To Absent Friends - Franco Harris

Franco Harris

1950 - 2022

On January 1, 1973, twenty-one year old me awoke to the news that Roberto Clemente had been killed in a plane crash.  It took another 49 years, 11 months, and 21 days before any death, including those of family members, came with the shock factor of Clemente's death, but it happened again yesterday when I awoke to the news that Steelers Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris had died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 72, four days shy of Christmas and two days prior to the 50th Anniversary, of the play that made him famous and has been voted time and again as the most famous single play in NFL history, The Immaculate Reception.  That Harris and the Steelers were to celebrate this Anniversary at a banquet on Friday, and retire Franco's #32 jersey at the game with the Raiders on Saturday only adds to the surreal nature of Harris' death.

I am not going to recount that famous play here.  If you are a football fan and are reading this, you already know all about it.  However, I cannot make mention of the Immaculate Reception with out making to obligatory statement that I WAS THERE.  Attended the game at Three Rivers Stadium - Section 651, Row J, Seats 5-6-7-8 - and I can still see the play unfold right before my eyes.

In watching the NFL Network yesterday morning, a couple of things struck me. The ex-players serving as talking heads on the morning show all admitted that they knew Harris only by reputation, and watching clips.  They never saw him actually play.  1984, the year Fraanco retired, was a long time ago.  One of those talking heads, however, Jason McCourty, made the excellent point that people need to realize that the Immaculate Reception was no one hit wonder for Franco Harris.  He was NFL Rookie of the Year, a multiple time Pro Bowler, a Super Bowl MVP, eight 1,000 yard rushing seasons, and a Walter Payton Man of the Year.  He was the third all time leading rusher at the time of his retirement, and today, thirty-eight years after he last played a game, he ranks second all time in NFL post-season rushing yardage.  

Franco trounces the Vikings for 158 yards 

and a touchdown in Super Bowl IX

More importantly, Steelers fans know that he was the final piece of the puzzle that Chuck Noll put together (Joe Greene and L.C. Greenwood in 1969, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount in 1970, Jack Ham, Dwight White, and Mike Wagner in 1971 among others).  Harris was the first round pick, 13th pick overall, in the 1972 draft, and he became the running back that Noll needed to implement the ball control, run oriented offense that he wanted, and that was necessary in the NFL of that era.  With Harris in place, the Steelers made the playoffs for the first time in their forty year history in 1972, and in 1974, they won the Super Bowl for the first time, the first of four such championships in six seasons.

Football fans know all of that.  What those outside of Pittsburgh may not know is how Harris stayed in Pittsburgh after his playing days ended, and became an astute businessman and a pillar of the community.  No charitable or philanthropic organization ever had Franco Harris say "No" to them when they asked for his assistance or help.   The local media has been filled with stories these last two days of people telling stories of how Harris helped out with this charity or spoke to that youth football program banquet or even how he stopped on the road side to lend a hand when their car broke down.

It seems like everyone had a story about an encounter with Franco Harris, so here is mine.  One night, probably sometime in the 1990's, I was walking through Northway Mall and there walking right towards me was Franco Harris himself.   I said hello, shook his hand, and thanked him for what he gave to us Steelers fans over the years.  He was polite, cordial, and acted like I was the first person, and not the one million and first person, to ever say that to him.  That night, one of the greatest Steelers and NFL players in history was just like me: a guy wandering aimlessly in a shopping mall while their wives were shopping in one of the stores.

Franco became one of the Steelers greatest ambassadors in his retirement years.  He showed up at games and team reunions, and almost always appeared at the NFL Draft to announce one of the Steelers' picks, as he did this past spring when he announced Kenny Pickett at the team's first round pick.

The Steelers may never see his like again.

RIP Franco Harris.
 

Super Bowl XIII - A Football (and Cultural) Time Capsule

With time on my hands and with no actual sports to watch, I pulled out a DVD set that I have owned for a number of years, a six disc set that has the complete telecast of all six Super Bowls won by the Pittsburgh Steelers.  In all the years that I have owned this, I had only watched one of the games, but on Friday night, I decided to watch the telecast of Super Bowl XIII, the one where the Steelers defeated the Cowboys 35-31.  Early on it became apparent that I was not only revisiting a happy sports memory, but I was also seeing a time capsule of sorts, so I began making some notes, and I will share some of those thoughts with you.  Football, television, and the Super Bowl itself were very different forty-one years ago than those institutions are today.

The game was televised by NBC.  Curt Gowdy, "the man who has described more major sporting events than anyone else", did the play-by-play with color by John Brodie and Merlin Olsen.  The "host" announcer, the guy who did the pregame (what little was included on the DVD) was a very young Dick Enberg.  Player introductions were handled by the Orange Bowl p.a. announcer and consisted only of the offensive starters for each team.  Very little hype and hoopla associated with these introductions, although the famed Cowboys Cheerleaders did form an aisle for the players to run through.  My first thought when I saw Terry Bradshaw was "wow, it looks like he hasn't put his shoulder pads on yet", but, no, he had them, or something that resembled shoulder pads, on and that is what he wore throughout the game.  

Note the puny shoulder pads on the QB

There was none of the hype associated with Super Bowl pre-game stuff today, but there was a preview of things to come when as the captains gathered for the coin toss, a vintage 1920 automobile drove onto the field with NFL  patriarch George Halas in the back seat.  Old Papa Bear was going to flip the coin to start the game.  As this was going on, a crossed wire on the radio frequency for the game officials caused the Pittsburgh radio broadcast to be heard on the telecast.  Yes, for about ten seconds, a national TV audience heard the dulcet tones of Myron Cope!!! Later in the telecast, Gowdy apologized for the technical glitch.

Before I give some of my stream-of-consciousness thoughts on the telecast, let's talk about the game itself.

The Steelers scored on their first possession with a Bradshaw to John Stallworth TD pass.  Stallworth actually had one foot land out of bounds in the end zone, but it was ruled that he was pushed while in the air and that he would have landed in bounds had the Dallas defender not hit him while he was coming down with the ball.  An official's judgement call perfectly permissible back then.  Today, it would have been an incomplete pass.

Dallas scored the next two TD's, the second one coming when a Cowboy defender stripped the ball from Bradshaw's grasp and ran it in for a touchdown. It was now 14-7 Dallas.  On the third play after the kickoff, Bradshaw hit Stallworth on a crossing pattern that resulted in a 75 yard TD pass and run, an play that Steelers fans have seen a zillion times over the years, which included a punishing block by Lynn Swann that helped free up Stallworth.  It was now 14-14, and the announcers noted that this was the first time in Super Bowl history that four touchdowns had been scored in a half.

Stallworth goes 75 yard to even the score at 14-14

Shortly before the end of the half, Bradshaw connected with Rocky Bleier for a TD that put the Steelers up 21-14 at the half.  Gowdy, Olsen, and Brodie were going on and on about the "fireworks" produced by these two teams in the first half and what could possibly happen to top it in the second half.  This game, according to them, was already "the greatest Super Bowl ever."

An acrobatic Bleier puts the Steelers  

up 21-14 just before halftime

The third quarter produced only one score, a field goal by Dallas after the play when a wide open in the end zone Jackie Smith dropped a sure pass that would have produced a touchdown and tied the game.  Both Steelers and Cowboys fans well remember the play.

A dropped pass by Jackie Smith forces the 

Cowboys to settle for a FG

The fourth quarter proceeded at the same pace as the third until late in the period.  On a play in Dallas territory, Franco Harris began jawing with a Dallas defender who, in Harris' opinion, took a cheap shot at Bradshaw after the play.  On the very next play, Bradshaw handed it off to an obviously pissed off Harris, who ran 23 untouched yards over left guard for a touchdown that put the Steelers up 28-17.  The hole that was opened up for Harris by Gerry Mullins, Sam Davis, and Mike Webster was so huge that Olsen and Brodie were marveling over the execution of the play.

Franco Harris rumbles for 23 untouched 

yards and and a 28 -17 Steelers lead 

What followed was a play that I did not remember.  The kickoff following the Harris TD was fumbled by Dallas and recovered by the Steelers' Dennis "Dirt" Winston.  The fumble was forced, by the way, by a young Steelers special teamer who had a bright future ahead of him - Tony Dungy. Anyway, on the very next play, Bradshaw went for the jugular and hit Swann in the end zone that put the Steelers up 35-17 and, effectively, ended the game.  The Steelers had scored two touchdowns in :11 of elapsed game time.

Swann's amazing leap makes it 35-17 Steelers

That's four Hall of Famers in this picture, folks!

With a little over four minutes remaining, Dallas got the ball back, and more specifically, Roger Staubach got the ball back and led the Cowboys to a touchdown to make it 35-24 with 2:24 on the clock.  Dallas then recovered an onside klick (that went through the hands of Dungy), and Staubach again drove them down field, including one conversion an a 4th and 18 play, and scored another touchdown to make it 35-31 with :22 remaining in the game.  A second attempt at an onside kick failed when the sure handed Bleier recovered the kick.  Staubach, far and away the best Dallas player on the team that night, made it interesting, but in retrospect, that four point win made the game appear closer than it actually was.  Still, I'm glad that Bleier recovered that second onside kick!

Thus, the Steelers of Chuck Noll became the "first team in history to win three Super Bowls".  Noll and the team would add one more the following year.

Okay, that was the game, and it was a great game, but what about some of those other factors that made viewing this game like opening a time capsule?  Let me list some of them here, as well as one other notable moments from the telecast.

• The telecast was almost primitive compared to what you see on a televised  game today.  No graphics.  The picture did not show the score of the game, the time remaining, the down and distance, and there sure as hell was no yellow line to show the first down line to gain!  The TV didn't show the clock at all until there was four minutes remaining in the first half.  Amazing how used we have become to such amenities in a telecast.
• Oh, and very limited use of Instant Replay, and, of course, no coaches' challenges or booth replay reviews.
• Right after the coin toss NBC, via a pretaped segment, allowed all game officials to introduce themselves.  They don't do that anymore, and you're lucky if the announcers even tell you the name of the Referee.  That's too bad.  Among the Zebras in SB XIII were Pittsburghers Jerry Bergman, Head Linesman, and Chuck "Ace" Heberling, one of the Alternates.  Jerry Bergman, passed away a few years ago, and two of his sons, Jeff and Jerry, are currently officials in the NFL and both have worked in Super Bowls. The younger Jerry is also a former co-worker and a personal friend of mine.
• The helmets the players wore in 1979 were small and toy-like compared to the helmets worn in 2020.  It wasn't exactly the leather helmets worn by the pioneers of the game, but let's just say that helmet technology has sure come a long way.
• Hitting.  Both Staubach and Bradshaw were subject to cringe worthy hits by defensive players, plays that would draw penalties, if not ejections, today.  After one particularly crushing hit absorbed by Bradshaw, Merlin Olsen made it a point to note that it was not a "cheap shot."
• At one point early in the telecast, Gowdy commented on all of the Steelers fans in the Orange Bowl who were waiving their "dirty towels."  Olsen quickly corrected him.  "They're Terrible Towels, Curt. Terrible Towels."  It was also commented upon that Steelers fans far outnumbered Cowboys fans in the Orange Bowl that day.
• After four catches, two TD's, and 100+ yards, Stallworth was hurt late in the first half and did not play in the second half.  I did not remember that.
• Lynn Swann more than made up for the absence of Stallworth. Man, oh, man, was Lynn Swann good.  Of course, I knew that.  I saw him play, and he is in the Hall of Fame, but I have to admit that I fear that I have forgotten just HOW GOOD he was.  Antonio Brown, you were a great receiver for the Steelers, but you were no Lynn Swann.
• Jack Ham.  Another great player.  GREAT.  Jack Lambert is probably remembered more fondly by Steelers fans, and he was great, to be sure, but I think that after Joe Greene, Ham was the next best defender of that Steelers Era.
• Mel Blount was 6'3", 205 pounds.  He looked as big as the defensive linemen out there.  Another guy that was just amazing to watch.
• On the Dallas side, Roger Staubach was, as I said, the best player on that team, or at least he was that night.  Staubach had and still has the reputation of being the All-American Boy, Frank Merriwell-type, Aw Shucks kind of player, but he was anything but that after Smith dropped that pass in the end zone.  He was one totally PO'd guy coming off the field after that play.
• Other Dallas players who stood out to me watching that game were safety Cliff Harris, defensive linemen Randy White, who played the game with a cast on one hand, and Too Tall Jones, and, of course, Tony Dorsett.
• Also seen on the Dallas side line were HC Tom Landry looking natty in a camel's hair sport coat, necktie, and a felt fedora, and assistants Ernie Stautner and Mike Ditka, who looked ridiculous with his hair in a curly-haired perm.
• At one point it was noted that during the regular season, Steelers place kicker Roy Gerela was 12 for 26 on field goal attempts during the season.  Guys would get cut for that in the NFL today, and, in fact, Gerela was gone from the Steelers after that season.
• In this game, Franco Harris became the all time leading rusher in Super Bowl history.
• The Steelers did not run a single play out of a shotgun formation.  The Cowboys ran the shotgun maybe a half dozen times.
• Bradshaw called all of his own plays.  ALL OF HIS OWN PLAYS.  Quarterbacks actually used to do that.
• Also in this game, Terry Bradshaw recorded the first 300 yard passing game of his nine year career (17/30, 317, 4 TD, 1 INT).  Generations of football fans know Bradshaw only as the buffoonish talking head on the Fox pregame shows, but fewer and fewer fans remember him as the very great HOF quarterback that he was.  That's a shame, but Terry is laughing al the way to the bank, so maybe he's okay with that.
• When Dallas got the ball with four-plus minutes remaining and down 35-17, John Brodie made the statement that this wasn't over yet, that he remembered a game when Staubach beat his 49'ers by scoring fourteen points with his team never getting the ball back.  Gowdy says, "Oh, yeah that was that famous game in San Francisco a few years ago."  Brodie replied, "Famous for some people maybe..."  Good line.
• Late in the game, the announcers began to comment that the dropped pass by Smith in the third quarter was looming large for Dallas and wasn't it too bad that a 16 year vet like Smith had to bear that burden.  Brodie made the point that it was totally unfair.  "No single play in the third quarter of a football game decides a game."  
• In spite of my quoting Brodie here, the best announcer in the booth that day was Merlin Olsen.  He was really, really good.  He died in 2010 at the age of 70, and its probably just as well that he never had to listen to Booger McFarland broadcast a football game.
• The DVD of the game did not include any commercials.  I wonder if the Super Bowl commercials then were as big a deal as they were to become?
• Nor did the DVD include the halftime show.  A search on the Google Machine tells me that the halftime show was "Bob Jani presents Carnival: A Salute to the Caribbean."  Looks like the NFL and the Super Bowl were already moving away from marching bands and dogs chasing frisbees back in 1979. And, no, I have no idea as to who Bob Jani was, nor the inclination to look him up.
• The announcement that Terry Bradshaw was the unanimous selection for MVP of the game came with over four minutes remaining in the game.  That could have been embarrassing had the Steelers failed to recover that second onside kick and given Staubach one more crack at the Steelers prevent defense.
• Throughout the second half, Gowdy kept hyping a new show on NBC, "Brothers and Sisters", which will "debut on most of these NBC stations immediately following the telecast of this game."  Anyone have any memory of that show?  I don't.

Like I said, it was a fun and interesting viewing experience, but there was one sad part as well: the realization of how many people, most of them young and vibrant at the time, are no longer with us.  Chuck Noll, Mike Webster, Dwight White, LC Greenwood, Sam Davis, Steve Furness, George Perles, both Art and Dan Rooney, Tom Landry, Ernie Stautner, and other guys from the Cowboys of whom I am not aware.  Sobering.

Anyway, sorry that this post has rambled on longer than usual, but the subject matter was just too vast to allow for conciseness.

Once again, that final score, the Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers 35, the Dallas Cowboys 31.

The Quarterbacks

Pittsburgh Steelers "Franchise Four"

The recent promotion by Major League Baseball to name the "Franchise Four" for each team (and a word on that at the end of this post) prompted Joe Aro, a Facebook Friend of mine from the Washington DC area to name his "Franchise Four" for the Washington Redskins.  Fair enough, and it prompted me to try to list a Franchise Four for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

After putting much thought and analysis into it - maybe fifteen or twenty minutes of thinking about it - I came up with these four:

Joe Greene

I mean, really, do I have to justify this choice?  Simply put, the Greatest Steeler Ever.

Ernie Stautner

A Hall of Famer, he is here for the simple reason that people need to be aware that the Steelers existed and had great players before the 1972 season.

Jack Ham

Tough and smart, he may have been the best and most consistent defensive player of a team that was filled with Hall of Fame (and HOF caliber) defensive players.

The fourth guy has to be a quarterback, and I went back and forth between these two guys. Both were (and are) great.  One has greater stats than the other, but an argument can be made that the stats for each of them are a function of the era in which that played, but each of them, I contend, would have excelled and been great, no matter the era. In the end, only one stat separates the two - four Super Bowl rings vs. two Super Bowl rings, so here is the fourth guy.

Terry Bradshaw

It is a very narrow margin, and on any given day I could still be talked into including this guy:

Ben Roethlisberger

I ran this whole idea around at breakfast yesterday with Dan Bonk, Len Martin, Jim Haller, and Dave Finoli, and, of course, there was no unanimity.  The two names most mentioned who should be on the list were Franco Harris and Mel Blount, and I would have no argument if either of those guys, especially Harris, were in the Steelers' Franchise Four, so let's a salute them here:

Franco Harris

Mel Blount

Oh, and I mentioned that I would have a word on MLB's Franchise Four selections.  The name of Walter Johnson does not surface anywhere.  Not on the Minnesota Twins list, not on the Texas Rangers list, nor, even, and this is really stretching it, the Washington Nationals list.  That perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time cannot find his way on any of these lists calls the whole process into question, but I guess no one said that this would be anything more than a popularity contest decided by people raised in the era that says "if it wasn't on ESPN, it didn't happen."

"What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is Going On....?"

The title of this post is dedicated to my breakfast companions of yesterday morning.


Some sporting thoughts on a Sunday morning.....

• It is frustrating to see the Pirates just eaking out wins over the Astros, a team that they should be hammering into submission, this weekend, but, hey, they ARE winning those games, right?  Just a sign, I suppose, about how far the Pirates have come this season.
• Those Astros, by the way, are really a bad ball club.  As bad a team as I've seen since, oh, the 2010 Pirates.   I'm watching these games, and I am unfamiliar with just about every player on that team.  And is it a coincidence that Brad Mills makes you think of John Russell as he stands expressionless in the Houston dugout?
• For the record, I liked the trade for Wandy Rodriguez.  Nolan Ryan, he ain't, but he will be an improvement over Kevin Correia, I think, in the long run, despite the fact that Correia has won his last six decisions.
• It should also be noted that Rodriguez is under contract, and not an inexpensive one, for, I believe, two more seasons after this one, so kudos to Nutting/Coonelly/Huntington for pulling the trigger on this one.
• If Colton Cain wins 20 games for the Astros in 2017, this will still have been a good deal, if the Pirates get to the post-season this year, or even if they stay in the hunt deep into September.
• I also like that Starling Marte is now here in Pittsburgh, and how can you not after that spectacular debut?  True, he is hitless in his last two games, but I do believe he will be an improvement over what Pirates left fielders/lead off batters have given the team so far.
• Now the big question:  Does GM Neal swing a deal to bring a hitter, or "a bat" as is now the lingo, to PNC Park for the stretch?  I will not pay attention to anything Neal might say on the subject between now and Tuesday - he will never say anything significant on such a subject - but I anxiously await that July deadline.
• In case no one noticed, and it is definitely a secondary story line in Pittsburgh this summer - the Steelers opened training camp  this week.  The highlight for me was hearing my first Mike Tomlin soundbite of the season.  I LOVE hearing those, and I am not being sarcastic.
• Mike Wallace learned a hard lesson this week: When you get into a contract hassle with the Steelers, you will lose.  Every time.  You think these guys would know that by now.
• One thing that guys like Wallace and their agents absolutely, positively need to remember:  the Steelers released Franco Harris in a contract dispute back in 1983.  They do that to one of the pre-eminent figures in franchise history, then guys like Wallace will never have a chance.
• It amazes me to hear that there are some folks in Pitt fandom who think that the Panthers should now forget about ever playing Penn State, even to the point of canceling the two games scheduled for '16 and '17.  "Who needs THEM now?", they sniff.  This makes those elements at Pitt guilty of the same arrogance and hubris that they have accused (and not without some justification, it should be noted) Penn State and Joe Paterno of having had ever since the series ended.
• My friend Dan Bonk, a major Pitt fan and supporter, has taken the opposite tack:  AD Steve Pederson should be on the phone RIGHT NOW to whoever is in charge at Penn State these days negotiating a long term home-and-home deal with Penn State. 
• Penn State has always been able to find a way to schedule teams like Ohio University.  Pitt has always found a way to schedule teams like the University of Buffalo.  They can find a way to make this happen, and don't forget, the one person who always prevented  this series from continuing, is no longer on the scene.
• The NCAA and other college "spokesmen" have talked very loftily about how the College football culture needs to change after it was allowed to run amok at Penn State.  Yet there were reports this week, the ink on the consent decree not even dry, of rival schools' coaches on the PSU campus recruiting the Lions' current scholarship athletes.  Do you REALLY think that that culture is going to change?
• In spite of all that has fallen upon Penn State, I find myself really rooting for Bill O'Brien and those kids who will choose to stay at Penn State this coming season.
• I learned very quickly this week, that if you want to watch the Olympics and not know the results of a given event, stay off of Facebook, Twitter, or the entire Internet itself over the course of the next two weeks.