The Pittsburgh Steelers report to Saint Vincent College in Latrobe on Wednesday. Here is one of our final series to bridge the gap between the end of offseason practices and the start of training camp. This is the fourth of five parts.
Training camp has long been a breeding ground for practical jokes with the players, while living in dorm rooms, trying to combat boredom when they do have idle time.
In 2009, kicker Jeff Reed and Steelers head of security Jack Kearney pulled off a doozy, getting serious points for creativity and ultimately outdoing most camp jokes because they pranked the entire team.
They rented charter buses and strategically parked them along the street that overlooks the practice fields. Morning walkthroughs, while not daily, were still a thing then, even for reigning Super Bowl champions like the Steelers. Mike Tomlin was only in his third year as head coach but there were enough players from the Bill Cowher era to remember that Coach Chin would sometimes break up the grind of camp with some sort off-campus outing in place of a practice. Usually, it was a trip to the movies.
Imagine, given this context, the players as they walked to the walkthrough and saw those buses. Some were downright giddy at the thought of hitting the fields for a little stretching before getting on those buses. Air-conditioned buses.
Unfortunately for the players who wore smiles as wide as their shoulder pads, Tomlin was in on it. Sort of.
Reed had cleared the visual double cross with Tomlin, and he and his assistants played along with it simply by treating it like any other walkthrough albeit one conducted in the shadow of those tour buses.
If memory serves it did not take long for the players to realize they had been had and that Reed was the one who had tricked them. The prank was so good that they could not do anything but laugh even if it came at their expense.
That camp also proved one of Dick LeBeau’s favorite sayings: “Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you.”
The rookies, of all players, turned out to be the bear who got Reed. During the annual rookies’ skit show, one of the players mimicked Reed. In the skit, the veteran kicker with two Super Bowl rings trashed a bathroom (one made of props, not a real one).
Reed was a good sport about it, as most are when it comes to training camp pranks.
