Still crazy after all these years

Chuck Noll with four Lombardi trophies he won Photo courtesy of Pinterest … Tomlin inherited Super Bowl talent, but has built nothing From the time that I started rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955, until Chuck Noll arrived in Pittsburgh as the Steelers head coach in 1969, the team compiled a 75-102 record, winning just 42 percent of their games. They had never captured any kind of championship from 1933 until that time. I remember as a boy about nine or ten years old, saying to my father, “Daddy, can’t I root for any other team than the Steelers?” He immediately replied, “No, they’re our team.” “But Daddy, they’re so bad.” When the Steelers captured their first Super Bowl in the 1974 season, I was 27 years old. Worse, my dad was 68, and he had been a loyal fan for 41 years. Who made that happen? Chuck Noll My father loved Chuck Noll, not just because he started a winning tradition with the Steelers. As a referee at the college and high school levels, he liked coach...

… jury still out on Jackson, but 2019 has been special As I wrote last week, the Steelers made a monumental error when they passed on drafting Dan Marino with their first-round pick in the 1983 NFL Draft [“You took the wrong guy”: Art Rooney, Sr., “The Chief” and founder of the Steelers, on his team passing on Dan Marino in 1983: Could have given them more Super Bowls] Marino went on to be selected by Don Shula and the Miami Dolphins, where he set the then record for passing yardage with 61,361 yards and 420 TDs. Marino played in only one Super Bowl in 1984 with the Dolphins, which turned out to be his best season, but he never earned a ring. Had he played for the Steelers, he could have led them to Super Bowls in 1989 [Bubby Brister et. al.], 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998. That may be optimistic, but they were that close on occasion. Imagine Marino instead of Neil O’Donnell against the Cowboys in 1996. However, the failure to draft current 2019 MVP candidate Lamar Jackson in 2018 m...

… just place an * after their Super Bowls “Who thought this was a good idea?” … Tedy Bruschi on ESPN When the Patriots were again accused of cheating last week when they taped Bengals coaches on the sidelines giving signals during a game with the Browns, the team immediately shot out another of its patented denials. It stated that the production crew did nothing that even remotely resembled cheating. And then the truth came out when it was revealed that the cameraman in the press box whom Bengals staff watched him film coaches on the sideline for eight minutes before had his camera and film confiscated. That showed not a video of an advance scout as the Patriots had said was the case. So, on ESPN where he works, Bruschi, while admitting to loving the Patriots, said, Bill has denied it and says that he has nothing to do with Kraft Productions. I know that Kraft Productions is a separate part of the building. However, Kraft Productions is under the umbrella which is the New Engl...

Tom Brady: Dude, the rules do not apply to us … why not just put an asterisk after their Super Bowls? In 2007, the New England Patriots were embroiled in a scandal that was referred to as “Spygate.” Unfortunately, the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, destroyed the evidence before it could be evaluated, saying that they had made their own investigation. After an uproar ensued about Goodell's conduct, and photos emerged of him with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, the league fined the Patriots $250,000 and Coach Bill Bellichick $500,000 for their elaborate efforts to steal signals and other information from opponents. And then, there was Deflategate of a few years ago which led to the suspension of quarterback Tom Brady.. However, on Sunday, the Patriots were again caught filming, this time in the press box in Cleveland. When caught, the team yesterday issued a statement saying that they were simply filming a piece about one of their advance scouts that they were going to place on...

Art Rooney, Sr. (left) and Art Jr. Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Steelers … from the Chuck Noll biography In the background, the Chief was circumspect. He’d met Marino and was extremely fond of him. More than once that weekend, Art Sr. would sidle up to Artie [son, Art Rooney, Jr.] and say, “You took the wrong guy.” Michael MacCambridge, “Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work,” University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016 On a snowy Sunday in January, 1985, I met Art Rooney, Jr. [known as Artie by his family] at St. Francis College in Loretto, Pa. The visit had nothing to do with the Steelers, but had everything to do with my job recruiting athletes as the head football coach at the college. At the time, Art, Jr. was personnel director for the Steelers, and he was the one who led the drafting for the four Super Bowl teams of the 1970s. It was a nice visit except for one nagging question that I as a devout Steelers fans wanted to ask him on that day — but the timing was not r...

... LSU behind Ohio State, whose schedule is 29th in the country When Lousiana State University defeated the Crimson Tide of Alabama, scoring 46 points against the then-undefeated Tide that has won more national titles in this century than the Big Ten combined, everyone figured that the LSU Tigers would be the number one seed in the College Football Playoffs as long as they defeated Georgia for the SEC title. However, the CFP committee, which includes a slew of over-the-hill septuagenarian coaches, has Ohio State at the top of its list today despite LSU being about 30 points better in each of the national polls. Note that in addition to defeating Alabama, the Tigers knocked off seventh-ranked Florida and will face fourth-ranked Georgia in the SEC title game. About those Buckeyes According to the Sagarin rankings, the Buckeyes has played the 29th strongest schedule in the country. Woeful. They have played no one of any quality outside the Big Ten, and as I have written befo...

... my note to Gov. Tom Wolf Dear Gov. Wolf, You are no doubt aware of the first part of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …” Well, it appears that the nefarious Cleveland Browns are in Pittsburgh for another football game against our beloved Steelers. However, while they have not won in the ‘’Burgh since 2003, the last game — in Cleveland — was a debacle, with a player taking a swing at our QB with his helmet. That player is gone, but the others who knocked out our beloved JuJu Smith-Schuster and our promising rookie Diontae Johnson are still there. In the interest of safety, you need to alert the state militias, the guard and reserves, to be ready for this violence. Please get them to Heinz Field ASAP. Rumor is that some fans with Cleveland Browns regalia are already in the stadium, so time is of the essence.  Sincerely, Hugh Conrad A quiet and reserved Steelers fan

 … three national titles in 50 years? College football fans have been consistently told over the years about how tough Big Ten football is. However, history does not support this premise. First, one determinant of how good a program is can be traced to how many national championships it has won. So, how many have the teams in the Big Ten won in the past 50 years? Three. Yes, just three over that period. Ohio State has two (2014 and 2002) and Michigan one (1997), and that one was a split verdict, with the Wolverines winning the AP poll and Nebraska, then a member of the Big 8, winning the coach’s poll. Penn State has won as many national titles as Ohio State in the past half-century — two (1982 and 1986)— but did so as an independent. The Nittany Lions have not won a national title since becoming a member of the Big Ten 26 years ago. Yes, those are the numbers. Ohio State is such a power, its fans say, but the Buckeyes have won just two national titles in the past 50 years. To p...

Chuck Noll as a college player at University of Dayton Photo courtesy of Dayton Flyers … not exactly Myles Garrett, but close  In Chuck Noll’s biography entitled “Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work,” writer Michael McCambridge wrote about a play that occurred during the 1954 season when the NFL Hall of Fame coach was playing for the Cleveland Browns. Noll was then in his third season with the Browns, playing both offensive guard and inside linebacker. He was a tenacious competitor, but was not a cheap-shot artist like the current Cleveland Brown defensive player Myles Garrett. McCambridge wrote, Chuck’s tenacious style earned him the appreciation of his teammates but not always his opponents. One player he persistently tangled with was Chuck Bednarik, the Eagles’ cantankerous two-way lineman. Early in his career, Chuck laid a good shot on Bednarik at the line of scrimmage on a punt. After the game, still peeved. Bednarik took a swing at Chuck with his helmet, striking him an...

George Atkinson hitting Lynn Swann [This was not the infamous 1976 hit.] Photo courtesy of Pinterest … showed how dirty Oakland — and others — in the league were It was a spectacle so bizarre, so beyond the realm of common sense and ordinary imagination that it might have been the creation of some mad comic producer—a cross, say, between Mel Brooks and the Marquis de Sade. But there it was: in the clean well-lighted environs of a U.S. district courtroom in San Francisco the National Football League, that most august and shining symbol of American morality, excellence and all-round exemplary life style, was on display with a full line of dirty laundry. The subject was mayhem, and judge and jury listened with fascination as all manner of lurid language was applied to the grand old game—"wanton violence," "gang warfare," "criminal acts," "happiness at pain," "love of blood." William Oscar Johnson, Sports Illustrated, 197...

… I do feel your pain, but I was upset previously At present, Penn State Nittany Lion football fans are very upset that Coach James Franklin’s undefeated team that they believed had an opportunity of winning a national championship lost to what they consider to be an inferior Minnesota team last week — albeit an undefeated team. They have reason to be upset. They complain that the Nittany Lions will never win a national title as long as Franklin is coach. They Lions played very poorly, and after beating tougher teams like Michigan and Iowa, this was particularly galling. I even read one comment that said, “This would never have happened under Joe Paterno.” History The truth is that Paterno did not win a national championship until 1982, 17 years into his coaching career at Penn State. He won another one five years later, but did not win another one in the final 25 years of his career. So, placing Franklin in that category may not be fair. I know that I have criticized Franklin in t...

Adam Vinatieri dejected after missing FG against Steelers Photo courtesy of ESPN … Kevin Colbert MVP? Well, he created this mess At the start of the season, I had listed my predictions of the fate of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2019, and I was wildly optimistic. Really, 11-5? That now sounds ridiculous even if their starting QB had stayed healthy. I then seriously reconsidered the rest of the season after two or three consecutive losses, and realized that a nine-win season might be enough to eek out a spot in the playoffs. However, even in this reconsidered piece, I had them losing one of two games, either to the Indianapolis Colts or the Los Angeles Rams, who played in the Super Bowl last season, in the middle of the season. Now, they have won both of those games, but only because Lady Luck was shining on them in the Indianapolis game. The Colts had what for future Hall of Fame kicker Adam Vinatieri was a chip shot, a 43-yarder, that would have given the Colts a 27-26 victo...

 … ACC lied about how great the conference would be When the Atlantic Coast Conference set out to destroy the Big East Conference in the early 20-teens, they lured away schools like Syracuse and Pitt by saying that the ACC football program would be superb when they joined and left the Big Easta. They cited programs like Florida State, Miami, and Virginia Tech that had won national titles in the past as being the bedrock of that new fabulous conference that would compete with the Southeastern Conference [SEC]. The truth is that the ACC just wanted to eliminate the Big East for basketball because it was the dominant conference in men’s basketball in the early 2000s. Since 2003, the ACC and Big East — which was decimated by defections in 2011 — have won an equal number of national basketball titles. Football is the Big One In football, the ACC is currently a joke — except for a fabulous Clemson program that has won two national titles in the past three seasons. In fact, Clemson ha...

… Is the CFP actually worse than the BCS, with just two more teams? Coaches often tell their players to avoid making derogatory comments about their opponents prior to the football game. Those statements make their way into the media, whether it is television or on the internet the old antiquated newspaper clippings that can be clipped and placed on the bulletin board in the locker room. However, sometimes outside forces can do that work for them, and that occurred on Tuesday for Coach James Franklin of Penn State read that his Nittany Lions had leapfrogged undefeated reigning national champion Clemson into fourth place in the first College Football Playoff rankings. It occurred for LSU Coach Ed Orgeron twice in the past two weeks when it leapfrogged Alabama in the Top 25 AP rankings and then were placed one spot ahead of the Crimson Tide at number two in the unbelievably biased CFP rankings. And, ironically, it occurred for first-year Ohio State Coach Ryan Day when somehow the CFP ...