety George Atkinson. Although the Steelers went on to win, it initially appeared unlikely that Swann would be able to play in the Super Bowl. But with two weeks off before the big game, a well-rested Swann recovered sufficiently to play.

 

Not only did he play, he grabbed four passes for 161 yards, scored one touchdown and set up another. Three of his catches, as one veteran reporter noted, were of the "break-out-the-thesaurus variety." The first was a 32-yarder down the sideline with tight coverage. Three plays later the Steelers scored. On his second reception, a circus grab, he dived, tipped the ball, did a mid-air twist, and caught it while lying the ground – a 53-yard gain. His biggest catch of the game, however, came with just minutes remaining, when he burned the Dallas defense with a 64-yard touchdown catch that put the Steelers ahead, 21-10.

 

"My big catches that day are what people remember," Swann said. "But in coming back from my concussion, my biggest catch occurred on the first pass that Terry threw to me. I went up for a high, graceful reception that gave me the confidence I needed to make the other catches later on." The Steelers went on to win, 21-17, and Swann was named the game's MVP.

 

"I'd like to say that we developed Lynn Swann," said Coach Chuck Noll. "But the truth is he was perfectly developed as a football player the first time he stepped on our practice field."

 

The following season began with the assumption that Swann would continue his assent into the limelight as one of the game's premier wide receivers. But in the first game of the season, disaster – or rather George Atkinson – struck again.

 

In a now notorious play, Atkinson walloped an unsuspecting Swann in the back of the head with a forearm smash. Swann, who was clearly not involved in the play, lay motionless with another concussion. The concussion caused Swann to miss two games, and that coupled with a foot injury sustained later in the season, resulted in a statistically disappointing season for the him.

 

Despite his injuries, Swann still led the team in receptions and finished strong down the stretch. He caught 12 passes and scored three touchdowns in the last three regular season games, including a remarkable five-reception outing in the snow in Cincinnati. In the postseason, he added to his growing reputation as a big-game performer by hauling in eight receptions for two touchdowns in two games.

 

Swann, however, concerned about his concussions, seriously considered retiring from the game after just three seasons. Ultimately, he decided that he still enjoyed playing too much to call it quits. He did decide, however, to take a vocal stand against the unnecessary violence that existed in the game. His sometimes unpopular and courageous stance against unsportsmanlike play eventually resulted in rules changes.

 

In 1977, Swann returned to full form. His 50 receptions again led the Steelers. His outstanding play earned him Pro Bowl and All-Pro honors for the second time in three years.

 

While 1977 was a terrific season for the fourth-year veteran, 1978 was a breakout year. That season Swann had 61 catches for 880 yards, both career highs, and consistently demonstrated an uncanny ability to deliver in the clutch. He also had his best postseason performance with 13 catches for 274 yards and three touchdowns. His per catch average in the playoffs was 21.1 yards. The Steelers, like Swann, also had a great season and again advanced to the Super Bowl.

 

Super Bowl XIII was a déjà vu game for the Steelers. Just as they had in Super Bowl X, they faced the Dallas Cowboys. It was the same teams in the same Orange Bowl, the same coaches, and many of the same players. Happily for the Steelers, their star receiver again turned in a sterling performance with seven catches for 124 yards and a touchdown.

 

John Stallworth, the Steelers other outstanding receiver, caught two touchdown passes in Super Bowl XIII. The first was on a pass play that Swann convinced Bradshaw to call, assuming his quarterback would call his number.

 

"People tell me that John (Stallworth) caught two touchdowns in the Super Bowl, and I only got one. But if they want to nitpick, I got one-and-a-half because I put that play in," Swann joked. "Terry called it in the huddle and looked at me and smiled and then called it to John's side. We were doing things like that all year."

 

Swann and the Steelers pressed on to a record fourth Super Bowl in 1979, a 31-19 victory over the Los Angeles Rams. Swann caught five passes for 79 yards, including a 47-yard touchdown grab that put the Steelers into the lead in the second half.

 

At the time of his retirement from pro football, Swann, who was named to the All-NFL Team of the 1970s, held five Super Bowl records, including career receptions, career receiving yards, career touchdown receptions, yards in a game, and the highest punt return average in a game. In 1991 he was named to the NFL's Super Bowl Silver Anniversary Team.

 

Swann's career portfolio shows that he recorded 336 receptions for 5,462 yards and 51 touchdowns. It also shows that at the time of his retirement, he was the Steelers career leader in receptions, receiving yards, and touchdown receptions. What it doesn't show is the tremendous impact those receptions and yards had on the fortunes of one of pro football's all-time great teams.

 

For nine seasons there was simply no such thing as a Lynn Swann-dropped pass. "I don't care if they only throw one pass to me the whole game," Swann once said. "I'll make sure that I catch that one."

 

 

By William Ecenbarger

Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

 

It was the worst of times, and it was the strangest of times in 1943. Homemakers went from store to store looking for a stick of butter. The Hit Parade included, "He's 1-A in the Army and He's A-1 in My Heart." Night baseball was canceled to save electricity, the Indianapolis 500 was canceled to save gasoline and the U.S. Open was canceled to save rubber (used to make golf balls).

 

And for the struggling National Football League, it, too, was the strangest of times. The Eagles had just become the Steelers and the Steelers had just become the Eagles.

And then they became the Steagles.

 

Historically, the two Pennsylvania franchises, both in their 11th seasons, were among the weakest in the league, and as the wartime draft took more and more professional football players, it became clear that neither could survive alone. And so in 1943, they merged. Officially, the team was named the Phil-Pitt Eagles- Steelers, but to fans and headline writers everywhere, they were the Steagles.

 

Ironically, the two teams joined forces just one year after they had traded cities in one of the most complicated and little-known transactions in the history of American sports. But let's go back to the beginning:

 

It is no coincidence that the Steelers and Eagles franchises began in 1933. It was in that year that voters in both cities repealed the law banning professional sports on Sundays.

In Pittsburgh, Art Rooney gave his team a strong local flavor by recruiting players from the University of Pittsburgh and other area colleges. He initially called his team the Pirates, after the city's big-league baseball team.

 

In his first eight years of operating the Pittsburgh franchise. Rooney estimated he lost $100,000.

Meanwhile, the Eagles were owned by a syndicate headed by Bert Bell, but the team lost $80,000 and 21 games in its first three seasons. One by one, the investors dropped out, and by the end of the 1935 season Bell had the Eagles to himself. The following year, the Eagles were shut out six times.

 

Bell became the coach, general manager, scout and public relations director, and took to hawking tickets on downtown Philadelphia street corners. Because the rent was cheap, the team played in the 102,000 seat Municipal Stadium before at least 100,000 empty seats. One rainy Sunday, 50 people showed up for a game against the inept Brooklyn Dodgers; Bell invited them up to the covered press box, where he provided free coffee and hot dogs.

 

In 1940, the Pirates were so bad that Rooney sold them at the end of the season to Alexis Thompson, a 26-year-old steel heir from Boston frequently described in the press as a well-heeled New York playboy. Thompson renamed the Pirates the Ironmen, but he planned to move the franchise to Boston and play games in Fenway Park.

 

Rooney and Bell had become close friends during the early NFL years, and so, soon after he sold the Pittsburgh franchise, Rooney bought a half interest in the struggling Philadelphia operation. The plan was to field a combined Philadelphia- Pittsburgh team called the Keystoners that would play home games in both cities.

 

But Thompson's planned move to Boston was blocked by Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, and so a switch was engineered. The Philadelphia franchise, now owned by Rooney and Bell, moved to Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh franchise, owned by Thompson, moved to Philadelphia.

 

After the deal was made, Rooney told a reporter for the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph: "The original proposition was that Thompson would buy the franchise and take the Pittsburgh club to Boston, and Bell and I would pool our interests in a Philadelphia-Pittsburgh club, splitting the home games between two cities.

 

"But then Thompson changed his mind and said he'd keep the club in Pittsburgh.... Then I got an idea. I asked him if he'd like to make a switch and let me stay in Pittsburgh and take over the Philadelphia territory himself. That suited him because Philadelphia is so much closer to his New York headquarters, and that's how it worked out."

 

Before the 1941 season, Rooney emphasized the break with the past by sponsoring a contest to give the new team a name, and the Steelers emerged.

 

Bell began the season as the Steelers' coach, but after two losses, Rooney hired Buff Donelli. Bell continued his part-ownership of the Steelers until 1946 when he was elected NFL

Commissioner. He held that post until 1969 when he died of a heart attack at Franklin Field in Philadelphia during a game between two teams he had helped form -- the Steelers and the Eagles.

 

Donelli tried to coach the Steelers and the Duquesne University team at the same time. Five losses later, Commissioner Elmer Layden ordered the Steelers to get a full-time coach, and former Steelers (Pirates) player Walt Kiesling was hired. The Steelers won one of their last four games.

 

The 1942 Steelers had their best year in history, 7-4, mostly because of the presence of Bill Dudley, who was their best runner, best punter and best defensive player. But Dudley was drafted into the military right after the 1942 season, and there was considerable doubt that either of Pennsylvania's professional football franchises could field a team in 1943.

 

On Jan. 18, 1943, the Office of Price Administration abruptly banned all pleasure driving, and almost overnight, private automobiles disappeared from the nation's roads. Restaurants folded up, and not a single one of the 15,000 thoroughbred racehorses in America was running.

Railroads were still the keystone of the national transportation system, but they had not recovered from the Depression. Rolling stock was scarce, and the transportation of troops and military supplies took precedence.

 

The Office of Defense Transportation announced in July that professional football teams would reduce their travel by 37 percent in 1943 by cutting the size of rosters from 33 to 28 and by revising their schedules.

 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt never firmly declared a policy on professional sports during the war. But FDR was explicit on one point: No professional athlete subject to the draft would be deferred.

Fathers were being drafted by 1943, and the pool of quality players dried up. NFL owners found themselves fielding teams composed of 4-Fs, inexperienced youths and overripe veterans.

At the league's meeting, a motion to suspend the 1943 season was narrowly voted down. One of its advocates was Eagles owner Thompson, who was now an Army corporal.

 

Because of the manpower shortage, the NFL instituted one of the most profound rule changes in its history: free substitution. Purists had opposed the idea for years on the theory that real football players ought to "go both ways," i.e., play offense and defense. Although the depleted NFL rosters prevented the development of platoons until after the war, free substitution paved the way for today's separate offensive and defensive teams and the various specialists.

 

The NFL allowed the Cleveland franchise to suspend operations because of heavy losses to the war effort. And to complete the reduction from 10 to eight teams, the league authorized the merger of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh franchises.

 

Thompson, Bell and Rooney required all of the Steagles to work at least 40 hours a week in defense plants. The team wore the Eagles' green-and-white uniforms and trained at the University of Pennsylvania's River Field for three hours, Monday through Saturday, at 6 p.m.

 

"You worked all day, and you practiced all night, and by the end of the day you were tired as hell," remembered Jack Hinkle, the team's offensive star. Hinkle, who had been discharged from the Army Air Force because of stomach ulcers, worked at the Bendix Aviation plant in North Philadelphia along with several teammates.

 

Hinkle recalled being paid $135 per game, or $1,350 for the season, which he said was about average for 1943. "Most of us played because we loved the game."

 

Even though the player limit had been reduced to 28 per team, there were usually only 25 Steagles on the roster for games. Hinkle recalled that the Steelers and Eagles got along very well during the 1943 season, but the coaches were another matter.

 

From the beginning, Philadelphia coach Earle "Greasy" Neale and Kiesling were at each other's throats over strategy and personnel. A major point of contention was where the new players would go after the merger was dissolved. "There was a big blow-up about halfway through the season when Neale called one of the Steelers a statue of (excrement)," said Hinkle. "Kiesling pulled all of the Steelers off the practice field."

 

The Steagles started out like champions. In their opening game at Shibe Park on Oct. 2, they defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers, 17-0, as the defense, led by former Steelers, held the visitors to minus-44 yards rushing. The following week at Shibe, the Steagles upset the mighty New York Giants, 26-14. On the downside, the Steagles fumbled 10 times to set an NFL record.

 

The bubble burst the following week at Chicago's Wrigley Field where the big, bad Bears crunched the Steagles, 48-21. On Oct. 24, the Steagles lost to the Giants, 42-14, before 42,481 fans at the Polo Grounds.

 

In all, the Steagles played four games at Shibe Park, where they attracted crowds of about 33,000 each time. There were smaller attendance figures for the two games played at Forbes Field. They finished the season 5-4-1, which made it the first winning season ever for the team named the Eagles and only second for the Steelers.

 

With Neale and Kiesling increasingly at each other's throats, the Steagles were dissolved after the season.

By JOE HORRIGAN
Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA
 
He was the last piece of the greatest draft in NFL history. The sturdiest piece, for sure, but also the final piece.

Mike Webster, who was born March 18, 1952, in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, played more seasons (15) and more games (220) than any other player in Pittsburgh Steelers' history. He joined the Steelers as a part of that 1974 draft class that netted the team four future Hall of Famers.

In order of their selection in that draft, those Hall of Fame players are: Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and Mike Webster.
 
Since Webster, an All-Big Ten center, stood just 6-foot-2 and weighed a mere 225 pounds -- a bantam weight by pro football standards -- there was considerable doubt that he could handle opposing NFL Goliaths. However, he quickly demonstrated that he could hold his own against the game's best.
 
Always in top condition, Webster maintained an unswerving dedication to excellence, and a quick learner, he was able to play in every game during his first two seasons with the Steelers by splitting time at center with veteran Ray Mansfield. Additionally, he was the long-snapper on all punts and kicks.

However, in the final game of the 1975 season, Coach Chuck Noll decided to insert Webster into the starting lineup. It was the beginning of a remarkable string of 150 consecutive starts that lasted until 1986, when he missed the first four games with a dislocated elbow, an injury that might have kept a lesser man out twice as long.
 
Those were the only games "Iron Mike" would miss during his first 16 seasons. From his rookie season through 1985, Webster played in an amazing 177 consecutive games. As one veteran writer put it, "nothing short of an Act of Congress" would keep Webster from taking his place in the Steelers starting lineup.
 
"That's the toughness I like," said Mansfield. "Not a macho toughness, where you've got to strut it around, but an inner toughness, the John Wayne type who doesn't complain." The com¬parison to the popular actor was no accident, since Mansfield knew his former understudy was a big fan.
 
Noll put it another way. "John Wayne may have been fiction in heroics. Mike's not fiction. Mike's real."
 
In 1976, Webster showed his versatility when injuries to the Steelers' offensive line forced Noll to shuffle his linemen. Webster started the first two games at center, the next six at guard, and the final six at center. "Mike gives us versatility," said Steelers offensive line coach Dan Radakovich prior to the start of the 1977 season. "He's got the quickness, strength and intelligence to play center, guard or tackle. Mike was the best center in the league last year. He's the best because he has great self motivation."
 
Like most players, Webster found life in the NFL to be a continuing education. And, like most offensive linemen, he quick¬ly realized that fan recognition came primarily for mistakes.

Although Mike was snapping on punts since 1974, many fans weren't even aware of his special teams role until a nationally-televised Monday night game in 1976, against the Minnesota Vikings. In that game, Steelers' punter Bobby Walden was unable to handle a high snap from Webster, and the result was a botched kick. That set up the Vikings second and clinching touchdown. Suddenly the little-noticed center was the talk of the town.
 
Webster even received a call from his father who suggested that his son wasn't looking through his legs at the punter before lifting his head and snapping the ball. Humbly, Webster had to acknowledge that his father's observation was on the mark. "I hadn't been looking all year," Webster recalled. "I guess I got too cocky. Rad (Radakovich) told me I was acting too much like a pro player. Now they (the fans) know who I am. I'm not just a number," Webster added with a smile.
 
Quickness, strength, intelligence and motivation were just a few of the weapons found in the Webster football arsenal. Intimi¬dation was another. "Watch any other lineman in the league; they all saunter up to the line," former Steelers' offensive line coach Bill Meyers once observed. "But Mike sprints to the line on every play. That's intimidating. He whipped your butt on the last play and here he comes sprinting up to do it again."
 
A natural leader, Webster played in 19 playoff games with the Steelers and was the team's offensive captain for nine sea¬sons. "Webbie" was considered the strongest Steelers player by most of his teammates and in the 1980 offseason he gave credence to that belief by winning the NFL's Strongman Competition.
 
"I always felt the best way to be able to do my best was to just get going and keep going for as long as I could," Webster said. "I had a coach tell me one time, `You'll play much better if you just relax a little more between plays.' Well he just doesn't understand. That guy over there on the other side of the line is trying to beat me up on every play. I'm not real calm about that. I do much better if I just keep a steady pace for as long as I can."
 
Webster's steady play earned him All-Pro recognition six straight years from 1978 to 1983, and he was named to the All-AFC team five times from 1978 through 1982. Nine times he made the Pro Bowl. That's more than any offensive lineman in NFL history. "Mike has been the thing you work around," explained Noll. "It's the one position we never had to concern ourselves with."
 
Although individual recognition came fast and furiously for Webster, he was the consummate team player. "I was very, very fortunate to have been a part of a collective group of people who accomplished something that's very, very rare in any profession," he once said about the Steelers' four Super Bowl wins. "There's just no feeling like collectively doing something to be the best, and sharing that feeling with others."
 
Throughout his career, Webster maintained a work ethic -- report early, leave late and play hurt -- that earned him the respect of everyone who ever played with him. He credits his strength and conditioning as the primary reason he was able to avoid serious injury during his career. As a part of his condi¬tioning, Webster maintained a weight room in his home and for a period of time even had a blocking sled in his front yard.

"I'm not a very good athlete," he offered. "I don't run very well, and I'm not very agile or nimble. The only chance I have to be suc¬cessful is if I'm in better condition than the other guy."
 
Mike's dedication and work ethic didn't go unnoticed. In 1985, following an early-season game with the Houston Oilers, his teammates awarded him with a game ball for his courageous play. Not only did he start that game, but he played every offensive down despite having missed the entire week of practice with an extremely painful back injury.
 
"Every offensive lineman wants to grow up to be Mike Web¬ster," former Steelers' guard Craig Wolfley once said of his teammate. "But when God made him, he used a different kind of material. There will never be another one like him."
 
On Feb. 1, 1988, the Steelers announced that they were leaving their long-time star unprotected under Plan B, the NFL's modified form of free agency. Twenty-three days later, Webster, the last active member of the Steelers to have played in all four Super Bowl championships, announced his retirement. Five days after that, the Kansas City Chiefs announced that they had hired Webster as an assistant line coach.
 
But within a few weeks the 15-year veteran realized that he still had the desire to play. Together, Chiefs' President/General Manager Carl Peterson and Coach Marty Schottenheimer, convinced "Iron Mike" to return to the field.

"Playing is the best way I can contribute to this organization right now," he said in an¬nouncing the continuation of his playing career. "I still feel strongly about playing, and I believe I can contribute in a positive fashion. It will be a tremendous challenge, and that excites me."
 
At age 37, Webster was a little uneasy about starting over, but after six weeks in the weight room he knew he was up to the task. Along with his considerable talent, Webster brought some¬thing more to the Chiefs -- experience and a winning tradition. "When opportunity comes along, you have to be ready in this business -- in any business," Webster told a reporter. "There are 46 people trusting me if I'm called upon. I get a certain satisfaction knowing that I'm a dependable guy."

And dependable he was. Webster was the Chiefs' starting center in 1989 and played in all 16 games.
 
In the 1990 season, his 17th in the NFL, Webster was used more as a spot player, as relief for rookie Tim Grunhard. Put¬ting it in perspective, Grunhard was 6 years old when Webster began his pro career. Once again demonstrating his long-standing belief that the team success far out-weighed individual recogni¬tion, Webster accepted his new role with typical stoic dignity.
 
"It doesn't matter to me who starts," he commented. "There are lots of ways for me to help the team. We've all got to commu¬nicate and work together and do what is best for the team."
 
Following the 1990 season, Mike Webster officially ended his 245-game career when he again announced his planned retirement. "It's been 17 wonderful years, but one thing you learn in this game is reality," he explained. "It's time."

 

By JIM SARGENT
Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

Lynn Chandnois may be remembered today only by the older generation of pro football fans, but a look at his career and his statistics illustrates that for a few years he was one of the National Football League's top halfbacks.

Jerry Nuzum, a standout halfback and defensive back for the Steelers during 1948-1951, said this about Chandnois at a 1979 old-timers reunion.

"Lynn had everything: size, speed, and shiftiness," Nuzum said, "but Walt Kiesling was our coach, and he didn't know how to deal with players. Those coaches today do a lot of teaching. Back then we were expected to know how to play."

What is Chandnois' story?

After his parents died, Lynn, who was born on Feb. 24, 1925, in Michigan's upper peninsula, moved to Flint to live with an aunt and go to school. He was a talented natural athlete who loved competing in all sports.

At Flint Central High he earned All-State honors in both basketball and football. But after graduating in 1944, he joined the Naval Air Corps and served for two years.

At 6-foot-2, 195, when he entered Michigan State in 1946, the 21-year-old freshman started at forward and lettered in basketball. But after one season he got married and concentrated on football. One year later Lynn and Mary, living in a campus apartment, had their first daughter, Lynda, and Suzanne came a few years later.

A Physical Education major, Chandnois became the right halfback for four years, the last three under Coach "Biggie" Munn. In 1947 Munn's team switched to a complex multiple offense, which included the T-formation, and Chandnois usually played the blocking back.

The fastest man on the team, Chandnois could run the 100 yards in uniform in 10 seconds. Often he ran the quick reverse, plus he returned kickoffs and punts. A bruising straight-ahead runner, "Chad" was most dangerous in the open field, where he had an instinctive sense of when to cut, shift speeds, and sprint.

Although Chandnois prefers not to talk about his achievements, his name still graces Michigan State's record book. For example, from 1946 through 1949 he averaged 6.52 yards per carry, which ranks second all-time at the school. His 1948 average of 7.48 yards per carry is the all-time single-season record, while his 1949 average of 6.86 yards ranks third.

Following his senior season, Chandnois starred in the East-West Shrine game, played on New Year's Day in 1950, at San Francisco's Kezar Stadium. Playing for the East squad, which won, 28-6, Chandnois gained 44 yards on six carries, caught five passes for 116 yards, and scored two touchdowns -- after playing the first quarter as a defensive back.

While Eddie LeBaron, the 5-8 quarterback from College of the Pacific, was voted game MVP, Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy told reporters, "Chandnois was easily the most outstanding player on the field."

Chandnois had already signed to play for the Cleveland Browns of the All-American Football Conference, but the AAFC merged with the NFL in December 1949. The merger came after Chandnois signed with Cleveland -- one of three AAFC franchises to join the NFL. Commissioner Bert Bell supervised the reorganized NFL's draft, and Pittsburgh took Chandnois first.

"Art Rooney and Bert Bell were buddy-buddy," Chandnois recalled, "and they told me I had to go with Pittsburgh. We didn't have any lawyers or anything like that. So I said, 'If I have to go to Pittsburgh, I want a bonus.'

"They said, 'We just paid to the Cleveland Browns the bonus they paid you.'

"'I don't care,' I said. 'I want an additional bonus.' So they said, OK, and I got a bonus, and that's how I ended up with Pittsburgh."

Chandnois made the adjustment, and today he has mostly fond memories of his years with the Steelers.

While he had a good rookie season, Chad was sometimes slowed by injuries, including knee and rib problems. Pittsburgh, coached by John Michelosen, was the only NFL club still using the single wing offense, and the passing attack, triggered by triple-threat tailback Joe Geri, a 36 percent passer in 1950, sputtered. The Steelers scored 180 points, lowest in the NFL.

Pittsburgh finished 6-6, and Chandnois placed third among Steelers in rushing, but he didn't score a touchdown.

Still, he excelled on kickoff returns, where his great broken-field running allowed him to elude defenders. He topped the Steelers with 351 yards on 12 returns, a 29.3 average. "Vitamin" Smith of the Rams led the NFL with a 33.7 average.

In 1951, Chandnois, despite a broken toe, became a regular in the Steelers backfield. While Michelosen kept the single wing, the defense held opponents to two touchdowns or fewer in six games. Tough defense characterized the team, including linemen Ernie Stautner and Bill McPeak, and Jack Butler and Jerry Shipkey.

But the Steelers finished 4-7-1, fourth in the six-team conference largely because their passers threw 26 interceptions. Chandnois, for example, completed 16 of 43 passes with two touchdowns but four interceptions.

Pittsburgh's up-and-down 1951 season is best illustrated by a tough loss to the Green Bay Packers on Oct. 7. With three minutes gone in the second quarter, quarterback Tobin Rote plunged 1-yard for the touchdown that gave the Packers a 28-0 lead.

Inspired by Chandnois, Pittsburgh caught fire on the damp, chilly day. He scored twice within four minutes, first on a touchdown reception covering 34 yards, and again on a 2-yard end sweep, which cut the deficit to 28-14. End Charlie Mehelich tackled Green Bay's Jack Cloud for a safety, and Rogel plowed 2 yards to score, just before halftime, and the deficit was cut to 28-23.

Early in the third quarter, Pittsburgh moved ahead, 30-28, when halfback Jim Finks returned an interception 50 yards for a touchdown, and then Joe Geri's field goal upped the lead to 33-28.

At that point Pittsburgh had made the greatest comeback in NFL history. But with less than five minutes in the game, Rote put together the winning drive and capped it with a 16-yard touchdown pass to Bob Mann, and Green Bay won, 35-33.

The 1952 season looked promising, however, when Art Rooney went back to Coach Joe Bach, who had led the Steelers in 1935-1936. Bach switched to the T-formation and installed Jim Finks as quarterback. While the new system generated more offense and fan excitement, Pittsburgh's record improved only to 5-7.

Still, Chandnois performed so brilliantly in 1952 that, in addition to being named All-Pro, he became the second Steelers player to be voted NFL Player of the Year by the Washington Touchdown Club. Triple-threat halfback Bill Dudley had won the award in 1946.

Chandnois rushed for 298 yards, second on the club. He placed third in receiving yards, catching 28 passes for 370 and two touchdowns. In kickoff returns Chandnois again led the NFL with 599 yards on 17 returns, a 35.2 yard average -- still the top single-season average in franchise history. He ran back two kickoffs for touchdowns.

There was one kickoff Chandnois had to return twice for a touchdown. On Nov. 30 at Forbes Field against the New York Giants, Chandnois, despite falling snow and frigid temperatures, ran back Ray Poole's opening kick to the end zone. But an offside violation nullified the score. After a five-yard penalty, Chandnois returned the second kick 91 yards for a touchdown.

The inspired Steelers turned the game into a rout and won, 63-7. It was the most points scored by the Steelers and the worst defeat suffered by the Giants. Said Art Rooney, also owner of the Shamrock Stables, about the scoring return by Chandnois: "If my horses could go that fast I'd be a wealthy man!"

Walt Kiesling, the assistant coach since 1949, wasn't overly impressed by Chandnois, double-touchdown effort.

Chandnois: "Art Rooney always used to have a story. He said, 'Lynn, I know Walt Kiesling didn't like you,' and I told Art that was O.K. because I didn't like Kiesling either. See, I was the Steelers' representative to the NFL Pension Plan. I used to give Walt a bad time. I would say, 'We want this, and we want that.'

"But Art's story was about the game against the New York Giants in 1952. I took the opening kickoff back for a touchdown. But one of our guys was offside, so the play was called back. They kicked it again, and I ran it back again for a touchdown.

"Walt Kiesling told Art Rooney after the game, 'Isn't Chandnois the luckiest guy you ever saw in your life?'

"That was one of Art Rooney's favorite stories about me."

Chandnois, other touchdown runback covered 93 yards against the Philadelphia Eagles at Shibe Park on Oct. 12, 1952. He made the run in the second quarter, cutting the Eagles, lead to 10-7. Film highlights show a dazzling play: Chandnois caught Chuck Bednarik's kick on the 7-yard line, angled right, then left. Behind good blocking, he turned up the speed near the 30, cut right near the 45, and sprinted past the remaining Eagles into the right corner of the end zone.

Chandnois produced another fine season in 1953, but the Steelers finished fourth at 6-6 only after winning their last two games – 21-17 over the Cardinals and 14-13 over the Redskins. Once more the Steelers defense proved more consistent than the offense. Chandnois tied Fran Rogel for club rushing honors with a 3.8 yard average. He gained 470 yards and scored three touchdowns. He also caught 42 passes for 412 yards, but none for touchdowns.

Chandnois scored on a return for the third time in his career to help Pittsburgh topple the Giants, 24-14, on Oct. 3, 1953. But statistics do not measure the value of Chandnois to the Steelers, because numbers cannot show big plays. As Pittsburgh sportswriter Pat Livingston observed in 1953, "It's in the clutch that the long-legged, 205-pound Chandnois is most likely to come through. In the matter of kickoff returns, Chandnois has no peer." During his first four years in the NFL, Chandnois averaged 30 yards per return while the average NFL return was 22 yards.

Chandnois performed brilliantly during his first four seasons, but injuries hindered him thereafter.

Throughout his seven-year NFL career, Chandnois was the Steelers back most likely to make the big play, catch a crucial pass, or spark the offense with a fine kick return. When that threat was removed, however, Pittsburgh's offense often misfired.

"Chandnois' value was never more apparent," wrote Livingston on Dec. 6, 1955, as the former All-American was awaiting knee surgery, "than in the last two games when, playing without him, the Steelers were unable to get any kind of a running attack going."

With his knee fully recovered before the 1956 training camp, Chandnois, now 31, played superbly.

Consider these 1956 highlights:

Against Washington in the Forbes Field opener on September 30, before 27,718 happy fans, Chandnois scored twice on short runs, caught a 17-yard pass from Ted Marchibroda for a third touchdown, returned a kickoff  91 yards to set up the fourth score, and Pittsburgh won, 30-13.

At home against Cleveland on Saturday, Oct. 6, Chandnois scored the lone Steelers touchdown with a 1-yard plunge in the second quarter. The Browns finally won, 14-10, but only after a last-second Marchibroda pass from the 4-yard line was batted down in the end zone.

After being hampered by a twisted knee during two defeats, Chandnois scored one of three Steelers touchdowns against Cleveland on a dive play. But he was helped from the field in the final minutes with "a possible right shoulder separation."

In fact, Chandnois had suffered a fractured shoulder. After five games, his season, actually his career, was over.

Before he left football in 1957, Chandnois switched from his offseason insurance business to a brokerage firm that he co-owned with Pirates pitcher Bob Friend. Two years later he sold out to Friend and entered the steel business. He also moved his family back to Flint, and in 1960 he was divorced.

Despite his injuries and some tough times, Chandnois enjoyed an impressive career with Pittsburgh.

"Pittsburgh is a great sports-minded town, long before they won the Super Bowls in the 1970s. I can remember the day we beat the New York Giants, 63-7. We had about three inches of snow that fell the night before the game. When the game started, we had only about 5,000 fans. But at halftime, we had 25,000 or 30,000 in the stands. They heard it on the radio, and they came out to the ballpark.

"Also, Art Rooney was just a wonderful president. He always called me 'star.'

"Football was terrific for me, and Mr. Rooney and Pittsburgh were always kind," Chandnois said in 1995. "Steelers fans always treated me extremely well and I was really pulling for them to go all the way to the Super Bowl and win it. Art Rooney and Biggie Munn are the two men I admire most. They were great to me."

Added Jerry Nuzum, "If Chuck Noll had coached Chandnois, he'd be in the Hall of Fame."

By BOB BARNETT
Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

For black athletes, the integration of American sport and the struggle for acceptance by white teammates, coaches, and fans has never been an easy task. When Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he faced verbal abuse, dirty play, and hostile fans. Bill Willis and Marion Motley of the 1946 Cleveland Browns in the then-new All- American Football Conference were prohibited by state law from playing against the Seahawks at Miami, Florida, and were the targets of death threats.

Even Roberto Clemente, one of the first Spanish-speaking black Pirates, was vilified early in his career in the press and by the fans as being lazy and a malingerer. And every black athlete who integrated formerly all-white college teams had to deal with social ostracism and discrimination. Yet each faced these ordeals knowing that their actions would hold the door open for other black athletes to follow. Many were suc¬cessful and have subsequently been honored for the price they paid.

For Ray Kemp, the struggle was more difficult, the price higher, and the tangible rewards have been practically nonexist¬ent. Kemp was a charter member of the Pittsburgh Steelers (then Pirates) when they entered the NFL in 1933. He was the only black Pirates player and only one of two black players in the entire NFL. His struggle took place in the heart of the Depression when economic conditions stimulated a rising tide of racism, and blacks and whites tended to separate into their own worlds.

Worse yet, Kemp's battle to maintain a foothold for black players in the NFL was a lonely struggle with few rewards in sight.

Ray Kemp graduated from Cecil High School in 1926. He worked in the coal mines around Cecil for one year before enrolling at Duquesne University.

Kemp's arrival at Duquesne coincided with that of Elmer Layden, one of Notre Dame's legendary four horsemen, who had been hired to resurrect the Iron Dukes' struggling football program. Looking back at the first day of practice, Kemp recalled seeing only two other black players. Kemp said, "They were gone after my first year so I was the only black on the team. In fact, I can't remember even playing against another black player the whole four years I played at Duquesne."

Kemp, hardened and matured by his year in the mines, became a starter during his sophomore year, and by the end of his senior season received honorable mention on some All-American lists. Layden's coaching also succeeded beyond expectation. His 1928 team won eight of nine games, and his 1929 team finished the season undefeated. By 1931, Kemp's senior season, the Dukes had progressed to the point that they played national power Carnegie Tech in a postseason charity game.

Kemp's entry into the NFL came about because of his success at Duquesne. "Art Rooney came up to me at our athletic banquet following my senior year at Duquesne and told me that he would like for me to play for his J.P. Rooney semi-pro team, if I was going to stay around Pittsburgh," Kemp recalled.

The following year Kemp enrolled in graduate school at Duquesne and served as the line coach for Layden. In his spare time he did play for both the J.P. Rooneys and the semi-pro Erie Pros, again as the only black player.

The following year, the Rooneys became the nucleus of the Pittsburgh team that joined the NFL and eventually would be named the Steelers. Art Rooney Sr., once described the transition this way: "I had teams which compared favorably with most of the teams in the NFL. But we had the Blue Laws in Pennsylvania and the Blue Laws were such that you couldn't play football on Sunday and belong to an organized league. In 1933, they voted the Blue Laws out and I just took my team and went into the National Football League."

That year, when Kemp and some of his Rooney teammates were joined by a collection of NFL cast-offs to form the team then known as the Pirates, there was only one other black player in the NFL -- Joe Lillard -- a tailback with the Chicago Cardinals. From the founding of the league in 1929 through 1931, 11 black athletes played in the NFL, but by 1932 Joe Lillard was the only black player remaining.

The Pirates opened the season on Sept. 20 vs. the defending Eastern Division champion New York Giants before a crowd of 25,000 in Forbes Field. As expected, the Giants rolled over the expansion team 23-2, but for Kemp it was a bittersweet experience.

"I can recall it as if it were yesterday, the tremen¬dous ovation I received when they announced that I was going in at tackle," Kemp once said. "I had my hands taped heavily because that's what we did in those days for linemen. On about the third or fourth play I was in, I broke through and their passer threw the ball right into my hands, but I couldn't hold it because of the tape. Also I remember that my style of defense didn't quite harmonize with my teammates because I stood up and used my hands, and they were very critical. I talked it over with Elmer Layden after the game and he said, `They're crazy, Ray. I saw the game and you were tremendous.'"

The following week, the Chicago Cardinals with Joe Lillard came to Forbes Field. Lillard, a triple-threat back, played a tremendous game. He completed a touchdown pass and kicked one of two extra points.

The Pirates did stop Lillard in the fourth quarter when he and a Pirates defensive player were ejected from the game for fighting, a problem that followed Lillard throughout the season. Kemp said, "Joe (Lillard) was an angry young man and the players on the other teams knew what would set him off. I could take care of myself pretty well in the line so I never had those kind of prob¬lems." With Lillard out of the lineup the Pirates stormed back for a 14-13 victory, their first in the NFL.

The next week however, the Pirates lost 21-6 to the Boston Redskins and the Monday after that game, Ray Kemp was released from the Pirates.

"I received a letter saying I had been dropped from the roster," Kemp said. "I talked with Art Rooney and I can recall his exact words. He said, `Ray, I feel you are as good a ballplayer as we have on the club, but I am not going over the head of the coach. You know how I feel about you personally.'

"I didn't talk to Douds personally, but he was a player-coach at my position -- tackle -- and he had a lot of cronies on the team," added Kemp. "I just think it was a combination of things."

Kemp went back to his job in the steel mill, and the Pirates went 2-5 over the next seven games. But on Dec. 1 he received a phone call from the Pirates asking him to return to the team.

"I guess I could have felt humiliated about being cut earlier and said no. I didn't need the money -- I only got $60 a game. But I felt someone had to keep the door open. You have to pay a price for being a pioneer," Kemp said.

Strangely enough, Kemp was named to the starting lineup after only two days of practice and played the entire game at tackle against the New York Giants. Unfortunately for the Pi¬rates, the Giants were on their way to the Eastern Division championship and romped over the Pirates, 27-3, at the Polo Grounds. It was before this game in New York that Kemp paid more of that price he spoke of.

"We arrived in New York very late Friday evening and the hotel was jammed with fans looking forward to attending the Army-Navy game the next day. They assigned the Pirates players to their rooms and I was standing there. The traveling secretary said, `Ray, I want to introduce you to the assistant manager of the hotel.' We were in New York and my guard was completely down. This man said, 'Ray, it seems we have a problem. We're sorry, we just don't have any room. We were wondering if you could stay at the YMCA, the Harlem branch of the YMCA.'

"Well I had no alterna¬tive but to say, 'Yes, I imagine I can.' That was one of the longest walks or my life -- to walk from that desk to the front door of the hotel."

The following morning Kemp was contacted by Walter White of the NAACP who suggested he file a discrimination suit. Kemp re¬calls, "I told him I wasn't being an Uncle Tom or anything, but I didn't want to file a suit that might hurt Art Rooney. He had given me a chance."

That game in New York was the final game of Kemp's brief career in the NFL. The next season he was hired as the head football coach at Bluefield State College in West Virginia. "The Pirates didn't ask me to come back," said Kemp, "but I wouldn't have anyway because I really wanted a coaching job."

In Kemp's first season at Bluefield State he led the Blues to an 8-0-1 record. That year was the first of a 39-year career as a successful coach and athletic director at Bluefield, at Lincoln University in Missouri and at Tennessee A&I College.

Joe Lillard did not return to the Cardinals in 1934 nor were any black rookies signed. The 1935 season began a string of twelve seasons in which the NFL had no black players. In 1946, the Los Angeles Rams reintegrated the NFL with the signings of Woody Strode and Ken Washington. The brand new All-American Football Conference opened its first season with black players Bill Willis and Marion Motley of the Cleveland Browns.

Ray Kemp, a soft-spoken, articulate, and gentle man, once said, "It wasn't too bad in the sense that every¬where I went I had white people befriend me -- like Elmer Layden and Art Rooney. I always felt that someone had to pay the price for being a pioneer, and I tried."

For black pioneers like Jackie Robinson, there is a postage stamp in his honor and a place in history books. For other black pioneers like Ray Kemp, there are only bittersweet memories of a price honorably paid.

By ED KIELY
Ed Kiely, a long-time Steelers publicity director, wrote this about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White in 1981 for PRO Magazine.

The room is so high-ceilinged and spacious that you could shoot baskets in it – though, of all the high-ceilinged, spacious rooms in this particular complex of offices, this might be the only one that would prompt such a thought.

The reason sits behind the desk, a plain mahogany desk that holds an old-fashioned upright typewriter and a space-age computer terminal. Scattered on the floor nearby are legal books and papers. It looks like the kind of mess a college sophomore makes at finals time.

For the man behind the desk, it always is finals time. Only his deadlines are set, not by some professor, but by the pressures of history and the conflicting claims of power-brokers. His "term papers" command the attention of the nation – sometimes, of the world. Oh, and one other thing: He never has to worry about a grade.

But then, some college jocks never do, right?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, a college jock who did worry about his grades, has gone on to achieve non-athletic excellence that – in at least some people's minds anyway – far transcends the significance of his rushing statistics. But he never has been able to outlive the fame that his first career brought him. For instance, he is the only Supreme Court justice with a nickname.

At 64, "Whizzer" still is trim and athletic-looking. The handsome, square-jawed face that made all the sports pages in 1938, when White signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates Football Club for the sum of $15,800 (munificent for the period), has aged into the high-domed, finely chiseled face of a no-nonsense Presbyterian elder. But his voice is soft, his sense of humor unexpected – and, to an observer who is inclined to be struck solemn inside the Supreme Court, so is his behavior.

Immediately upon sinking down into the big chair behind his desk, White swings his long, lean legs up in the air, bringing them to rest squarely on the top of his modern desk. The unexpected sight of a Supreme Court justice's soles makes an observer wonder: Could a similarly talented pair of feet, starting from the same line of scrimmage today, carry its owner to such a remote goal as this – the top of a mahogany desk in one of the most important institutions in the world?

The Justice, a man of humble origins who parlayed his athletic and academic skills into a successful career in law and politics and power, thinks it could happen. But he also thinks that maybe it wouldn't be as much fun today as it was back at the University of Colorado, playing three sports and making straight A's.

"I don't know whether I would have ever put up with what these college guys go through now," says the Justice. He thinks the new rules of the game have made a lot of student-athletes a little schizophrenic. "I would think it would be terribly difficult these days, balancing. There weren't anywhere near the pressures on people those days to devote your heart and soul to athletics."

The life White remembers, on the other hand, was idyllic. "I played three sports and I loved it," he says.

But White thinks his memories of the fun he had playing ball in college are just that – memories. "I don't think you could do that anymore," he says. "I don't think a football coach, especially if you were on scholarship, ever would let you do that. You wouldn't have the time. They wouldn't let you lay off spring football."

Obviously not above sowing sedition in the ranks of student-athletes, the Justice says, "If I were on my own, if I were just a walk-on, I would either run it my way or I wouldn't put up with it. It isn't worth it."

Ironically, White may have played a big part in the genesis of some of the pressures he now decries. Many club owners date the beginning of a new trend in professional football to 1938, the year Arthur J. Rooney of the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers) signed White, an All-America and a legend at Colorado. Earlier in the decade, football salaries were about equal with salaries offered young collegians entering the business world. Many of the major college football stars opted for desk jobs upon graduation.

White's signing changed all that. Because of Rooney's generous salary, and because of his own scholastic and athletic abilities, he became an important role model. The prototypical All-American boy, he encouraged other college stars to investigate the NFL by making college football respectable.

Initially, he refused Rooney's offer. A college senior at the time, he wanted to play, but he felt he had a more pressing engagement. White had received a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and was due in England that October to begin his studies at Oxford. Still, it rankles White that he had to refuse Rooney. He thought it would have been rewarding – in more ways than one – to have played a year and then gone to Oxford. An athletic star in the days before athletic scholarships were readily available, White had worked his way through school as a hash-slinger. It would be nice not to have to do that sort of thing in England, White thought. It would be nice to go with a little money – and time to travel. He wrote to his brother.

There are a lot of ambitious parents these days who spend thousands of dollars on prep schools, guidance counselors, tutors, child psychologists, and testing coaches, all to get their children into the right institutions of higher education. Albert and Maude White, two Coloradoans who never went beyond high school, never did any of that, but they obviously did something right. They had two Rhodes Scholars.

The older son, Sam, already was at Oxford when he received Byron's letter about the football contract he had turned down. In typical big-brother fashion, Sam immediately concluded that the kid was crazy. He told him so – and then told him he would talk to the Rhodes Scholarship officials at Oxford about an extension. Finally, they agreed.

"I never would have played if I had not been able to get the deferment," White says. "The Rhodes people had never given one before as far as I could find out."

During the next two years, moving between two very different worlds, White was to make two friends who would continue to pop in and out of his life at odd, unexpected moments. One was Johnny "Blood" McNally, player-coach of Rooney's football team. The other was John F. Kennedy, son of the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain.

Though they were very different personalities, it is not surprising that Blood and White became friends. Blood possessed idiosyncrasies calculated to delight White, a rookie who read law books on the team train while everyone else was playing cards. White quoted Shakespeare and liked to play the professor. Blood, on the other hand, cultivated a kind of flamboyance that would be lost today, when the outward signs of sports superstardom are big cars, fancy clothes, big houses and gold jewelry. It wasn't, however, lost on White, a man who says he had to work hard and give up a great deal in order to be a successful scholar-athlete. White nonetheless appreciates a good con artist. The justice smiles broadly and the eyes behind the glasses twinkle with mischief when he talks of Johnny "Blood."

"Blood was a coach, a player-coach," White deadpans. "And of course, people wished he'd do more – do more of each. Every now and then, he just wouldn't show up." For White, Blood's antics provided some much-needed comic relief. "We had a miserable season and Art (Rooney) had miserable luck financially. We didn't have a good team. The regular season wasn't so bad, but those warmup sandlot games really killed you. Go down to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and play in the gravel."

Small wonder then, that White's first reaction was to thank the young man who came to his door about a year later with a polite but firm warning. It was one of the first days at Oxford for White, who had just retired – as it turned out, temporarily – after a year in pro football. The visitor, White recalls, "was some very pleasant English lad who wanted to let me know that they understood I was a professional and would appreciate it if I didn't attempt to play any athletics.

"Which suited me fine," White says. "I thanked him. I said, 'Thank God.' I was so tired of athletics. It was just like coming out into the sunshine, to go to school and not have to go out and knock your damn brains out at three o'clock every day. I had a marvelous time, just riding bicycles and learning how to play squash and tennis."

However, there was at least one group in England that did not share the anti-professional attitude – the children of America's ambassador to England, members of a family that later would bring touch football to the White House lawn. White says he first met John F. Kennedy at one of the receptions Kennedy's father, the ambassador, regularly held for Rhodes Scholars. And though White does not say this, it probably is safe to assume that young JFK, accustomed to seeing America's best and brightest parade through his home, probably would have been more inclined to sit up and take notice of the one who played in the gravel at Johnstown for such fabulous sums of money. Whatever the reason, Kennedy looked up White the following summer when the two of them – they were almost exact contemporaries – were in Munich. "We gave Munich the once-over," White says with a smile, but with a Presbyterian elder look that indicates he has no inclination to reveal the youthful indiscretions of a national leader – whether a former President or a sitting Justice.

White's and Kennedy's Munich summer came on the eve of World War II. By fall, England was in the fight, and all the Rhodes Scholars were sent home. White's youth was not quite over yet. He resumed his dual student-athlete identity, playing autumns and studying the rest of the year at Yale Law School.

Rooney's team dealt the rights to negotiate with White to the Detroit Lions while White was studying at Oxford. Whizzer signed with the Lions in 1940 when he returned to the United States.

As he had done in his rookie year with Rooney's Pirates (567 yards in 1938), White led the NFL in rushing (with 514 yards) in 1940, his first season with Detroit. But after two years of that, America was getting ready to go to war, and so was Whizzer White.

"I signed up for the Navy," he says. "I went in and applied for a commission in Naval intelligence and ended up in the Pacific, afloat." There, he again crossed paths with John F. Kennedy. White wrote the official report of Kennedy's heroic actions in command of the PT109. When the survivors were brought in, his old Munich running mate was among them.

After the war, White finished his studies at Yale Law School – still using money had had earned with the Steelers – and began looking for work of a non-athletic nature. He landed what probably would count as the most prestigious apprenticeship in his field, serving as law clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson. White and his new bride, Marion, moved to Washington, D.C. "And guess who was here … a freshman congressman by the name of John Kennedy," White says. "He was right down the street here in the old House office building. So we got acquainted again."

It didn't last long. The Whites soon were off to Denver, where he set up a law practice and lost touch with Kennedy. "I didn't ever really follow him, or hear anything except what I read about him every now and then," White says, "until about 1958 when he began running for president." White was active with a University of Denver group that sponsored lectures, and one of the speakers they scheduled was Kennedy. "He drew a full house and a good many of his people were there," White says. "We had a good chat then, and it was soon after that I began becoming a little more interested in perhaps doing some work on the presidential campaign.

"I'd always been in politics," White says. "Local politics. I was a party hack and board chairman for years and always had gotten involved in every political campaign for somebody, maybe a judge or a congressman or a senator or a state legislator or somebody. But this time I hooked up with this campaign. And of course, that's the reason I'm here now."

Nominated to the Supreme Court by President Kennedy, White was sworn in as its 93rd justice on April 16, 1962. So he returned to Washington.

White's status now is, in a way, not so different from what it was back in the 1930s when United Press International had to send its top sports columnist, the late Henry McLemore, to Colorado to see whether this kid called Whizzer was "the real stuff." There is something very collegiate about Washington, D.C., with its many transients, its pristine landscaping, its competitive pace, and its proliferation of critics on all subjects.

It is not the sports writers, but the court reporters who now are scrutinizing White's performance to see if he has the real stuff. And apparently they think he does. In all the criticism of the Supreme Court that has become fashionable since publication of the book, "The Brethren," no one ever has questioned the credentials, or the work of White.

A genial man with a ready, self-effacing sense of humor, he has handled his latest encounter with fame and fortune with unassuming grace – the same way he handled it the first time around. Art Rooney said that the young White fit into the NFL scene, the bus rides and train rides punctuated by card games and practical jokes, very well – even though he was a Rhodes Scholar and even though he was paid so much more than his teammates. Today, White – who would rather talk about a painting he saw at the National Gallery during his lunch hour than about himself – fits into the tony, high-brow Washington scene very well, too. Even if he sometimes is apt to bring an old teammate to the White House for dinner.

At least, that's the way some of White's old NFL friends tell it. The story, according to them, is that one day White's former coach, Johnny Blood, showed up at the door of the White's Washington home – unannounced as usual. The Whites were on their way to attend a reception at the White House. The Justice never hesitated an instant. He brought Blood along. Kennedy was President then, and the mythmakers have it that when he was introduced to Blood, the President recognized the name immediately and made Blood the hit of the evening.

White won't say whether the story is true. It might have happened that way, he says, but he really can't remember. He smiles enigmatically. "That's the way newspapermen would like it to have been," he says and begins to laugh.

Blood never would have put the kibosh on such a good story, but White is incapable of roguishness – albeit charming roguishness. He is a man who likes facts and fine distinctions, and he sticks to them religiously – even if they don't do wonders for his ego.

"I'm not sure it's fair to call me a scholar," the former Rhodes Scholar says. "All I ever did was go to law school. And hardly any intellectual thinks lawyers qualify as intellectuals."

By JIM SARGENT
Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

"Bullet Bill" Dudley, the former ace running back from Bluefield, Va., who became the University of Virginia's first consensus football All-American, fondly recalls his final college game.
 
In 1941, for the first time in nine years, Virginia beat North Carolina, 28-7, and Dudley scored three touchdowns, passed for another, and kicked all four extra points.
 
"I was tremendously honored to make the All-America team," Dudley told sportswriter Lawrence Elliott in 1954, "but I don't feel I have to strain to live up to some mythical something. Yesterday's sports hero is a lot like yesterday's newspaper -- you always know there's a fresh one coming tomorrow."
 
But Dudley's football career went well beyond his honors at Virginia. He became an outstanding running back, defensive back, and placekicker in the National Football League, starring three years each for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Detroit Lions, and the Washington Redskins. In between, he spent two years in the Army during World War II Later, he was enshrined in 1966 as part of the fourth class of Pro Football's Hall of Fame.
 
Ironically, Dudley, who played in the NFL at 5-foot-9 and 170-175 pounds, was considered too small for football until he was a 110-pound junior at Bluefield's Graham High School. An intense competitor, Bill grew up playing sandlot ball. He taught himself to drop-kick, pass, and run the ball, and he seldom missed an opportunity to watch and study football.
 
As a senior under first-year coach Marshall Shearer, who taught Bill to placekick, Dudley won fame as the "Bluefield Bullet" and led his team to a winning record. Although not blessed with great speed, Bill started quickly, ran elusively, changed directions almost intuitively, maneuvered behind blockers, and often spun away from would-be tacklers. Graham High School's 1938 highlight came when the "Bullet" kicked a 35-yard field goal late in the season's finale to beat favored Princeton High, 10-7.
 
Dreaming of playing college football, Dudley got only one scholarship offer. Shearer helped persuade Virginia coach Frank Murray to recruit his determined protégé as an extra-point specialist. As a result, Dudley received a $500 grant, out of which he paid for room, board, and books.
 
Dudley, then 16, launched his college career as a 150-pound tailback in 1938. The next season he began as a fifth back, but played in several games because of injury. In 1940, as a junior, he started every game at tailback and led the South in total offense, but Virginia struggled to a 4-5 record.
 
But in 1941, after switching from the single wing to the T- formation, the Cavaliers finished 8-1, with the only loss being to Yale, 21- 19. Dudley's play won him recognition as a consensus All-American. Also, he received the Washington Touchdown Club's Camp Memorial Trophy as the outstanding college football player of the year.
 
His best game effort against North Carolina and earned him praise from famous sportswriter Grantland Rice. Playing in Chapel Hill, Dudley accounted for all 28 points by connecting on a 67-yard pass play for the first touchdown, running around end for more than 60 yards to score another touchdown, running 89 yards for another touchdown on a fake punt and driving 3 yards up the middle for his fourth touchdown. Also, he called the offensive signals, averaged 42 yards on his punts, passed for 117 yards, rushed for 215, and while playing defense he made several important tackles and added an interception.
 
In 1994, reflecting on his greatest collegiate day, Dudley said, "That was kind of the 'big game' of the year because we hadn't beaten North Carolina in nine years. That was the ninth year, and they had a good football team.
 
Overall in 1941, Dudley topped the nation's major colleges with 134 points (18 touchdowns, 23 extra points, one field goal) and in total yards gained with 2,441, which included rushing, receiving, interception returns, and kick returns. He also completed 57 passes for 856 yards and scored almost half of Virginia's 279 points.
 
"I scored a lot of points," Dudley recalled, "but a lot of people forget that we only allowed something like 40-some points all year. And 21 of those points were scored by Yale in one ball game. We had a very good defensive football team. North Carolina only scored once, VMI scored twice, and I think that was it."
 
After the season, Dudley traveled to New Orleans and starred in the East-West Shrine game where he intercepted four passes and passed for his team's touchdown in a 6-6 tie.

HAPPY, DARK DAYS
By the time he graduated in June 1942, World War II was underway and Dudley aspired to be a Navy pilot. He never planned to play pro football.

"The Pittsburgh Steelers drafted me No. 1. Of course, I knew about the University of Pittsburgh, but I didn't know a thing about the Steelers. I knew a little bit about the Washington Redskins. We used to go up and see them play. But I never knew anything about the rest of the league, basically, because it just didn't enter my mind. College football, and the bowl games, were the big thing."
 
Dudley also said, "I was originally going to go into the Naval Air Corps. I was sworn in the Naval Air Corps in late May or early June of 1942. But when they started checking my papers, they found out I had to have my parents' consent, because I wasn't 21.
 
"So in the meantime, I went out to play in the College All-Star game in Chicago, and I signed a professional football contract. I played with the Steelers mainly for the money. They signed me for $5,000, because I was the No. 1 draft choice."  

As a rookie with the Steelers in 1942, Dudley played in All-Star games against the Bears in Chicago and the Eagles in Philadelphia. He injured both ankles against the Eagles, but he was ready to play against Philadelphia on the NFL's opening day.
 
On a trap play up the middle, "Bullet Bill" ran 55 yards for a touchdown to give the Steelers a 7-0 lead. The Eagles won, 24-14, but Dudley established himself as a tough big-league athlete.
 
His first game foreshadowed his NFL career. He always played all-out and he would not hesitate to criticize a player who didn't give his best effort.
 
"I can't stand a ballplayer who doesn't put out," Dudley later explained. "There's no reason for a ballplayer to hang back at any particular time, particularly when they're getting beat. That drives me up a wall."
 
Pittsburgh lost its second game to Washington, 28-14. Inspired by Dudley, however, the Steelers bounced back and won seven of their last nine. Art Rooney's club, coached by Walt Kiesling, finished at 7-4, the franchise's first winning record, and placed second in the Eastern Division behind the 10-1 Redskins.
 
Reflecting further, Dudley added, "We had a lot of fun. Pittsburgh in 1942 was probably one of the most 'fun' years I ever had. I didn't know anything about Pittsburgh, the sun, it's dark. All the steel mills were in full blast. You couldn't see the sun for the smoke. Probably we'd work out from one to three o'clock in the afternoon, and it was just overcast all morning long."
 
Running out of the single wing, Dudley led the league with 696 yards, averaged 4.3 per carry, and scored five touchdowns on the ground. He also completed 35 of 94 passes for 438 yards and two more touchdowns, averaged 32 yards on 18 punts, returned 20 punts for 271 yards (14.0 average) and 11 kickoffs for 298 yards (27.0 average) with another touchdowns.
 
Said Dudley about that season, "I was Rookie of the Year, and All-League, and I was just beat out for MVP, coming in second to Don Hutson."

ARMY DAYS AND A FAMOUS BATTLE
 
Facing the draft in Lynchburg, Dudley had enlisted in the Army Air Corps in September 1942, but the high number of recruits resulted in a three-month delay, which allowed him to finish his rookie season.
 
Along with thousands of other young Americans, Dudley spent the next two years in the service. He went through basic training in Florida and various flight schools in Texas. At Randolph Field he was asked to play football, which was deemed "essential" to the war effort as a "morale booster." Bill agreed. In 1944 his team went 12-0, he was named MVP, and he made the All-Service squad.
 
Dudley was shipped to the Pacific near the war's end, and he was able to fly two supply missions. Upon his return to Hawaii, the Army's top brass co-opted him to play in three football games against All-Star teams. His reward: he could fly home in two days, as opposed to enduring a six-week voyage by troop-ship.  

That fall Dudley returned to Pittsburgh, shared an apartment with center George Titus, and played the last four games of the 1945 season. Against the Chicago Cardinals at Forbes Field, "Bullet Bill" flashed his pre-war form by running for two touchdowns and kicking two extra points in a 23-0 victory, Pittsburgh's
second win in a 2-8 season under Coach Jim Leonard. By tallying 20 points in that game, Dudley scored more than any other Steelers player in 1945.
 
His explosive performance in 1946 is still remarkable. Pittsburgh, now coached by the austere Jock Sutherland, tied Washington for third place with a 5-5-1 record, and Dudley accounted for the biggest chunk of the club's offense.
 
Playing tailback and safety, Dudley scored 48 points and led the league in three different categories: rushing, with 604 yards (4.1 average); 10 interceptions, which he returned for 242 yards; and 27 punt returns on which he picked up 385 yards, a 14.0 average. For his outstanding season, Bill was named All-Pro as well as the NFL's Most Valuable Player.
 
In the meantime, a rift had developed between Dudley and Sutherland. During one passing drill at preseason camp, Sutherland, who made sarcastic comments about Dudley's sidearm passing motion, criticized his star for suggesting that it would be easier to complete passes if the defensive squad wore different color jerseys than the offense. Words were exchanged, Dudley later apologized, but after the season, he announced his retirement.
 
Dudley recollected, "Playing the single wing, I figured, particularly in 1946, that I played about three years of football in one year. I was on the field almost 60 minutes, and doing everything. But that's what I was capable of doing, and that's probably one of the reasons I was able to stay in the league. But I did have a good head on my shoulders. You see, you play as much with your brains as you do with your body."
 
Dudley, who had endured a back injury in 1946, suffered a knee injury in the season finale, a 10-7 loss to the Eagles. Consequently, he secured a position coaching the backfield for the University of Virginia in 1947. At that point, Pittsburgh traded him to Detroit.

LIONS AND REDSKINS
 
When the Lions offered him a guaranteed three-year contract at $20,000 a season, Dudley decided again to give football his best shot. A player's player, he was unanimously elected captain by his teammates for each of his three seasons in Detroit, where his determined play became the heart of the Lions. Although the team did not have enough talent to fashion a winning season during Dudley's tenure, he led the club in scoring each year.
 
On Oct. 19 during Dudley's first year with the Lions, he had an 84-yard punt return for a touchdown against the Bears, still the fourth-longest in franchise history. But during an up-and-down season, Detroit averaged 31 points in three victories and 15 points in nine losses.
 
Under Coach Bo McMillin in 1948, Detroit remained in last place for the third year in a row. Nagged by injuries, Dudley accounted for six touchdowns, but Camp Wilson led the club in rushing. In 1949, again under McMillin, Dudley led Detroit in scoring for the third year. With more talent all around, Detroit won three of the last four games to take fourth place with a 4-8 mark.
 
"When I went to Detroit, I had a contract that was guaranteed for three years," Dudley said. "At the end of the three-year period, if I didn't play, I was guaranteed one year of coaching. Bo traded me to the Redskins, feeling that I might want to exercise that contractual right, you see, as a coach. I was just getting ready to work for the Ford Motor Company. I worked for them one year in the offseason."
 
Dudley moved to Lynchburg, Va., and drove to Washington, where he played for three seasons, 1950-51 and 1953. Each year he led the Redskins in scoring. By that time, however, his knees were giving him more problems, notably with bursitis. Partly as a result, he spent 1952 as the backfield coach for Yale University.
 
Quarterback Sammy Baugh was the Redskins' leader, but Dudley, as always, made important contributions. On Dec. 3, 1950, he again proved his big-play ability after a 60-yard punt by Pittsburgh's Joe Geri.
 
The "Bullet" believed in always returning a punt. After running more than 30 yards to get to the kick, he reached out of bounds to catch and kept both feet in-bounds at Washington's 4-yard line. Running straight up the sideline, Dudley startled the Steelers, who thought they saw the ball go out of bounds. Step-faking a would-be tackler, as if to cut to the middle, Dudley hustled down the sideline, behind gathering blockers, and scored untouched on a 96-yard run.
 
When he returned for one more season with the Redskins in 1953, Bill performed part-time while coaching the backs, his favorite assignment. Mainly, however, he played defense on passing situations. He also handled the place-kicking and kicked a career-high 11 field goals.
 
At the end of the season, physical wear and tear had accumulated to the point where the "Bullet" decided to retire. He had entered the insurance business in Lynchburg with his brother Jim in 1951. During those years he also coached and scouted for, first, the Steelers and, later, the Lions.
 
Writing for "Sport" in 1954, Robert Smith summarized Dudley's greatness: "Despite his lack of breakaway speed, Bill was the most feared kickoff returner in the game .... He passed sidearm, like a kid, yet he had a fine completion average. He was 'too small,' but he was hardly ever hurt too badly to play. He was the league's top ground gainer, yet he was also one of the fiercest defensive tacklers and the best in the game at interceptions. As one of the men who faced him ruefully admitted, Bill could not throw a pass correctly and 'ran as if he was staggering,' yet he could always find a way to beat you."
 
That clutch ability explains why Dudley was able to lead his club in scoring during every one of his nine NFL seasons. Today he is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the college Football Hall of Fame, and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.
 
Since 1990 the Downtown Club of Richmond has sponsored the Bill Dudley Award, which is given each year to the top college football player in Virginia. That honor is a fitting tribute to Dudley's outstanding dedication, performance, and work ethic.

 

By JACK HENRY
Reprinted, Courtesy of PFRA

Most graybeard football fans are now willing to concede that the caliber of play in the National Football League has improved over the span of the past six decades. However, some continue to contend that the present-day performers are not as colorful as those in earlier years.       
 
An illustra¬tion to prove such a point would be the former Steelers player-coach, Johnny Blood. In more modern times there have been such characters as Tim Rossovich, Dick Butkus, and Joe Don Looney but none really matched the eccentric Blood, who was one of a kind.
 
They called him the Vagabond Halfback and the Magnificent Screwball, but actually he was the one and only genuine Peter Pan of pro football. He put in 15 years in the NFL, was chosen for the Hall of Fame in 1963, and even attempted a comeback as a player when he was 42 years of age.  
 
Johnny Blood's real name was John V. McNally, and he came from such a wealthy family of newspaper publishers and paper mill owners that he never needed to play football for a living. But that didn't stop him. In fact, when he still had a year of eligibility at St. John's College in Minnesota he decided along with his buddy, Ralph Hanson, to sneak in some pro activity with the East 26th Street Liberties of Minneapolis.        
 
Both McNally and Hanson knew the custom of the day was for college players to dabble in pro football under such assumed names as Smith or Jones. Young McNally varied the routine. He spotted a theater marquee billing Rudolph Valentino in the film "Blood and Sand" and immediately picked Blood as his name and induced Hanson to switch his to Sand. From that day forward, Johnny signed all documents, Johnny Blood.       
 
Veteran Pittsburgh fans never will forget when Blood arrived in 1937 to be player-coach of the Steelers (then known as the Pirates) to succeed Joe Bach. The season opener was against the Philadelphia Eagles and on the opening kickoff Blood galloped 92 yards for a touchdown. No player-coach in NFL history ever had a more spectacular debut than that.
 
Blood had been with Pittsburgh earlier as a halfback for Coach Luby DiMelio in 1934, but his tenure was short and he returned to Green Bay where he became a big factor in Curly Lambeau's championship years.       
 
It was back in 1929 that Lambeau had figured he had a squad that could win the NFL title if he could add Blood, Cal Hubbard, and Mike Michalske. Curly lured Blood away from the Pottsville Maroons, induced Hubbard to leave the New York Giants, and picked up Michalske when the New York Yankees franchise began to dissolve. Lambeau's judgment was correct and he went on to coaching glory.
 
Prior to service under Wilbur (Fats) Henry at Pottsville, Blood had played for John Bryant with the Milwaukee Badgers and Ernie Nevers with the Duluth Eskimos. His biggest days, though, were at Green Bay, and it was on the basis of his exploits for Lambeau that he became a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
 
Blood was a scrawny kid in high school and disappointed his father by not excelling in athletics at that time. The explana¬tion should have been obvious since Johnny graduated from high school at 14 and was not sufficiently mature to hold his own physically with his contemporaries. However, by the time he hit the NFL he was 6-foot-2, 198 pounds.            
 
In his prime Blood was a superb runner, excellent kicker and passer, a better than average blocker, a sure tackler and the best pass catcher in the professional league until Don Hutson came along. Some observers still argue that not even the brilliant Hutson could make more difficult catches than Johnny.    
 
Blood held all the major NFL pass-receiving records until Hutson joined him on the Packers roster. When Hutson arrived, Blood was 32 years old, but the young rookie from Alabama could only beat him by a foot or so in the 100-yard dash. Blood in his 20's would have outrun Hutson by yards to spare.
 
Green Bay fans remember a game against the Providence Steam Rollers when the Packers had the ball on their own 15-yard line. One play -- called "69" -- was one in which the fullback would take a handoff from Blood while the end faked taking a handoff on an end-around. Another version was "69-X" in which Blood would fake a handoff to the fullback and instead give the ball to the end on the reverse.
 
In the huddle Blood called, "69-XX." His teammates quickly reminded him that they had no such play. "You do now," said Johnny. "Just go through with the 69 sequence and I'll do the rest."   
 
The play worked when Blood faked to the fullback and then faked to the end on the end-around. Blood then tucked the ball under his arm and whirled his way 85 yards for a touchdown. During his career with the Packers, Blood reached pay dirt 37 times.               
 
Once when the Packers clinched a league championship, a victory party was held on the train back to Wisconsin. Blood reeled off some antics that enraged the team's towering end, LaVern Dilweg. LaVern chased Blood from the club car through all the other cars and figured he had him trapped on the rear platform. Football's Peter Pan then hoisted himself on top of the moving train. Dilweg sensibly gave up pursuit and Blood made his way back on the top of the train and dropped into the cab to startle the engineer and  fireman. They were entertained by him for the remainder of the trip.                      
 
Although Blood never had the need to make money from football he was not against turning a quick maneuver. For example, late in the 1932 season he figured an American professional team would be an attraction in Hawaii. He cabled the sports editor of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and suggested a New Year's Day event matching Green Bay with a Hawaiian All-Star outfit.            
 
Meanwhile, Blood delivered a sales pitch to Lambeau, who said he would be in favor of a postseason game as long as Green Bay received a $9,000 guarantee. Blood then sent a second cable to the Honolulu newspaper explaining that the Packers would perform for a $10,000 guarantee or 50 percent of the gate, whichever was higher.   
 
The offer was OK'd and the game was played. Blood turned over $10,000 to Lambeau, who was delighted to pick up more than he had bargained for. The 50 percent of the gross brought in $1,200 additional, which Blood cheerfully pocketed.                    
 
The story is often told that on one occasion Blood, while the player-coach for Pittsburgh, attended a Sunday game between the Bears and the Packers. Friends in the press box questioned Blood as to why he was in the Midwest, and Blood replied that the Steelers had an open date. The scoreboard showed otherwise. Pittsburgh was in action without the boss being present. Such curious memory lapses or nonchalance frequently kept Johnny in hot water.
 
Getting back to collegiate days, Blood, at the close of his junior year at St. John's, suddenly decided he would like to become a Knute Rockne protégé at Notre Dame. Reasoning that Notre Dame officials knew nothing about him, he enrolled as a freshman and eventually reported for the yearling squad handled by George Keogan.      
 
Keogan, who became better known in later years as the varsity basketball coach of the Fighting Irish, believed Blood could be useful but wanted him to be a tackle. Blood insisted he was the fastest man on the South Bend campus and wanted no part of an assignment in the line.
   
Keogan tossed Blood off the squad, but he remained for a time at Notre Dame, where he played basketball at the South Bend YMCA and helped quarterback Harry Stuhldreher with his poetry assignments.             
 
After World War II service in the China-India-Burma theater, Blood returned to pro football. He was 42, but he finally became convinced that he was too long in the tooth and returned to St. John's College to earn his degree 26 years late.
   
His mind evidently returned to the closing days of his player-coaching tenure at Pittsburgh. It was then his habit to inject himself into the lineup in the late stages of a game, annoying his teammates who wished to reject him as an incoming substitute.                   
 
In retrospect, few members of the Hall of Fame can show better credentials than Blood did when he was honored in 1963. Certainly no other member was as unpredictable. Probably his wife Marguerite Streater McNally, put it best when she said, "Even when Johnny does the expected, he does it in an unex¬pected way."             
 
This was true even when publishers convinced him to write a book. Everyone figured it would be a saga on football. Instead, it was a highly rated effort on the Malthusian theories of eco¬nomics.