Read Online Dan Rooney by Dan Rooney - Free Book Online Page A

and in 1947 he led us to our best season ever, 8 wins and only 4 losses. We tied the Eagles for the Eastern Conference championship. On the off-week before the playoff game, our players struck for more pay. Jock and Bert held firm and would make no concessions. The players lost their bid for more money, and what’s more lost their focus. The Eagles beat us and went on to the championship game.

    Jock brought to the Steelers not only his commanding presence and strict discipline, but also his single-wing formation. Bert Bell introduced to the team the Chicago Bears-style T formation back in 1941, and the coaches who followed him—Donelli, Kiesling, Neale, Handler, and Leonard—stuck with it. But Sutherland was a firm believer in Pop Warner’s single-wing, a run oriented offense in which the center snapped the ball to one of two backs. By 1946 the single wing was popular only with youth football and a few college teams, because most of the pros had abandoned it for the T formation. Despite the trend away from this old style of play, Jock made it work. I remember we had some great players that year: Halfbacks “Bullet” Bill Dudley and Johnny “Zero” Clement, tight end Elbie Nickel, and receiver Val Jansante.
    I loved being out there, loafing with the players and working with the team. I did whatever needed to be done and didn’t get paid much to do it, but I felt part of the team—I was a Steeler.

CHAPTER 3
    JOHNNY U AND ME
    North Catholic Halfback Problems Are Over—Dan Rooney Is Coming
    Â 
    THAT’S THE HEADLINE that appeared in the Pittsburgh Press in the summer of 1946, soon after I graduated from St. Peter’s grade school. While playing both halfback and quarterback on the sandlot, our team posted a winning record. The coach always told me I was one of the fastest boys in the school, and I was big for my age, tipping the scales at more than 135 pounds and standing five feet eight inches tall in my bare feet.
    But as for solving North Catholic’s halfback problems, that was a tall order. All this attention embarrassed me, and I took a lot of ribbing from my friends and teammates: “Who is this guy who thinks he’s a star?” I wondered whether one of my father’s reporter friends had written
the story. As the Steelers’ water boy, I’d met and gotten to know most of the sportswriters on the sidelines during practice. I guessed these guys were just having some fun at my expense. Even if it was a put-up job, the headline made me want to prove that I really was a good football player. I wanted to show what North Catholic could do.
    Let me tell you something about Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania football. More great football players and coaches—from sandlots to the pros—hail from this region than from any other place on earth. Sportswriters have named Pittsburgh the “Cradle of Quarterbacks.” More than forty NFL quarterbacks have come from the area, including such Hall of Famers as George Blanda, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Joe Namath, and, of course, maybe the greatest quarterback of all time, Johnny Unitas. Willie Thrower, the first African American quarterback to play in the NFL, came from New Kensington, just up the river from Pittsburgh.
    Why Western Pennsylvania—is it something in the water? I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do know that the people of our region take their football seriously. They know and love the game. The hard-working people, many of immigrant stock, adopted the game and made it their own. The sport that evolved in Western Pennsylvania bore little resemblance to the high-brow college game that came from Princeton and Yale at the end of the nineteenth century. Western Pennsylvania-style football was physically tough, straight-ahead, and hard-hitting, reflecting the often brutal and sometimes violent realities of work in the steel mills and coal mines. Dad believed the