Why did Pitt’s Jimbo Covert mention Chuck Lucidore in his NFL acceptance speech?

Jimbo Covert

… Lucidore had a checkered high school career, to say the least

The only player that I truly cared about in the 2020 NFL Hall of Fame induction class was number 43, Troy Polamalu. So, when he and the other members of that class were inducted a year late, I spent little time reading about anyone else. 

However, a friend mentioned that former Pitt star tackle Jimbo Covert, who starred for the Chicago Bears for eight years, mentioned a former Penn Cambria High School in his acceptance speech. 

I had not heard the name Chuck Lucidore much over the past 30 years after he had been unceremoniously sent packing by the school district despite having an undefeated football season the year before that. 

So, my question was simple, “Why did Covert mention Lucidore in such a high-profile speech?”

No answer, but …

The only answer I could give is that Covert must have thought the world of Lucidore, his coach at Freedom High School in Butler County. 

My only answer is that he thought the world of his high school coach. For instance, here is what his hometown newspaper wrote after Covert had been named to the Hall of Fame two years ago, placing it in context with some pretty impressive people,

He’ll be the fifth Beaver County product to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He’ll join Beaver Falls’ Joe Namath (induction class of 1985), Aliquippa’s Mike Ditka (1988), Hopewell’s Tony Dorsett (1994) and Aliquippa’s Ty Law (2019).

“That’s good company,” Covert said. “Getting into the Hall of Fame with those guys ... it ’s hard to even imagine that. Growing up in Conway and going to Freedom High School, you never really think about things like this. You just love the game and appreciate how much the game means to you.

“I had a great high school career. I played for coach Chuck Lucidore. I went to Pitt and played for coach Jackie Sherrill and (O-line coach) Joe Moore. Then I went to Chicago and played for Mike Ditka.

Mike Bires, “Freedom grad Jimbo Covert selected to the NFL Hall 

of Fame,” Beaver County Times, January 14, 2021

Covert placed Lucidore in some pretty impressive company with an NFL Hall of Fame coach and a very successful Pitt mentor. 

However, Lucidore had a very, very checkered career. 

Rumors abounded

When Lucidore was hired at Penn Cambria in 1988, the rumor mill was something that journalists could not ignore. He was hired as an athletic director and football coach and attendance officer or bus director or some other jobs that justified giving him a job. Penn Cambria had never had a full-time coach like Lucidore previously. 

The superintendent who had hired him, Dr. Russell Strange, was lambasted by a board member for a long time because he claimed that the school leader had not done due diligence before hiring him. 

The board member was probably correct and must have felt that his complaints were justified when Strange finally pushed him to the brink and he walked out forever. 

What was there in Chuck Lucidore’s background that resulted in his taking a job in Cresson, 80 miles from the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Conference (WPIAL)? Were the stories true that he was blackballed by schools in the WPIAL? 

I knew that even a top investigative reporter could not find any evidence of schools blackballing Lucidore, but the truth is that he took the PC job because no one else would hire him. 

And two years later, he was gone. 

So, who was Chuck Lucidore?

Made national headlines in 1983

While Chuck Lucidore was coaching at Freedom High School, he made national headlines, and this had nothing to do with winning football games. 

It did, however, have something to do with Jimbo Covert,

A Pennsylvania high school football coach claims a former Clemson University assistant coach offered him a coaching job five years ago if he would persuade the star lineman Jimbo Covert to go to school there.

Chuck Lucidore, the football coach at Freedom High School in nearby Beaver County, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Tom Moore, an assistant Clemson coach and now the head football coach at The Citadel, ''flat out offered me an assistant coaching position of my own if Jimbo would go there.''

Moore denied Lucidore's allegation, saying the charge was ''a flatout lie.''

“Charge is made against coach,” Associated 

Press/New York Times, May 3, 1983

That obviously did not hurt Covert’s relationship with Lucidore. 

However, that was just part of the story that Lucidore appears to have concocted — or maybe not. Perhaps college football was as corrupt as he alleged.

Bribed alleged at Oklahoma

The crux of the story that is noted above focused more on another money offer to Lucidore, something vociferously denied by the University of Oklahoma,

A high school football coach charged Monday he was offered $3,500 by a person who identified himself as a University of Oklahoma "supporter" if he would arrange a campus visit by his All-American lineman, Chuck Williams.

OU coaches called the charge "ridiculous" and said they had not even heard of Williams.

Chuck Lucidore, the coach at Freedom Area High School in Beaver County, Pa., also said in a copyright story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he was promised an assistant coaching job at Clemson five years ago if star tackle Jimbo Covert would come with him. Covert instead signed with Pitt.

Lucidore's first-person story also contained comments about the various tactics schools such as Notre Dame, UCLA and Pitt used to recruit Williams, a 6-6, 245-pound Parade magazine All-American lineman who signed with Pitt.

Lucidore said the $3,500 offer, reportedly made by an unidentified Oklahoma fan, was only for a campus visit by Williams. The player did not have to sign a letter of intent for Lucidore to receive the money.

"He said, "I'll meet you personally at the airport and hand you 35 hundred dollar bills when Chuck gets on the flight,' " Lucidore said.

“OU ‘bribe’ charge denied,” The Oklahoman, May 3, 1983

The coach at Oklahoma at the time was the nefarious Barry Switzer, so while the coaches denied it, Switzer was known as a riverboat gambler,

OU head coach Barry Switzer was unavailable for comment, but assistant head coach Merv Johnson said, "I think it's ridiculous."

Johnson said none of the coaches on hand in Norman Monday afternoon had even heard of Williams, and Johnson personally went through the OU recruiting file.

"We didn't have a card or any information on him," said Johnson. "The secretary pulled out over 500 cards and he wasn't listed."

Johnson said it was possible that recruiting coordinator Scott Hill, who was not on campus, might have sent Williams a letter because Hill keeps up with people on the All-American list, but Johnson isn't sure.

"There is not anything there to give that story much credibility.

"I'm not saying the coach is not telling the truth," Johnson said, "But it could have been anybody making that call. It could have been somebody trying to get us in trouble, or somebody just playing a joke.") 

“OU ‘bribe’ charge denied,” The Oklahoman, May 3, 1983

So, who should you believe, Switzer’s coaches or Lucidore?

Sort of like saying who is more to blame for being thrown out of the Garden of Eden, Adam or Eve. 

Lucidore’s players loved him

At Penn Cambria, Lucidore inherited a group of good athletes, but he also did a good job of putting together an undefeated regular season. The players thought a great deal of their coach, but most people at Penn Cambria did not. 

Since many of the people involved are still alive, I will not repeat some of the allegations against him. They range from professional to personal, to not doing anything other than coach football to owing a ton of money to a bookie before he left town in the summer of 1990. 

Never to coach again after the Ken Lantzy Game. 

He blew his final chance. 

Still, he was a coach who was able to inspire young athletes, and that was his strength. 

Character was his weakness. When you finished an interview with him, you had to count your fingers to see they were still there. He was that strange.