Dan Rooney (14 page)

“Mr. Marshall, should we wear our new feathered headdresses? It's raining cats and dogs out there!” Without missing a beat, Marshall shot back, “We're in the entertainment business! You put those feathers on and get out there!”

So one hundred marching band members slogged across the field,
soggy feathers matted to their tubas, but the show went on as the delighted fans sang “Hail to the Redskins.” Marshall understood the value of entertainment. The Steelers would have to learn to be competitive in this arena as well.

Mossy Murphy came straight from Duquesne University, where he had successfully entertained fans and led the student body cheering section. He didn't look anything like a cheerleader. Standing five-foot-nine and weighing well over two hundred pounds, he had a larger-than-life personality and a creative spark that our team sorely needed.

He would try anything. He'd ride around the field on an undersized motor scooter, making certain the halftime performances were choreographed just so. Watching him putt around on that tiny scooter, gesturing, giving orders like a field marshal, left the fans and the team howling with laughter. He brought in professional or high school bands for every home game. The latter innovation was an especially good strategy, since the families and friends of the high school band members helped fill the stands.

He organized elaborate halftime shows. One Sunday it might be a jazz theme, the next we'd fight the Civil War. He always came up with something unusual. He set up a big muzzle-loading cannon in the end zone and torched it off whenever we scored a touchdown. One time he almost blasted receiver Buddy Dial as he crossed the goal line and ran into Mossy's line of fire. Dial's ad-libbed theatrical death scene made the highlight films for many years after.

We didn't need a mascot in those days; we had Mossy. He seemed to be everywhere. When a Pittsburgh politician, Prothonotary David Lee Roberts, annoyed fans by blocking their view—he had season tickets just behind the players' bench at Pitt Stadium—Mossy decided to play a prank on him.

Knowing he loved the limelight, Mossy said to me, “Let's have some fun with Roberts.” He jumped on his scooter, rode over to the
bench, and with his walkie-talkie in hand, hailed the official, saying, “Mr. Roberts, I'm from CBS. This game is being televised. Would you mind if we interviewed you?”

“Oh, yes, of course!”

Mossy held the walkie-talkie as if it were a microphone and began a lengthy interview, touching on topics ranging from football to politics. Roberts was a huge fan. Waxing eloquent about the Steelers game plan and basking in all the attention, he didn't notice he was speaking into a walkie-talkie instead of a microphone.

Then Mossy said, “Mr. Roberts, turn around and wave to the cameras in the press box.”

Of course, there weren't any cameras trained on the Prothonotary, but again he didn't notice. Then I came up and interrupted the interview. “Thank you, Mr. Roberts, we have to cut to a commercial now.” Then we led him to an out-of-the-way VIP seat. It was a riot and all we could do to keep from laughing out loud. Mossy could always be counted on to come up with shenanigans like this.

But sometimes he pushed the envelope too far. I remember the time he hired a beautiful baton twirler, decked out in a very tight gold lamé outfit. She's twirling, she's spinning, she's gyrating.

I buzzed Mossy on the walkie-talkie and said, “Listen, you're going to get us both canned if you don't cover her up!” The next thing I see is Mossy's scooter putt-putting across the field, blue smoke trailing behind, straight for the golden girl. He jumps off the scooter and covers her with his raincoat. The poor girl is draped in Mossy's tent of a coat, baton in hand, not knowing what to do. Finally, with coat dragging, she high-steps off the field, much to the crowd's disappointment. It had been quite a show, but I knew such a performance wouldn't sit well with Dad. There had to be limits on how far we'd go for the sake of entertainment.

People often ask me why the Steelers don't have cheerleaders like other teams in the league. The truth is we did have cheerleaders once,
in fact, the first in the NFL. In 1961 Mossy recruited a whole squad of girls from Robert Morris College. He dressed them up in pleated gold vests, short skirts, and natty caps. Equipped with black-and-gold pompoms, they performed the kinds of cheers you'd see at high school and college games across the country. They were nice young women, but we felt they unnecessarily distracted players and fans. Television cameras liked them, but we take our football seriously in Pittsburgh. We just didn't need them. By 1969 the Steelerettes were history, and today the Steelers are one of the few NFL franchises without exotic dancing girls on the sidelines.

 

 

As the league changed, so did the team. Pittsburgh was changing, too. The smoky city of my youth was undergoing a transformation, a renaissance of sorts. In 1948 the industrial smoke had turned deadly. Just a few miles up the Monongahela River from downtown Pittsburgh, a cloud of smog smothered the small mill town of Donora. Fans at the high school football stadium couldn't see the players on the field. By afternoon you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. The next day eleven people were dead and scores more rushed to area hospitals.

This tragedy prompted local officials and steel industry executives to get serious about air pollution. For the next decade Pittsburgh led the nation in reducing emissions from mills and coal-powered plants of all kinds, and pioneered federal legislation that today allows all Americans to breathe easier. As smoke-control ordinances took effect, Pittsburghers washed decades of soot and grime from the stone facades of municipal buildings, libraries, museums, and churches, uncovering hidden beauty.

In 1958, as Pittsburgh renewed itself, the city celebrated its bicentennial. It had been two hundred years since George Washington and
General John Forbes arrived at the Point and found the smoldering ruins of Fort Duquesne, the French stronghold designed to keep the Three Rivers from the British. Forbes and Washington named the new British settlement “Pittsburgh” in honor of parliamentary leader William Pitt.

Now city leaders pulled out all the stops and hosted a yearlong celebration. They cleared the Point of industrial waste—rusty railroad tracks, empty warehouses, and abandoned mills—to create a beautiful urban park. They erected a festival city, a world's fair, and invited dozens of celebrities, from Gene Kelly and Perry Como to
Gun-smoke
's James Arness, to join in the festivities. Parades and oratory entertained crowds of people who flocked to the reborn city. State and local dignitaries laid the cornerstone for the civic arena—no small feat considering the round building had no corners. It was the first retractable domed arena in the world, known locally as the “Igloo” (where the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 1991 and 1992).

Unfortunately, the process of urban renewal impacted the rich history and culture of Pittsburgh's Hill District. Since the 1920s this African-American community had produced amazing talent: Clarence “Pinetop” Smith pioneered boogie-woogie, jazz legends Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, and Billy Eckstine played the Craw-ford Grille, and Kenny Clark originated bebop. The stories of this neighborhood are immortalized in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson's Pittsburgh Series, a ten-play collection that captures the vitality and spirit of the Hill District's golden age.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation bored the Ft. Pitt Tunnel through Mt. Washington at the confluence of the Three Rivers. With the opening of this tunnel in 1960, the world discovered Pittsburgh in all its glory, as if a curtain had been raised on a stage. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and native son David McCullough says, “Pittsburgh is the only city in America that makes an entrance.” And he's right. You come through that tunnel and see skyscrapers of
glass and steel and aluminum crowded onto the Golden Triangle, where the rivers converge. Towboats push coal barges, and cars and trains cross black-and-gold-painted bridges, the soothing green of the hills and parks contrasting with the hard urban landscape. I feel proud every time I drive into the city.

The sporting world also focused its attention on the city in 1960, when the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the defending world champion New York Yankees in the seventh game of the World Series. Bill Mazeroski's ninth inning walk-off homerun electrified the nation and made Pittsburghers believe anything was possible. I remember the city went wild—horns honking, church bells ringing, streetcars clanging. In the streets strangers hugged and danced and sang. It was a public celebration on a scale I hadn't seen since World War II and wouldn't see again until the Steelers won their first Super Bowl.

 

 

The decade of the 1960s ushered in a new era for the NFL as well. On October 11, 1959, cross-state rivals, the Eagles and Steelers, faced each other in Philadelphia. Commissioner Bert Bell, who once owned a stake in both teams, sat in the cheap seats with the fans—he never liked special treatment or VIP boxes. With two minutes to go in the fourth quarter, the Eagles ahead 28-24, Bell suffered a massive heart attack. At the age of sixty-four, the most influential commissioner in NFL history up to that time was dead. Although a closely guarded secret, some of his close friends knew Bert was planning to resign as commissioner in order to reacquire the Philadelphia Eagles and return to the ranks of NFL owners. He always felt like one of the boys, and he was a real football guy, never entirely happy with the burden of responsibility that came with being the league's chief executive. His passing took us all by surprise and left a big leadership hole in the emerging NFL.

In January 1960 the owners met at the Kenilworth Hotel in Miami to select a new commissioner. Behind the scenes, owners jockeyed for position, lining up their candidates before the meeting convened. Two men, Austin Gunsel and Marshall Leahy, quickly emerged as front runners. By and large, the eastern owners, including George Halas and George Marshall, backed Gunsel, Bert Bell's former assistant, thinking he was someone they could control. The westerners, like Dan Reeves (Los Angeles) and Tony Morabito (San Francisco), wanted Leahy, a San Francisco lawyer and the league's chief outside legal counsel. Some people say the easterners didn't want a commissioner who lived on the West Coast. But I know for a fact that wasn't the case. The two Georges didn't care where Leahy lived—they just didn't like the guy. As I said, they wanted someone they could control.

The balloting seemed to go on forever. The winning candidate needed a two-thirds majority, or nine votes. Those owners supporting Leahy thought they'd made a deal with George Halas. If they got eight votes, he would provide the ninth. They thought they had the election in the bag.

“What do you think about this?” my father asked me.

“Let's vote for Leahy and see what happens,” I said.

So my father voted for Leahy. But Halas didn't deliver his vote. The other owners slapped their foreheads and pounded the table. “But you promised us your vote.”

George wouldn't give in. “No, I just can't do it,” he said. He wanted to expand the league and feared losing the support of either the West Coast or East Coast faction if he backed one candidate or the other. He remained stubbornly indecisive.

“But you promised,” they pleaded.

“I can't do it,” he answered, “I'm not going to do it.”

My father saw George's plight. “Then I'm not voting for Leahy, either,” he said, and joined Halas in his holdout.

Dad told the owners, “We need another candidate.”

Then out of thin air they started pulling out names. I was there when they suggested my father be the commissioner. But he was too smart for that.

“I'm not running for commissioner,” he emphatically stated. “Do you think I was born yesterday?”

Next they proposed Detroit Lions president Edwin Anderson, who sat right next to me. When they put his name up, he thought he was going to get the job, but only two or three votes went his way.

The balloting went on. Round 20, Round 21, Round 22. If Bert himself had been there, by this time he would have taken out his teeth and started crying. When the discussions grew tedious, Bert Bell Jr., who worked in the league office, and I retreated to a palm-tree-shaded shuffleboard court outside the hotel. At first we played for a dollar a game, then for a dollar a shot. It turned out I was pretty good at shuffleboard, though it hardly counts as a sport in my book. I started playing with only a couple of bucks, but by the end of the day my wallet was a good deal fatter.

When we returned to the smoky meeting room, Dan Reeves put forward the name of the thirty-three-year-old general manager of the Los Angeles Rams, Pete Rozelle. The nomination took us by surprise, and no one in the room was more surprised than Pete. He attended the meeting just as I did, at the request of the team owner.

Reeves said, “He's young, but he's very bright, and he's very good.”

Dad leaned over to me and asked, “Who is this guy? Do you know him?”

“Yeah, I know him,” I said. “He's a good guy. I think he can do the job.”

Pete and I were nearly the same age and had worked together on NFL marketing issues. We had spent some time together, and I found him to be bright, articulate, and most important, honest.

“He's all right,” I said to my father. “He's someone we can get
along with.” So my father told Reeves and the others that we'd back Rozelle if he were nominated.

The owners asked Rozelle to leave the room, and while he was killing time in the washroom we elected him without much debate on the twenty-third ballot. My father helped break the logjam. He didn't speak often at league meetings, so when he did, the other guys listened.