More than 50 years later, Art Rooney Jr. still remembers a significant Pittsburgh Steelers moment amid an unlikely backdrop.
Palm trees, not steel mills, dotted the landscape when he hopped onto a golf cart driven by John McKay. The USC football coach was just a season removed from winning the third of four national championships in the shadow of Hollywood.
Rooney, as part of his crisscrossing the country to scout college players, had stopped at USC, which was always overflowing with premium talent. While driving him around during a Trojans practice, McKay extolled the “best of the best” of his NFL prospects.
A great athlete and even better team guy, McKay told Rooney. Can “catch anything anywhere,” he added.
The player was Lynn Swann. And that day eventually played a part in Rooney pushing for Swann when the Steelers were deciding between him and fellow WR John Stallworth in the first round of the 1974 NFL Draft.
They somehow ended up with both, getting Stallworth in the draft double dips of draft double dips three rounds after taking Swann with the 21st overall pick. The story of the Steelers doesn’t start with the 1974 draft, but you certainly can’t tell the Steelers’ story without it.
It turned into a legendary haul – one that will almost certainly never be replicated – and helped birth a dynasty. The Steelers were on the verge of being very good before that draft. They won the franchise’s first Super Bowl a little less than a calendar year later.
Three more Super Bowls titles followed so swiftly that the Steelers’ mantra less than a decade later was “one for the thumb in ’81.” It represented a stunning turn for a franchise that had only played in one postseason game from 1933-71.
And it doesn’t happen if the Steelers don’t draft four future Pro Football Hall of Famers in 1974 and sign another one as a college free agent that year. After taking Swann in the first round, the Steelers drafted LB Jack Lambert in the second round, Stallworth with the first of two fourth-round selections (thank you, Bill Nunn), and C Mike Webster in the fifth round.
After the draft, they signed S Donnie Shell, who joined Swann, Lambert, Stallworth, and Webster in Canton if a little late for Steelers’ fans liking.
To say that draft – and ones that preceded it – validated Rooney is an understatement.
“It gave me credibility,” the son of Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr. told Steelers Depot. “I was the Chief’s son and had his name too.”
While Noll held final say in draft picks, Rooney had a prominent role – and voice – as the franchise’s personnel director after the Steelers committed to building through the draft. And his tireless work as the scout he always saw himself helped the Steelers draft nine future Pro Football Hall of Famers from 1969-74.
Rooney was inducted into the Steelers Hall of Honor in 2018. Last year he was a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, nominated by the senior committee as a contributor.
He will be up for HOF consideration again this year, and hopefully the 50th anniversary of the 1974 NFL Draft is something that will at least help his candidacy.
“They tell me I’m a hard sell because my dad and [brother] Dan are in, and Bill Nunn, who was a very, very dear friend and worked with me, he got in,” Rooney said. “They tell me, ‘There’s too many Rooneys.’ You try to laugh about it, but it is sort of a kick in the shins.”
That’s one way to put it, and full disclosure I asked Rooney about getting overlooked for Canton; it was not something he brought up.
Unfortunately, he seems to suffer from the same bias as the great L.C. Greenwood. One of the leaders of the iconic “Steel Curtain” does not have a bust in Canton. Too many Steelers from that era, the, ahem, logic goes. Apparently, that extends to the Rooneys too, at least for now.
It makes no sense. And it is a shame.
You could make a strong case for Art Rooney Jr.’s inclusion in the Pro Football Hall of Fame based solely on a draft that gave us Lambert and his gap-toothed sneer, Webster’s toughness and transcendence and Swann and Stallworth’s greatness, especially on Super Bowl stages.
Fact is Art Rooney Jr.’s fingerprints are all over the Steelers winning four Super Bowls from 1974-79. That glorious period endures in so many ways, not the least of which is Terrible Towels twirling in force even when the Steelers play in away stadiums.
It’s past time to honor a man who played a big part in that. Even if his last name is Rooney.
