Becoming an obsession
All over Western Pennsylvania, the game of football was thriving. Well, everywhere except for Forbes Field, Pitt Stadium or Three Rivers Stadium, or wherever it was the Steelers happened to be playing.
On Friday nights, in small towns and blossoming suburbs, boys represented their families and their neighborhoods under bright lights with great pride, turning the region into a recruiting hotbed for colleges and the act of cheering that talent into ritual.
For the rest of the week, though, Pittsburgh was a dormant football town. The Steelers had a sad-sack following, with fans who couldn’t help but acknowledge their own self-loathing on Sundays. Still, there was reason to care. The team’s name alone embodied the ethos of the region, and the team’s owner, Art Rooney Sr., was born and raised on the North Side, the son of a saloon owner.
The prevailing feeling in Pittsburgh was that the Rooney family wanted the Steelers to be a winner but were either too cheap or too dumb (or both) to make it happen. Still, Rooney Sr. was their deadbeat owner, he hadn’t moved the team, and he was viewed as a positive force in the community. Even as he built his fortune with his deft handicapping of horses at the track, he didn’t leave his modest North Side home.
One of his five sons, Art Jr., had been working as a promoter in the Steelers ticket office. When his father asked him to take over the team’s scouting department, Art Jr. had a feeling who had hatched the idea.
“I think my mom got me the job,” Art Jr. recalls. “I got the job because of nepotism, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to have anybody say I didn’t work at it.”
Art Jr. now spent most of his time in college towns across America with one clear goal: To find the players that could make his father’s name as an NFL owner.
“It became an obsession,” Art Jr. recalls.
In 1969, the Steelers drafted North Texas defensive end Joe Greene. In ’70, they took Louisiana Tech quarterback Terry Bradshaw and Southern (La.) cornerback Mel Blount. The next year, they plucked a Penn State linebacker, Jack Ham. The next, Penn State running back Franco Harris.
Of all the picks made in those drafts, one player would capture Pittsburgh’s collective imagination the most. Franco Harris made an immediate difference in ’72, carrying the Steelers to big victories over prominent teams like the Minnesota Vikings and the Kansas City Chiefs. Without even trying, his impact off the field would be just as profound.