Dan Rooney Read Online Free

played, but in this case it sure seemed like a case of divine intervention. The locker room is a madhouse. I look for my son Artie, but he’s still out on the field picking up the team’s equipment and running interference for the players making their way through the swarming fans. Across the locker room I see number 32—Franco. I’m not a touchy-feely kind of guy, but after I shove my way through the crowd I can’t help but give him a big hug. “Franco, that was the greatest play I ever saw!” And I mean it, too. Then there’s the Chief, standing with Coach Noll, players all around them—Joe Greene, Andy Russell, Gerela, Ham, Rocky Bleier, Bradshaw, Frenchy—helmets off and grins as big as can be. Dad doesn’t say anything, but Chuck steps up and makes a little speech, “You guys played a great game—I’m really proud of you! Now next week we have another big game, so don’t celebrate too long.” Chuck is all business. Can you believe it? He could keep his cool even during the “Immaculate Reception.” That’s what Myron Cope, the voice of the Steelers, later called it. At first I thought it was sacrilegious, but over time it kind of grew on me.

    The Immaculate Reception is one of the greatest touchdowns in the history of football, even though Al Davis and coach John Madden complained bitterly about the call and how it destroyed their season and the Raiders dynasty that might have been. Frenchy—ever the showman—added to the controversy by refusing to give a straight answer about whether or not he had touched the ball. But Chuck Noll summed it up: “Well, if Frenchy didn’t touch the ball . . . and Tatum didn’t touch the ball . . . well, the rule book doesn’t cover the hand of the Lord.”
    The Immaculate Reception changed not only the history of the Pittsburgh Steelers but the NFL itself. The Steelers went from forty seasons as the “lovable losers” to a great, great football team. Maybe the best that ever played. The national television audience for that game was huge, one of the largest ever to see a football game. The excitement of that one play captured the imagination of fans everywhere, especially throughout the far-flung Steelers Nation. The moment was so powerful, so memorable that millions of people who saw the game on TV honestly believe they were in the stands at Three Rivers Stadium that day. The Immaculate Reception immediately entered the realm of sports legend. It is still one of the greatest plays in NFL history and, for that matter, all of sports. This play and this playoff game helped establish pro football as America’s passion, surpassing baseball, “America’s pastime,” as the number-one sport.
    Of course, there are other milestones in the history of the NFL. I saw most of them, because I celebrated my first birthday the same year the Steelers played their first season in 1933. In some ways I think of myself as the Last Steeler, the last of the founding generation of the NFL. I’ve had the good fortune to know and work with the men who started the league—Wellington Mara, Curly Lambeau, Tim Mara, George Halas, Walter Kiesling, George Marshall, Charley Bidwill, Bert Bell, and, of course, the Chief—men who knew and loved the game and shared with me their values of hard work and
sportsmanship and fairness. The National Football League has come a long way since its beginnings, and I’m honored to have been a part of it.
    Pro football was born 1 on the muddy fields of Pittsburgh’s North Side in 1892—just three blocks from where I was born forty years later. I guess you could say the game is in my blood.

CHAPTER 2
    GROWING UP ON THE NORTH SIDE
    I WAS BORN IN MERCY HOSPITAL in Pittsburgh on July 20, 1932, the first Rooney to be born in a hospital. The Sisters of Mercy came from Ireland during the great potato famine of the 1840s to care for the people