"We've
been lucky," Arthur J. Rooney has said many times, usually in the presence
of the Super Bowl trophy. True.
There
has been great good fortune, all of which dates back to the year preceding
the Sensational 70s and the hiring of Noll. To understand what
Noll has meant, you have to understand something of Arthur J. Rooney.
To The Chief, professional football was always fun. He is
a personal man, which means he invariably shakes your hand and inquires
after your wife and asks - and really wants to know - "how are ya?"
His
friends were his coaches and the sportswriters. He conducted a
personal business. Which meant that if he still refers to Joe
Bach as "that bullheaded Irishman," and if he found it necessary to
knock Bach down following serious differences of opinion, he also twice
hired Bach as his coach. As he did another pal, Walt Kiesling.
Rooney's coaches were friends, confidantes. Hamhanded, affable
men who thought football was a game won by pounding the opposition flatter
than a puddle; men who liked to sit around and drink beer and argue
with their employer and tell stories and laugh a lot. Personal
men. "
We
had more fun in the old days," Art Rooney has said many times, although
rarely in the presence of the Lombardi Trophy. The fun ended,
or rather was drawn to the narrow perspective of victory, with the hiring
in 1969 of Noll, a 36- year old assistant coach with the Baltimore Colts
and reputed to be something of a defensive wizard.
Noll
was not Art Rooney's type of coach. He was the new breed. Bright,
dedicated only to winning, disciplined, fraught with innovative ideas,
and not given to sitting around joking with the boss. "A nice
boy," Art Rooney remembers. But, as many have said since, not
a guy you'd go get a beer with.
Dan
Rooney had picked up jocks and repaired equipment and handled tedious
front office chores through years of Steeler ineptitude. He wasn't
interested in drinking beer with the coach who would replace the fired
Bill Austin, a throwback to Bach and Kiesling who won only 11 of 42
games. Dan Rooney was interested in winning.
Having
taken over the operation of the club short of determining matters of
major policy - "the old man still does that," a club official would
say 10 years later - Dan Rooney conducted the search.
It
ended at 7 a.m. on January 27, 1969. After a fretful night's sleep,
Dan Rooney rolled out of bed and reached for the telephone. His
mind was made up. He had talked to experienced National Football
League coaches looking for work. They had all promised a winner
immediately, if not sooner.
Noll
had come to Pittsburgh two days after Baltimore lost Super Bowl III,
surveyed the situation, studied the roster, and told Dan Rooney the
truth:
The Steelers were a wreck, the rebuilding process would take at least
three years and maybe five, only a few of the players were talented
enough to play for a good NFL team, and the club was operated in a manner
befitting a loser.
'The
job's yours, if you want it," the sleepy Rooney mumbled into the telephone.
"I want it," Noll said. He is the oldest of the five Rooney
boys, who it is generally agreed will never be the man their father
is. And he will forever be "Art's kid . . . whatshisname?" Both
are harsh labels for a man to live with, but Dan Rooney has handled
them well.
There
is about him, even at 47, in the year 1980, a boyishness unmarred by
graying temples. It is at once his charm and his power. How
could a man smile so winningly and be so unfailingly nice, and wield
the power Dan - still Danny to those who've known him a decade or more
'and, revealingly, to many who work for him - does?
It
could be a hustle. Call it, rather, a soft con. Or Irish
charm. In the turbulent '70s, the players and owners renting the
game over economic differences which at times seemed irresolvable, Dan
Rooney became a bridge.
Players' association officials had grown to personally loathe their
NFL Management Council counterparts, ex-Baltimore Colt John Mackey and
Dallas general manager Tex Schramm could literally not stand to be in
the same room with the other. Dan Rooney was Commissioner Pete
Rozelle's choice to negotiate a peace which would not strangle the golden
goose. Quietly, skilfully, cajolingly, he did. He has been
Art's boy, perhaps, but he is no one else's.
An observation: In one 1979 game, the Steelers were being beaten. The
Dan Rooney smile had long been lost to the obvious outcome. There
was a minor error on the scoreboard. Dan Rooney seethed. "Val
. . .Val!" he shouted at NFL director of television Val Pinchbeck, who
sat a row in front in the press box watching a mini-TV set, earphones
squeezed tightly over his ears. When Val Pinchbeck didn't respond,
Dan Rooney threw a notebook at him. "Damn it, Val, the board's
wrong."
The sensational 70s began there, with the son ascending to the throne
and a young assistant come to power to exercise all of the thousands
of football theories which had been running pell-mell through his mind
for years.
A
messenger guard and linebacker for Paul Brown's Cleveland Browns and
an assistant under Sid Gillman and Don Shula in the pros, Noll came
to the job well-schooled and with certain foundational ideas which he
has not yielded. A team is built through the draft. "No
one wants to trade you quality," he says, having not made a major trade
in his 11 seasons.
"You
build with draft choices. You find people with talents adaptable
to your plans and then you teach them to do things the way we do them."
Joe Greene was the first of them. A 6-5, 265-pound defensive tackle
from North Texas State, he was called a Fort on Foot. An injury
had kept him out of the two most prestigious college all-star games
as a senior, but Noll had seen him dominate the line of scrimmage for
the South in the Senior Bowl. Greene was as quick a defensive
lineman as Chuck Noll had ever seen.
It
was being won on defense in the NFL at the end of the 1960s. This
kid would be the foundation of that defense. "We are going to
build a championship team in Pittsburgh," Chuck Noll promised the day
after the draft, when a Pittsburgh newspaper headline screamed in 48-point
type, 'Joe Who?' "Joe Greene is going to be the cornerstone of
that defense."
Greene
started all 14 games in 1969 and was named the NFL Defensive Rookie
of the Year. It was the lone Steeler boast entering the '70s.
The Steelers won their first game under Noll, lost the next 13
and the only consolation was having the first pick in the college draft.
"The
best way to describe the 1969 season is that we decided we had to do
certain things to win a championship and we decided to do them, even
though we knew some of the personnel couldn't handle it," Noll said.
But the personnel would shortly change . . . drastically.