Dan Rooney (20 page)

To the fans Chuck's first season looked like a disaster. The Steelers went 1-13. In the second game of the season, the Philadelphia Eagles beat us 41-27. In this game, we started to come back in the fourth quarter. On third down and short, maybe two yards to go, we didn't make it. We went for it on fourth down and again didn't make it. In a fit of frustration, Joe Greene picked up the ball and threw it into the stands. This got him thrown out of the game, and most people in the league thought he was a smart-aleck. But when I saw him do that, I knew we had a good man. This guy wanted to win and wouldn't tolerate failure.

Despite losing the next twelve games, Noll didn't lose the team. I noticed it, and so did my father. It was an amazing thing to see. The players understood that building the team would take time. They could see progress, even if the fans and sportswriters didn't.

Everything depended on the draft. Noll's practiced eye and insight, coupled with BLESTO intelligence and great scouting from Art, Bill Nunn, and Dick Haley, brought outstanding talent to the Steelers.

Nunn, the sports editor for the
Pittsburgh Courier
, one of the country's largest African-American newspapers, joined the Steelers' scouting staff full time in 1969 when Noll took over the team. Focusing his attention on black colleges in the South, like Grambling and Prairie View and Florida A&M, he discovered amazing talent. For years he had covered and reported on black college players overlooked by NFL scouts and sportswriters for America's major newspapers.

The Steelers had black players going back to the very first season in 1933, but we didn't systematically scout or recruit them. Like all the other pro teams, we tended to scout the big universities, which at that time were predominantly white, so we seldom saw black players.

In 1967 I'd been reading Bill Nunn's column in the
Courier
and was especially interested in his annual Black College All-America Team. Why didn't we know about these guys? A reporter at the
Courier,
Rick Roberts, used to hang around our offices at the Roosevelt Hotel, so I asked him why Bill Nunn never came around. Roberts went back and told Nunn what I said, and Nunn told him to tell me that I didn't have to worry about Bill Nunn coming down to the Steelers offices, because he didn't like the way the Steelers did business. So I called the
Courier
and asked Bill if he would come talk to me. He hesitated at first, then agreed to meet.

“How come we never see you down here?” I asked.

“There have been many times when I felt getting into the press box and different things, that because I was the black newspaper, I wasn't particularly welcome,” Nunn said. “Plus, I turn out an All-America football team every year, and nobody from the Steelers has ever contacted me. I heard from the Los Angeles Rams about ‘Deacon' Dan Towler, and I even heard from the New York Giants about Roosevelt Brown. To tell you the truth, nobody from the Steelers ever called me. I don't think you'll ever be a winner.”

“Well, why don't you join us, scout for us?”

“I've got a job,” he replied.

“Work for us half time, then,” I said. “Look at the games, take notes on the players, and send us reports—tell us what you think.”

I think Nunn was surprised I even called him. He may have thought we were deliberately excluding black players, but the truth was we didn't know them or how good they were.

I can't tell you how important Bill Nunn was to our organization. His father, Bill Nunn Sr., was editor-in-chief of the
Courier
. He sent his son to college at West Virginia State, where he excelled at basketball, so much so that the Harlem Globetrotters wanted him. The NBA wasn't integrated in the late 1940s, but some NBA teams looked at him as well, thinking he might be the one to break that color barrier.
As it turned out, another Pittsburgher, Chuck Cooper of Duquesne, had that honor. Bill decided not to pursue a career in basketball but instead went to work with his father at the
Pittsburgh Courier.

When Bill came to the Steelers, he gave us an edge other teams didn't have. Joe Gilliam, John Stallworth, Mel Blount, Ernie Holmes, Chuck Hinton, Ben McGee, Donnie Shell, Jack McClairen, Willie McClung, and Frank Lewis—all appeared on Bill's black All-America team. He had a great eye for talent and scouted the Big 10 schools as well. From the beginning, Nunn was more than a scout. He was a trusted advisor to Noll, Art, and to me, and a confidant to the players. Working in our front office, he became the first African-American executive on any NFL club.

As we worked together we got to know each other very well. We became friends. One of the greatest compliments I've ever received came from Nunn. He told Joe Gordon, our communications director, “I don't think Dan sees color. And I don't say that about a lot of people.” Bill Nunn made a real difference for generations of African-American athletes. He provided opportunities in the NFL, opening doors for black coaches and front office employees. For him to say someone didn't see color really carried a lot of weight.

With Nunn, Art, Chuck, and director of player personnel Dick Haley focused on the draft, the Steelers scored big in the years from 1970 to 1972. We had the overall number-one draft pick in 1970. With it we took Terry Bradshaw from Louisiana Tech. Our scouts believed a talent like Bradshaw would come around only once in a decade.

In round three, we took Mel Blount, a great defensive back from Southern University. Nunn and Noll disagreed whether Blount was a safety or cornerback. Nunn worried the six-foot-four Blount might not be quick enough to cover deep. But poring over game film, Noll correctly predicted Blount could use his size to bump speedy wide receivers at the line, disrupt their patterns, and cover them deep.

As Noll built the Steelers with the addition of Bradshaw and Blount in 1970, I worked at opening Three Rivers Stadium. The Steelers had never had a home of their own. Most recently, we had played at aging Forbes Field and competed with the University of Pittsburgh Panthers for the use of Pitt Stadium. During the season we practiced in the dilapidated facilities of South Park. Owned by Allegheny County, South Park was better suited for stock shows and county fairs. The “locker room” didn't have any lockers—just hooks for uniforms and equipment. Most of the showers didn't work, the players had to run cross-country for lack of a track (during the Buddy Parker and Bill Austin years some of the veterans never ran at all but loafed in the woods, only joining the rookies when they reached the tree line), and the whole place reeked of decay. It was pretty hard to feel like a winner in these conditions.

Since 1965 both the Pirates and Steelers had worked with city and county officials to build a new stadium with state-of-the-art facilities. I never told the city we'd move the team if we didn't get a stadium the equal of other NFL teams, but I know the fans and others worried about it. My father and I never considered taking the team out of Pittsburgh. In many ways, we always felt the team belonged to the people of Pittsburgh, and we held it in trust for them.

But figuring out what the city would contribute and putting together the financing package was a big job. Fortunately, good will prevailed on all sides. We agreed on a North Side site for the new combination football-baseball stadium. In fact, we located it right where old Exposition Park once stood, where professional football began and where my father had played as a youth.

I worked with the designers to develop the architectural program for Three Rivers Stadium. In its final design, it looked like a big layer cake, perfectly round. The seating capacity of 50,000 was much greater than Forbes Field (35,000) and about equal to Pitt Stadium (55,000), with three tiers of grandstands. Three Rivers' synthetic
grass (Tartan Turf), giant electronic scoreboard, and elegant indoor restaurant (the Allegheny Club) contrasted starkly with the muddy in-field, manual scoreboard, and hotdog vendors and peanut gallery at Forbes Field.

With Three Rivers Stadium we finally had a facility we could be proud of. The stadium had to work for both baseball and football, so there were many compromises. All in all, I think we did a pretty good job. One day, before opening, I took my father on a tour. He wanted to see the location of our boxes, so I took him to the second tier. Our box overlooked the 50-yard line, perfect to watch a football game.

He complained, “This is a terrible place!”

I said, “Why? It's the best place to be.”

“No,” he answered, “I can't see the baseball. You put me behind home plate!”

As I said, Dad always was a baseball man.

 

 

We opened the stadium for football on September 20, 1970, with the help of 45,538 cheering Steelers fans. Our jubilation was dampened somewhat by the 19-7 loss to the Houston Oilers. The Steelers broke their sixteen-game losing streak with a 23-10 win over the Buffalo Bills on October 11—our first victory in the new stadium. Later that season, on November 2, we played our first regular season
Monday Night Football
game at Three Rivers Stadium, beating the Cincinnati Bengals, 21-10. ABC televised the game with Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, and Keith Jackson calling the action.

The new facility could be accessed by bus, car, and boat. The large parking lots—thirty-five acres—surrounding the stadium proved ideal for tailgating parties, which quickly became a Steelers tradition. At first, we used whatever promotions we could to help fill seats; give-aways and fireworks always boosted attendance. I felt good when the
ticket office reported our first sellout crowd, 50,353, for our game against the New York Jets on November 8, 1970. The standing-room-only crowd went wild when we beat Namath and company, 21- 17.

The 1971 draft proved to be one of our best. With it we acquired the nucleus of the Super Bowl championship teams that would soon follow.

Receiver Frank Lewis of Grambling came in the first round.

Penn State linebacker Jack Ham in the second.

In the fourth round we tapped East Texas State defensive end Dwight White and offensive guard Gerry “Moon” Mullins of Southern Cal.

Round five brought Larry Brown, a tight end from the University of Kansas.

Craig Hanneman, a guard from Oregon State, was our sixth-round pick.

Ernie Holmes, a defensive tackle from Texas Southern, came in the eighth round.

We nabbed safeties Mike Wagner, from Western Illinois, in the eleventh round and Glen Edwards, from Florida A&M, as a free agent.

 

 

We fought Cleveland for the lead of the AFC Central Division for most of the 1971 season. Toward the end of the year we were both tied with 5-5 records. Then our lack of experience caught up with us, and we lost three of our last four games. It was a disappointing end to the season, but we had been in the run for a championship for the first time in many years.

We felt 1972 would be our year. Our number-one draft pick, Franco Harris, the outstanding Penn State running back, filled a key
position and made an impact on the team almost immediately. Some say my brother Art and Chuck disagreed over who our number-one pick should be. Noll always energized these conversations and debates by throwing in a name that would create controversy and force everyone to take a stand. He did this with running back Robert Newhouse, who had been scouted by Bill Nunn and was a guy Nunn thought fit our style better. But I can tell you that we all ultimately agreed on Franco. There was never any question he'd be our number-one pick. And Franco won Nunn over the first time he put on a Steelers uniform. “The thing that impressed me about Franco,” said Nunn, “was that coming out of Penn State, he wasn't the number-one back, but he showed a willingness to work. That first day at practice, he ran everything to the goal line, and he had those quick feet.”

Joe Gilliam, one of the first African-American quarterbacks to be drafted in the NFL, came to us from Tennessee State. Other draft picks helped bolster the already formidable “Steel Curtain,” a term coined just a few months before in a Pittsburgh radio contest. Even with Greene, Greenwood, Holmes, and White, Noll continued to seek defensive depth.

Al Davis's Oakland Raiders came to Three Rivers to open the 1972 season. Al had built a tough team, but linebacker Henry Davis blocked a punt, and Bradshaw ran for two touchdowns and passed for another in a 34-28 win. Then we traveled to Cincinnati, for a disappointing 15-10 loss. On the road again at St. Louis, we defeated the Cardinals, 25-19. Then on to Dallas, where the Cowboys squeezed past us, 17-13. Following our loss to the Cowboys we went on a five-game winning streak, starting with Houston, 24-7. The Steel Curtain nearly shut down New England, 33-3. Our offense powered past Buffalo, 38-21, then back home to play Cincinnati, where we avenged our earlier loss, 40-17. Against Kansas City, our defense held the Chiefs to only one score and we beat them, 16-7, a big win for us—they had been Super Bowl champions two years before. In a last-minute nail-biter,
Cleveland defeated us, 26-24. We would not be defeated again for the rest of the season, and two of those wins proved to be important building blocks for the new Steelers.

The November 26 game against Minnesota brought a lot of national sportswriters to town, and these guys weren't used to seeing the Steelers win important games this late in the season. Beating the Vikings was similar to defeating the Chiefs. Minnesota had won three straight division championships and played in Super Bowl IV. Dave Anderson of the
New York Times
wrote this from the Three Rivers Stadium press box that day: