Dan Rooney (11 page)

“Catch him!” Dad said.

At the next red light I pulled up next to him. I could see John had his wife, Dorothy, and their daughter, Anna, with him.

Dad rolled down his window and yelled out, “John!”

“How are you doing, Mr. Rooney?”

“I hope you catch on with a team and have a great career!”

“Thank you, Mr. Rooney,” John replied, genuinely pleased.

Kies slumped in the back seat, looking like he'd just swallowed a large spoonful of vinegar, and growled, “He'll never amount to anything.”

The light changed and we both pulled off, going our separate ways.

After a year of sandlot ball and backbreaking physical labor, John finally caught a break. He had written to every team in the league begging for a tryout. Somehow one of his letters surfaced on the desk of General Manager Don Kellett, just at the time the Baltimore Colts were looking for a backup for their rookie quarterback sensation out of Oregon, George Shaw. Johnny signed on for $7,000, $1,500 more
than I had offered him to play for the Steelers. He told Dorothy, “Look at it this way, hon, I didn't get cut, I just got a fifteen hundred dollar raise.” In preseason, Johnny impressed scouts and sportswriters, but it didn't look like he was going to get any playing time as long as Shaw held the number-one quarterback slot. But in the fourth game of the 1956 season, Shaw got buried in a pile of Chicago Bears linemen, tearing ligaments in his right knee, knocking him out for the rest of the year.

Johnny got the call, and the rest is history.

His career with the Baltimore Colts is the stuff of legend. In my mind, he's by far the greatest quarterback in football history. His brand of football—brilliant play-calling, pinpoint passing, showman-ship, and never-say-die intensity—changed the game just as television came into its own. The 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants remains one of the greatest games ever played. Nationally televised, forty-five million Americans watched transfixed as Unitas drove his team downfield in overtime to defeat the powerful Giants. Unitas threw that day for 349 yards, surpassing Redskins' Sammy Baugh's title game record that had stood for more than twenty years. Johnny's two last-minute drives brought home viewers to their feet, cheering, and made America passionate about Sunday football. The game would never be the same.

I was one of the forty-five million people watching the game on television that historic day, and I remember thinking, “How did we ever let Johnny Unitas get away?” The Unitas story stays with me as a reminder that sometimes you have to trust your instincts, even if those around you, people you know and trust, don't agree. In this case, my brothers and I were right; Kies and Dad were wrong.

COMING OF AGE: “THE GAME'S CHANGING, DAD”

SINCE THE LATE 1940S and early 1950s the game had been changing. The upstart All-American Football Conference, a serious rival to the NFL, boasted teams like the Baltimore Colts, San Francisco Forty-Niners, and Cleveland Browns. These teams looked to capture a piece of the NFL fan base, so they opened their play books—nothing was sacred—and experimented with innovative offenses and defenses. The Cleveland Browns, coached by Paul Brown, had pioneered a new pass offense, one that confounded opponents and wowed the fans. The Browns broke the game wide open with their aerial attack, which by itself could win games.

In 1949, after much soul-searching and debate, the NFL owners agreed to merge with the rival AAFC, but only the three strongest
teams—the Colts, Forty-Niners, and Browns—would be brought into the fold. These teams brought with them their exciting new play.

In the summer of 1950, my father arranged for the Browns to play one of their first NFL games against the Steelers. This preseason contest would be played in War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo. So far the Browns had annihilated the opposition, averaging 35 points a game and racking up a 4-0 record. They shouldn't have taken us by surprise, but they did. They never stopped passing. They went on to beat us 41-31, but the game was never close.

Later, in the regular season, we played the Browns again, this time on our home turf at Forbes Field. At halftime as I walked off the field into the tunnel with Bob Davis, our wide receiver and defensive end (they played both ways in those days), Davis yelled over to the Browns players, “Hey, you guys pass so much you should be playing with the Celtics!” They just laughed, and went on to beat us again, 17-0.

On our bye week, Coach Kiesling and I decided to see for ourselves how the Giants' defense would handle the Browns' passing game. I gassed up Dad's Buick (the one that advertised on the doors, “North Side Buick” in gigantic letters and “Pittsburgh Steelers” underneath in barely readable print) and drove the two hours to Cleveland. I enjoyed that trip, especially spending time with Kies as he talked about the defensive options the Giants might use against the Browns. Our coach, John Michelosen, had utilized a 6-2-3 defensive formation (six men on the line, two linebackers, and three deep backs) in our game against the Browns. It didn't work. They picked us apart.

But the Giants-Browns game was a real eye-opener for me. The Giants' coach, Steve Owens, pulled the two ends off the front line to protect against the short pass, while the safeties covered long. The four guys up front had to stop the run. This is the first time we'd seen a 4-3 defense. It was a revolutionary change. They shut down the Browns' passing attack, forcing them to rely on only their ground game. The Steelers—and everybody else—saw the writing on the wall
and had to adapt. The passing game was here to stay, and the 4-3 defense was the way of the future.

When we got home to Pittsburgh I told my father all about what I'd seen in Cleveland. “The game's changing, Dad,” I said, “and we've got to change, too!”

Years later I learned that a young Johnny Unitas had also watched the Cleveland Browns play that season. He saw the same thing I did, but while Kies and I focused on defense, Johnny was inspired by the offensive opportunities. And he was just the quarterback to apply the new style of play introduced by the Browns and the other NFL newcomers.

But change came hard to the Steelers. Dad continued to defer to the coaches and, let me tell you, these guys weren't on the cutting edge of football theory. Coach Michelosen held on to Jock Sutherland's old single-wing, while everyone else had gone to the more versatile T formation. But as hard as he tried, Michelosen was not Jock Sutherland. His team lacked the punch and creativity that Jock's eshibited.

After Michelosen went through two losing seasons among his four as coach, my father decided to replace him, this time with Joe Bach, who had last coached the Steelers in the mid-1930s. He was a tough customer back then. He had the brass to stand up to my father and once squared off with him during a four-day train ride home from Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Bulldogs, a West Coast semi-pro team, had badly beaten and embarrassed Pittsburgh in an exhibition game. Dad hated to lose, especially to these bums. The fight broke out when he tried to tell Bach how to do his job, and only ended when Dad delivered a right cross to Bach's jaw, knocking him out cold. Back in those days, my father hadn't made up his mind to let coaches do the coaching. Dad fired him at the end of a disastrous season. Actually, Joe threatened once too often to resign, and this time Dad called his bluff and accepted.

Don't get me wrong, Bach was a pretty good coach in those early years, but time had passed him by. In his second stint with the team, 1952-53, Bach had lost the old fire, racking up an unimpressive 11-13 record. Suffering from loss of stamina and the effects of diabetes, Bach remained mired in the past, grudgingly adopting the new T formation over the single-wing.

In 1954 Dad brought Kies back for the third—and last—time. With him came his old coaching staff, those who were still around. Remember, these are the same guys who let Unitas go. They were a conservative bunch. It seemed like every play was right up the middle. Bob Drum of the
Pittsburgh Press
invented a little ditty that he'd sing in the press box at the start of every Steelers game:

 

Kies was as predictable as the Pittsburgh streetcar schedule. And it was true: every team in the league knew running back Fran Rogel was coming up the middle. Kies saw the game as a test of strength and will. We didn't need to outsmart or outmaneuver the other teams—we'd drive straight ahead and overpower them with Pittsburgh-style football.

By now Dad had decided not to interfere with the coaches' play calling, but even he grew frustrated with Kies' one-dimensional attack. He pressed the coach to try a pass on the first play of the game.

“Look Kies,” he said, “I want you to throw on first down.”

The coach resisted. “No, you don't throw the ball on first down!”

But Dad insisted and was so certain that this opening play would make Steelers history, he told all the boys in the press box to watch for a pass.

Drum said, “I'll believe it when I see it.”

Dad chomped his cigar and smiled. “You just watch—I guarantee it.”

Pittsburgh quarterback Jack Scarbath faked to Rogel, dropped back, and fired a long pass to Goose McClaren, who caught the ball and streaked down the field for an 80-yard touchdown. But the refs called the Steelers offsides, and the ball came back. Kiesling reverted to his old routine, and on the next play Rogel ploughed up the middle for a one-yard gain.

Drum chanted, “Hi-diddle-diddle, Rogel up the middle.”

Nothing would change on Kiesling's watch, although he accepted the T formation and the new defenses that would allow the Steelers to be competitive in the new NFL.

 

 

The NFL had come a long way since its humble beginning at the Jordan and Hupmobile car dealership in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. The days of Jim Thorpe and Joe Carr were long gone. Carl Storck came in as the third president of the NFL in 1939. He was barely able to hold the fractious owners together. According to my father, the only contribution Storck brought to the NFL was the big box of candy he brought to every league meeting. Otherwise, the league was in a holding pattern until Elmer Layden took over in 1941. Layden, one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame fame, was a real football guy who had coached at Duquesne University and Notre Dame itself. Right out of the chute he set out to correct the league's negative public image.

At this time college football was king, and the press corps had little respect for the professional game. Layden put an end to ill-considered player and team endorsements of liquor, cigarettes, and laxatives. He obsessed over details as minute as socks, sloppy uniforms, and the color of stripes on the officials' shirts. The league's tarnished image needed to be polished and protected. The owners charged Layden with holding the league together during the difficult war years when
the demand for manpower stripped the teams of their best players. Try as he might, however, he failed in his effort to get President Roosevelt to officially endorse football as a morale booster, as he had professional baseball. Baseball had seen a surge of interest following the president's call for Americans to attend games and continue with traditional recreational pursuits. He said, “The enemy will have won if we give up our American way of life.” But the president didn't give professional football the same consideration he gave baseball, and Layden and the owners worried the league's survival hung by a thread. The commissioner encouraged the Pittsburgh-Philadelphia partnership that gave birth to the Steagles and, later, the disastrous Chicago-Pittsburgh “Card-Pitt” union.

When the AAFC announced its launch in 1945, the owners expected Layden to combat the rival league, which threatened the very existence of the weakened NFL. Following the owners' lead, he opposed any consolidation with the new league, but he really didn't have the stomach for an all-out fight with the well-financed and well-organized AAFC.

By 1946 the discouraged owners—all of them, including my father, had lost a good deal of money—clamored for change. Layden was exhausted and ready to call it quits. But the Redskins' George Preston Marshall wasn't about to wait for Layden's resignation. Marshall wanted him out, the sooner the better.

The owners agreed not to renew Layden's contract and turned to Steelers co-owner and my father's friend, Bert Bell. Bell's personal finances had suffered during the war years. By 1945 my father had purchased some of Bert's share of the Steelers and gained controlling interest. He did this not to control the team, but because he wanted to help Bert out any way he could. When Bert agreed to become NFL commissioner, however, he knew he'd have to surrender his stake in the Steelers to avoid a conflict of interest. Dad suggested, “Let Barney have it!” As nearly as I can figure, when the deal was done, Barney
McGinley, Dad's old friend and boxing club partner, became part-owner of the Steelers.

The details of this arrangement never mattered much to my father. When Barney died, his interest went to his four children. His son, Jack McGinley, was the most involved of any of the McGinley family in the Steelers organization. Jack had married my father's youngest sister, Marie, the same Aunt Marie who watched me as a young boy. In many ways, Uncle Jack reminded me of my father—his love of Pittsburgh, his sense of humor, his devotion to family, his belief in the goodness of people, and his integrity.

We all got along, and it's always seemed to work. Today, the Steelers' board of directors is still composed of Rooneys and McGinleys.

 

 

Bert Bell lifted the league to a new level. First, he set out to bring unity and collegiality to the owners. He was, after all, one of the guys. He knew them, and he knew how to work with them. United, they could take on the AAFC. Bert brokered a compromise with the AAFC strongmen, millionaires like actor Don Ameche and producer Louis B. Mayer, cutting loose the weaker teams and bringing the Colts, Forty-Niners, and Browns into the NFL. The Browns were owned by Mickey McBride, a friend of my father's, and he had money. These well-financed teams represented big markets with growing fan bases. The AAFC was dissolved. The new NFL in 1950 comprised thirteen teams, representing cities from coast to coast: Chicago Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Washington Redskins, Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, New York Yanks, Los Angeles Rams, and the San Francisco Forty-Niners. NFL football had truly become a national sport.