Dan Rooney

by Dan Rooney

  We played our last game of the regular season at home against Cincinnati, avenging our earlier loss to them with a 27-3 victory. Franco went over the 1,000-yard mark and Bradshaw threw two touchdown passes. With two field goals and three conversions, Gerela earned the AFC scoring title with 93 points. Lynn Swann showed his versatility by returning three punts for 112 yards and ending the season with 577 return yards, just short of the team record.

  In the first round of the playoffs, at Three Rivers Stadium, we faced O. J. Simpson and the Buffalo Bills. Simpson was the league’s premier rusher, and in 1972 gained 189 yards on 22 carries against us, including a 89-yard touchdown run. Since then, our defense had improved, and during the 1974 season our coaches also had devised an alignment called the “Stunt 4-3.” The Stunt 4-3 placed Greene directly over the center but in a stance at a 45-degree angle. Sometimes Ernie Holmes lined up that way. If the offensive line tried to double-team Greene, Holmes often found himself with a free path into the backfield. If the offensive line concentrated on Holmes, it counted on one guy to stop Greene’s charge. “It started out as a pass technique,” explained Noll, “but we found out it really screws up the offensive blocking. It’s an aggressive defensive play because our front four isn’t sitting and reading the offense. Instead, they’re the ones making things happen.”

  That day, O. J. Simpson and his famous offensive line—called “the Electric Company” because it turned on “the juice”—managed only 49-yards rushing. Bradshaw himself ran for 48 yards that game and passed for over 200. Twenty-six of our points came in the second quarter, when Bradshaw led drives totaling 438 yards. We won 32-14, and moved into the AFC championship game against the Raiders.

  Going into this game, we had all heard the reports that Raiders coach John Madden had said he’d already seen the best two teams in the league the previous week, when Oakland defeated the two-time Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins. Usually cool and calm, Noll couldn’t contain himself. He called the team together for a talk. He told the players he didn’t see how it was possible for Madden to have already seen the best teams in the league, because the best team was sitting right here in the Steelers locker room. Noll’s talk really pumped up the team. Both Franco Harris and Joe Greene told me after that speech, the players felt like they couldn’t lose. Chuck was not given to locker-room pep talks—but on that day he instilled in our players a sense of confidence that made them feel invincible.

  This turned out to be our first conference championship in forty-two years. Oakland never knew what hit them—we had so many weapons on offense and defense. When it wasn’t Franco tearing through their line, it was Rocky. Between them they ran for more than 200 yards. Bradshaw and Lynn Swann were a dangerous combination. And then there was the Steel Curtain. Joe Greene, Fats Holmes, L.C. Greenwood, and Dwight White, backed by Andy Russell, Jack Lambert, and Jack Ham, forced three Ken Stabler interceptions and held the Raiders’ ground game to only 29 yards. After our 24-13 victory, Davis and Madden didn’t have any public comment about who they now thought were the best teams in the league.

  So we went off to New Orleans to play the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IX.

  The oddsmakers favored the Vikings. They had been to the Super Bowl twice before, and their quarterback, Fran Tarkenton, was an exceptional field tactician. The papers made much of the contrast between Tarkenton, the veteran, poised professional, and the brash young Bradshaw.

  Terry had gone through a really tough year. After two strong seasons, 1972 and 1973, he’d been benched in favor of Joe Gilliam, who had proven himself during the preseason following the players strike. And some fans and sportswriters questioned whether Terry was smart enough to lead the team.

  I want to set the record straight on this. Bradshaw is no dummy. He’s a very bright guy. Noll trusted him to call his own plays—that’s saying a lot. In 1974, after the last regular season game against Cincinnati, Chuck told Terry that from then on he was the Steelers’ starting quarterback. He went on to lead us to four Super Bowls. After his playing career, he went on to become a great television commentator and analyst. Terry has authored several successful books and is an excellent public speaker. This guy’s got a lot on the ball and should never be underestimated. That business about him being dumb—people wish they could be so dumb.

  But Terry is a sensitive guy. The hateful mail he received, the cat-calls from the stands, attacks in the media—all hurt him. I remember him saying how much he wanted the people of Pittsburgh to be proud of him. But in his first two or three seasons, he felt terribly alone. That’s when Joe Greene really stood by him. Terry had an unusual relationship with Noll. There was a great deal of respect between the two men, but they were so different. Chuck: cool, calculating, focused. Terry: loose, free-spirited, a gunslinger. What a pair. They learned to work with each other, and that’s what won us Super Bowls.

  He got through the public criticism with his wonderful sense of humor. I remember one day I was sitting in my office at Three Rivers when Terry came running in all out of breath. He yelled, “They stole my golf clubs out of my car!”

  I said, “Well, did you lock it, Terry?”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “I locked one side of it!”

  We both started to laugh, and I said, “Well, maybe they just stole half of the clubs. Go look around!”

  Terry and I enjoyed each other, but he and the Chief had almost a father-son relationship. They spent long hours talking. They discussed everything, from football to love and marriage. After Terry’s divorce, Dad told him, “You know what you need? You need one of those farmers’ daughters to take care of you.” Terry allowed that maybe it was so—he’d try harder next time. Sometimes he would go into Dad’s office even when the Chief wasn’t there. It became his refuge, a place he could go just to get away from it all—and smoke my father’s fat cigars.

  The Chief presented Terry with a gift horse, a stallion from our horse farm. Terry may not have known it, but this was quite an honor. My father didn’t give away fine horses to just anyone.

  But when Terry got the feed and boarding bill, Dad called him on it. “You’re not paying your bill,” he said.

  “I thought you gave me the horse!”

  “Sure I did, but I didn’t say I was going to take care of it forever!”

  “What, are you too cheap to pay for it?” Terry said, laughing, and pulled a dollar bill out of his wallet and dropped it in a trophy on the Chief’s desk. “Well, that ought to cover it!”

  We were all in stitches by the end of this episode. Dad told his trainers to take the horse and put it back in the paddock.

  Don’t get me wrong. Terry genuinely loved horses—their speed and grace. He once said, “Imagine yourself sitting on top of a great thoroughbred horse. You sit up there and feel that power. That’s what it was like, playing quarterback on that team. It was a great ride.”

  I’ve seen a lot of quarterbacks in my years with the Steelers and the NFL. The only quarterback I’d rate above Terry Bradshaw is the great Johnny Unitas. Dan Marino is up there high on the list, as is John Elway, but Bradshaw had something special. A tremendous athlete, big and strong, he could pass, he could run, he could even kick when we asked him to. He was smart, called his own plays, and was a team leader in the locker room. He contributed to the closeness of the team, and in critical games his sense of humor helped keep the players loose.

  The closeness of our young players and their ability to stay loose gave us a great advantage as we went into our first Super Bowl against the veteran Vikings. Both defenses dominated the first half, the only score coming on a safety when Tarkenton recovered his own fumble in the end zone and was downed by Dwight White.

  We kicked off to open the second half. The Vikings’ Bill Brown fumbled and Marv Kellum recovered for us on the Minnesota 30-yard line. Four plays later, Franco scored from 9 yards out. By the end of the day, Franco had rushed for 158 yards, then a Super Bowl record. Rocky contributed another 65 yards, while
the Steelers’ defense held Minnesota to only 17 yards on the ground. The Steel Curtain kept Tarkenton on the run all day, allowing only eleven of twenty-six passes to reach their intended receivers. Three passes were intercepted, and four deflected.

  Bradshaw finished off the Vikings with a 30-yard pass completion to Larry Brown, setting up another pass to Brown for a touchdown. In this final 66-yard drive, Bradshaw demonstrated real leadership, managing the clock, mixing his plays, and exploiting the weak points in the Viking defense. He showed poise and confidence. The final score, 16- 6, told the whole story. Both Bradshaw and the Steelers had arrived.

  It seemed everyone in the country wanted the Chief and the Steelers to win the Super Bowl that year—except, of course, the Minnesota people, and Al Davis. Pete Rozelle especially admired my father. Pete often said that handing the Chief the Lombardi Trophy in our very emotional locker room was the highlight of his career as commissioner. My father wanted me to accept it, but I said, “No, this is yours, Dad.” And it was his. He had founded the team, kept it in Pittsburgh, stuck it out through the lean times. He was the beloved Chief. He was the legend.

  What a party it was in New Orleans. Of our five Super Bowls, this victory is still the sweetest because it was our first. When we returned home, all of Pittsburgh turned out to greet us. The outpouring of affection overwhelmed me and reminded me how important the Steelers were to our community.

  Our family celebrated with a trip to Ireland. Dad, especially, enjoyed this visit to the Old Sod. When we got off the plane, the reporters there asked him his views on boxing and baseball. He said, “Aren’t you going to ask me about the Super Bowl?”

  They said, “What’s that?” They had no clue about American football.

  “What a relief,” Dad replied, “I’m happy you don’t know anything about it, because that’s all I’ve been hearing about for weeks.”

  When we got back to the States, my father came into my office and said, “Dan, I think it’s time we call you ‘president’—you’ve been doing the job for years.”

  “Do you think we need to make an announcement?” I asked.

  “No, just put it in the Media Guide and let them read it at the beginning of the season.”

  Though I’d been running the team for some time, we never worried about titles. Dad never liked to take credit for things. He tried to push me forward into the limelight. But he deserved to shine. He was quite a guy.

  When the Media Guide came out in the summer of 1975, Dad appeared as “Chairman of the Board,” followed by me as “President,” and my brother Art and Jack McGinley each as “Vice President.” The newspapers quoted me as saying, “Dad walked into my office and said, ‘You’re the president!’ There wasn’t a lot of fanfare involved. It’s a title without a raise.”

  But as far as I was concerned, the most important guy on that page was “Head Coach,” Chuck Noll.

  CHAPTER 6

  STEELERS DYNASTY

  THE STEELERS WERE FLYING HIGH in early 1975 after our victory in Super Bowl IX. And rightly so. We had rebuilt the team almost from scratch. In five years we had gone from the basement to the very top of the National Football League. Sometimes people forget the magnitude of this accomplishment. It takes a combination of talented players, coaching, team closeness, and good management. Without any one of these essential ingredients, you don’t have a Super Bowl winner. There are some teams in the NFL that have never experienced a Super Bowl. In the 1970s the Steelers won the Super Bowl four times—we won every time we appeared in pro football’s ultimate game. Plus, we did it back to back—twice—all within six years. That had never been done before, and no team has done it since.

  I hear and read how the Dallas Cowboys—“America’s Team”—was the team of the 1970s because they appeared in five Super Bowls. Well, we won four Super Bowls and beat those guys both times we played them for the championship. Don’t get me wrong. Tex Schramm and Tom Landry fielded some incredibly talented teams in those years, but I’d sure take the Steelers over the Cowboys if I had to pick the team of the decade.

  I lived and breathed football during these years, but I somehow found time to do other things. I don’t think it’s healthy to be totally consumed by any one pursuit. You’ll go nuts. For me, I had my family, my faith, and some meaningful outside interests as well.

  Chuck Noll not only coached the team but became a friend. He’s a Renaissance man—a connoisseur of fine wine and food, an aficionado of classical music (he once guest-conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra), and an expert pilot. In 1974 Chuck took me flying in his Beechcraft A35 Bonanza V-tail, and in 1975 I earned a pilot’s license.

  I’d been interested in flying since I was six years old. That’s when our whole family went out to Allegheny County Airport to see my uncle Dan (Father Silas) leave for his mission to China. My father had a pilot’s license in his early years, and I remember when he flew from New York to Miami Beach in one of those Yankee Clipper flying boats, the kind that could land in the water. He took off from New York harbor and flew to Florida, splashing down near Miami. A crew towed the plane to a dock, where the passengers disembarked. My mother drove me there to meet him. The plane fascinated me, and I’ve been interested in flying ever since.

  During World War II, my father gave me a “spotter’s guide,” which pictured silhouettes of military and civilian aircraft. I would scan the sky for hours, watching and identifying every plane I saw. I knew all of the planes made in the United States, how they were used, what they could do, and how fast they were. I remember being at our summer place in Ligonier outside of Pittsburgh, just lying in the grass on a hill above the cemetery, when suddenly a huge bomber returning from a practice mission flew over at treetop level—my first sighting of a B-29. It was massive, and the engine noise practically deafened me. You know how you remember impressions from your youth? Well, this is one of those, and the image remains vivid in my memory.

  I read everything I could on flying and the heroes of the skies, like the amazing Chuck Yeager, war ace and test pilot, and Joe White, who flew the X-15. Many of these aviators believed if we could have flown a plane into space, our space program would have progressed more rapidly, safely, and ultimately more successfully. Instead, rockets won out over fixed-wing aircraft. Men like Yeager and White argued for pilot control of spacecraft. They believed the first astronauts shot into space in rockets were the guinea pigs of the scientists at Mission Control; they had no more control over their craft than the monkeys sent before them. I can understand why, when those pilots put their lives on the line, they’d feel that way. But those original astronauts had a lot of guts.

  When Chuck Noll decided he wanted a new and larger aircraft, a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron, he asked me if I wanted to buy his Bonanza for what he’d paid for it. It was a good deal, and it got me flying. I worked with a flight instructor and became instrument rated. Since then I have accumulated more than twenty-five hundred flight hours.

  When I first got my license, I flew to Washington, Pennsylvania. On this trip, while performing a touch-and-go landing, I advanced the manifold and heard an ominous “pop.” The plane lost power, but I could still fly. To maintain altitude, I had to open it up and fly at full power. On the way back to Allegheny County, I constantly watched for a spot to make an emergency landing. But I made it safely back to the airport, where I learned that the rocker arm connecting the camshaft to the valve-stem had broken off. That’s why the engine lost compression and power. This was a little hairy for a young and inexperienced pilot, but I kept my cool.

  A pilot can’t panic. That’s why it’s important to do your homework, learn the flight systems, review emergency procedures (for engine failure, engine fire, electric fire, alternator failure, etc.), and keep your head.

  I’ve flown to New York on many occasions. One time, as a student pilot flying over the Hudson on a foggy day, I couldn’t see the other side of the river. I became a little concerned and checked in with the New York Cente
r air traffic controller. “Am I over the ocean or the river?” I asked.

  “You’re here,” the controller assured me.

  “Where’s here?”

  “You’re practically on top of us!”

  I made it to the airport okay. For a moment or so I was a little unsure where I was. But that’s how you learn.

  On another trip to New York, I again had to ask for help. “How do I get to Westchester County Airport?”

  The controller gave me directions, but I still couldn’t see the landing strip.

  Finally, he said, “Hey, just make a right turn, go down to where you see the big bridge, make a left at the bridge, and it’ll be right there a few miles out.”

  I thought he was being funny, but I followed the directions exactly and found the airport.

  I guess my most notable flying story occurred on a return flight to Pittsburgh from Latrobe during summer training camp in 2000. The mechanics who had just rebuilt the engine of the Bonanza either did not put the alternator on properly or installed a defective unit. I had no problem flying to Latrobe, but on the way back I ran into trouble. The lights on my instrument panel began to blink off. All electric needles shimmied side to side, then off. The radio went dead. I switched on the standby alternator. Nothing. The red light on the landing gear indicator remained on, but only dimly. The landing gear was almost all the way up but not completely retracted. “Don’t panic. Just get this plane back to Allegheny County Airport,” I said aloud to myself as I tried to crank the landing gear down manually. I couldn’t fly the plane and reach around to the back of the seat on the passenger side to wind the hand crank that would manually extend the gear. I just couldn’t do it. I called the tower on my cell phone but got voice mail. This was not good.