The ageless Dick LeBeau received more football validation – not that he needed any — Saturday when he joined Jason Gildon, Casey Hampton, and Willie Parker in the Class of 2024 Steelers Hall of Honor.
The latest reminder of the excellence that defined his 59 years in the NFL is a nod to LeBeau’s outsized role in the Steelers winning two Super Bowls and playing in another one from 2005-10.
One of the things that makes Dick LeBeau so unique is that on his way to becoming a legend, he never strayed from his roots. His small-town sensibilities are never more apparent than when he talks about his enduring love for high school football.
Such was the case a couple of weeks ago when the Pro Football Hall of Famer spoke at an annual gathering of Western Pennsylvania High School football coaches in Pittsburgh. I cannot remember how it came up, but at one point LeBeau talked about his own playing career at London High School in Ohio.
And the guy who is generally averse to talking about himself had a grin tugging at his mouth and a twinkle in his eyes.
“They called me ‘805 White Lightning.’ You’d kick off at 8 and 8:05 I was in your end zone,” he said to laughter from the coaches. “I think I scored 27 [touchdowns] my senior year in nine games. One thing about London was it was a football town. If you didn’t play football, you couldn’t get a date with anybody. We all played.”
They had to or London would have had trouble fielding a team. LeBeau’s graduating class had 48 people in it; less than 20 were boys. Playing for such a small school did not stop 805 White Lightning from getting noticed by the big boys. That included Ohio State.
When the Buckeyes offered him a scholarship, LeBeau could not pass on it. He quickly found out that playing at his dream school would be challenging to say the least.
“The first day we had all the incoming freshmen and we got in the room together. I’m looking at these guys and they’re six-foot-three and they’re all 275 pounds,” LeBeau said. “I’ve never seen so many big guys in my life. I said, ‘I don’t know if I made the right choice here.’ At London we had 145-pound fullbacks. One thing that I found out as we got on the practice field, if you hit ‘em, they’re coming down the same as [a smaller player].”
LeBeau played both ways at Ohio State as a halfback and cornerback, helping the Buckeyes win a national championship in 1957. He was one of the last players Paul Brown cut in 1959 after the Browns drafted him in the fifth round.
He spent the rest of his playing career proving that even coaching luminaries like Brown can make the occasional ill-advised decision. A coaching career that spanned 45 years followed. LeBeau’s addition to the Steelers Hall of Honor is the latest proof of the profound impact he made while wearing a headset.
From 805 White Lightning to Black and Gold immortality, what a ride it has been for Dick LeBeau.
