Author: pittsburghsportsdailybulletin

First, can you tell readers about your role with North Carolina as Associate Athletic Director – how you got started and what it entails?

I started out twelve years ago working as Director of Student-Athlete Development where my responsibilities focused mainly on be a resource for the student-athletes and helping them to navigate a successful college experience.  I was promoted to Assistant  Director two years later and have been the Associate AD for Football Administration for the past seven years.

While not a coach, you are obviously working with the coaching staff regularly. What coaches and coaching lessons from your time in Pittsburgh had the greatest impact on you – and which do you find yourself referring to now as you work with athletes and coaches?

Coach Cowher preparation for team meetings always fascinated me during my time with the Steelers.  He always delivered concise, planned messages to us during team meetings.  I try to handle staff and team meetings the same way here at UNC.  Time spent in staff or team meetings are very valuable so I work hard to be an effective, efficient communicator.

Continue reading “Corey Holliday, Steelers Wide Receiver, 1995-1997”

Jim O’Biren: “Only in America’”:

Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien

I turn to the obituary pages of the two Pittsburgh dailies each morning to check to see if anyone I know has died, and when the funeral services will be held.

         My late friend Tom “Maniac” McDonough referred to the obituary pages as “the Irish sports section.”

         He thought there was something about death that appealed to the Irish.  They loved going to wakes.  “It’s the only way you see old friends,” said McDonough.

         I don’t think a day goes by that there isn’t a funeral in Munhall or Homestead. 

         When I was a kid, I used to deliver a newspaper to Leo Sullivan, a nattily-dressed funeral director on Second Avenue in Hazelwood.  In the summer, he wore a straw hat and wide suspenders which set him apart from the pack.

         We had a standup routine.  I’d see him standing on the porch of his funeral home, and I’d say, “How’s business, Mr. Sullivan?”

         He’d smile and say, “It’s dead.”

         The names of six remarkable men I have known appeared in the obituary notices over the past two weeks.

         One day, I knew three people in a row in the paid listings, a personal record I think.  Their names were George Esper, Fred Fetterolf and Thomas “Red” Garvey (as in E, F,G).  The other three names I recognized on other days were Fred Yee, Bernie Powers and Tunch Ilkin.

         In Ilkin’s case, his wife Sharon, age 55, had died after a difficult six-year battle with breast cancer.  Tunch remains one of the most popular Pittsburgh Steelers, first as an offensive lineman and now as a sidekick providing analysis to the play-by-play call by sports broadcaster Bill Hillgrove.

         Among the pictures on display at the Beinhauer Funeral Home in McMurray was a framed cover of Sports Illustrated that had two cheerleaders at Indiana State University flanking the great Larry Bird.  One of the beauties was the future Sharon Ilkin.

         The Ilkin children often kidded their dad that their mom made the SI cover, but their dad never did.   Tunch told them his black Steelers’ helmet was visible at the bottom of one of the covers in the ‘80s.

         “We’ll miss her dearly,” Tunch told me.  “But she was in such pain.  She was a woman of great faith, so she’ll be fine.”

         Let me tell you a little about each of these men I mentioned earlier.

         Fred Yee’s daughter Michelle is my next-door neighbor in Upper St. Clair.  Her father, who lived in Bethel Park, has been ill the past year.  He died of cancer at age 76 at St. Clair Hospital.  I’d see him in the driveway or yard for the past five years.  He loved to play golf each morning at South Park.  We’d talk sports.

  He is the only person of Chinese descent who has been inducted into the Western Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.  He played basketball at Pitt in the mid-50s and he won five City League championships and a state title while coaching the boys’ basketball team at Schenley High School and then won five City League championships coaching girls’ softball at Carrick High School.  He must have been some motivator.

Our friend Bernard “Baldy” Regan, a Pittsburgh politician and sports promoter, used to praise Fred Yee      by saying, “Only in America can a Chinese guy coach an all-black basketball team to a state title.”

Baldy borrowed that phrase from Harry Golden, an editor and publisher of the Carolina Israelite, who wrote a popular book called Only In America in 1958.  I read it when I was a student at Taylor Allderdice High School.

The “Only in America” tag is applicable to most of the men I have mentioned.

Tunch Ilkin came to America as a child from Istanbul, Turkey and marries a cheerleader from Indiana State.  He returned after being cut from the squad at his first Steelers’ training camp to play 13 seasons with the Steelers and one year with the Green Bay Packers.  He was one of Art Rooney’s all-time favorite players.

Fred Yee grew up in Little Allentown, a stretch near Beltzhoover and Arlington on the backside of the South Side Slopes, unfamiliar to most Pittsburghers.  His family ran a laundry business.

When Yee’s team won the state title in 1978, students at Schenley High created a banner they hung in the hallway renaming the school “Schen-Yee High.”

There were two sports personalities I recognized at Yee’s viewing, Lou “Bimbo” Cecconi, who starred in several sports at Clairton High and the University of Pittsburgh, and whose last job was in administration at Steel Valley High School.  “Look at how many people are here,” Cecconi observed.  “That’s a real tribute.”   

Paul Tomasovich, a tall, husky fellow best known as “the Babe Ruth of Pittsburgh softball,” and more recently a sports official, was present as well.  Tomasovich was a close friend of Baldy Regan.  I have been fortunate to know such fascinating fellows.

“I was refereeing a basketball game between Schenley and Farrell at Farrell,” recalled Tomasovich.  “Fred was on the sideline coaching Schenley, and he called out, ‘Paul, Paul’ and signaled for a time-out with 14 seconds showing on the clock.  His team was down by a point.

“I stood by his huddle to hear what he was saying to his team.  He told them to get the ball to his star player, Sonny Lewis, who was a really good player.  He told Sonny to hold onto the ball and that Farrell would foul him.  He told Sonny he’d make both free shots and Schenley would win.

“Schenley inbounds the ball to Sonny Lewis and he immediately unleashes a long shot and misses.  That’s the ballgame, folks.  As I am running off the court, Fred calls out to me again, ‘Paul, Paul, tell me, was I speaking to those guys in Chinese?’ ”

There are always such stories shared at funerals.  There are laughs to go with the tears, and the solemnity of the occasion.  You are never quite sure what to say.  I used to admonish my mother as we were entering a funeral home not to say, ‘He looks good.’  Now I frequently find that’s my thought exactly.

I saw Tunch Ilkin’s mother near the head of the receiving line and I remembered that she was once “Miss Turkey.”  As I held her hand, I said, “You are still Miss Turkey.”  She smiled and said, “That was a long time ago.”

What do you say to a man who has lost the love of his life much too early?

Here’s what I said:

“Tunch, me boy, how are the Turks doing?  Are they still killing each other…like the Irish.”

Tunch smiled and hugged me.  It was something Art Rooney Sr. used to say to him whenever he saw him in the lobby or locker room at Three Rivers Stadium.  Tunch told me that when I was interviewing him in my family room for one of my books about the Steelers.  Tunch has always been a favorite topic.  He’s a good man, a good story.

Tunch told me how much Sharon had suffered and that she was in a better place.  When Tunch first came to the Steelers he was a Muslim.  But his teammate and still loyal sidekick, Craig Wolfley, influenced him spiritually and Tunch converted to Christianity.

Wolfley’s father was ill during training camp and Ilkin was impressed with the strength Wolfley gained from his Christian faith.  In time, Ilkin preached at churches and youth gatherings.  He even tried, but failed, to convert Myron Cope.  Cope married a Presbyterian, but he was proud to be a Jew.

Try to imagine that conversation between Cope and Ilkin.

There were lines out to the parking lot at the Ilkin viewing for one of the afternoon sessions.  I saw several former Steelers such as Edmund Nelson, Dwayne Woodruff, Bill Hurley, Craig Wolfley     Members of the media present were Gene Collier, Jerry Dulac, Ed Bouchette, Paul Alexander, Bob Pompeani and Dan Potash.

It was the same room where I had attended funerals for former Steelers Ray Mansfield, Steve Furness and Lloyd Voss.  

I had not seen or heard of George Esper in a long time, but I met him in the summer of 1963.  I had an internship at The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, when George was writing at the Philadelphia branch of the Associated Press.                        

         He was a friend of George Kiseda, then a sportswriter for The Bulletin. Kiseda was a Pitt grad from Pittsburgh’s South Side and he got his start as a sportswriter with the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph.          He was a great writer.

         Esper and I each had rooms in the upper level of a home owned by the mother of Ralph Bernstein, the sports editor of The Associated Press.  Esper hailed from Uniontown.  His parents had immigrated to America from Lebanon.  His voice positively crackled when he spoke.

         He went on to become an AP correspondent covering the war in Vietnam and he won several major awards for his coverage.  How fortunate I was to share a summer with him when I was a student, and learn from him and Kiseda.  Philadelphia had some of the best sportswriters in the business at the time, such as Larry Merchant, Stan Hochman, Jack McKinney, Ray Kelly, Jack Kiser, Hugh Brown and Sandy Grady and I hung around them as much as possible.  They were great mentors.

         Esper and Fred Fetterolf both qualify in the “Only in America” category as success stories.

         Fetterolf was a mild-mannered but enterprising young man as a student at Grove City College in the early ‘50s.  He stood five feet, five inches tall, yet he won varsity letters in three sports for the Grovers.  He played on the football, basketball and golf teams.  Yes, basketball.  At 5-5!  He may have given a half inch to Myron Cope.

         Fetterolf went on to become a giant in the corporate world.  I met him when he was the President and COO of the company in 1979, his second year in that position.  Vince Scorsone, who had come out of McKeesport High to star as a lineman at Pitt, was a vice-president at Alcoa at the time.  Fetterolf was proud to show his spiritual side and lent his presence to many good causes.

         Fetterolf and Scorsone ordered 1,000 copies of each of the first two books I wrote and edited with Marty Wolfson, namely Pittsburgh: The Story of the City of Champions and Hail to Pitt: A Sports History of the University of Pittsburgh

I never would have been able to write and publish 20 books about Pittsburgh sports achievement if I had not had that kind of support at the start.  So I will always be indebted to those great gentlemen.

I remember Scorsone telling me a story about running into Duke Weigle, his football coach at McKeesport, prior to entering Pitt as a freshman.  Weigle wanted to know what Scorsone planned to major in at Pitt.

“I’m going into phys ed, Coach,” said Scorsone.  “I want to be a coach like you someday.”

“No, you don’t,” said Weigle.  “You should major in business.  You’ll be better off.”

Scorsone did just that and look what it led him to at Alcoa.  “Those were the days when you did whatever your coaches told you to do,” said Scorsone.

Red Garvey and Bernie Powers were both coaches and they had Mt. Lebanon ties, starting with St. Bernard’s and then South Hills Catholic.  Garvey coached for a couple of years with the football program at Pitt in the late ‘60s.  I’d see him on the Pitt campus and, in more recent years, bump into him at Atria’s Bar & Tavern in Mt. Lebanon.  Powers became the director of the City Catholic League sports programs.

I saw Jerry Conboy at Garvey’s viewing at the Laughlin Funeral Home in Mt. Lebanon.  Conboy was a terrific basketball coach at South Hills Catholic and Point Park College.

We agreed that we were going to too many funerals lately.

I blame it on Art Rooney.  He’s the one who told me why you have to go to the funerals.  What he told me made more sense than what Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t go to your friends’ funerals they won’t come to yours.”           

 Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien has a series of Pittsburgh Proud books available at area book stores.  His website is www.jimobriensportsautor.com   He can also be found on Facebook.

First, can you let readers know what you’ve been doing with yourself since the NFL and how you got involved in your post-NFL career?

My college degree is in Communications and Marketing.  Since the NFL, I have been in sales and marketing primarily working with education publishing companies.  I also coached little league teams in football, baseball and basketball for a number of years.  I helped coach my son’s high school team that sent nine players his senior year to division one college programs and several on to the NFL.

You were a first round pick in ’78 – how much pressure did you feel coming to a team with the reputation and recent success that the Steelers had and how did you prove yourself to the team/coaches?

I didn’t feel any added pressure to perform as I had just recently been named MVP in the Senior Bowl and had played a solid game in the East/ West Shrine Game.  I proved myself by showing up to training camp in great shape and being ready to run and hit.

Continue reading “Ron Johnson, Steelers Cornerback, 1978-1984”

First, can you let readers know what you have been doing since your time in the NFL?

I retired five years ago.  I have a development company in Michigan and do quite a bit of broadcasting for SiriusXM NFL Radio, Spartan Sports Network (calling MSU Football games), and CSN Chicago (Bears Postgame Live).

How did you get started in broadcasting, and is this something you want to continue to pursue further?

Yes, I am really starting to enjoy broadcasting and want to get better.  It is much like playing football in that the more repetitions you receive, you can hone your skills to get better at your craft.  I started when I first retired when Steve Cohen who is head of programming at Sirius interviewed me at Super Bowl 40 here in Detroit.  Steve asked me after I talked about my experiences on air if I had ever thought about broadcasting.  Four months later he talked me into flying to NY to give it a try.  I did three straight days of four-hour shows on air and he seemed to like what I had to say and offered me a job.  I’ve been working for Sirius ever since.

Continue reading “Jim Miller, Steelers Quarterback, 1994-1996”

First, can you let readers know what you’ve been doing with yourself since your time in the NFL?

I retired from the NFL after the 1965 season at Pittsburgh and returned to Dallas planning on finding a position with a construction company. My degree is in engineering and I had some experience in the construction industry. While looking for opportunities a Dallas Cowboy teammate, Don Meredith, and I decided to join a plastic pipe manufacturing company in Don’s home town; Mt Vernon Pipe and Supply. I was the major stockholder, president and general manager for a little more than two years.

In early 1968 I moved to Norman, Oklahoma and went into the construction business with a couple of contractors who Don and I had met in our pipe business. Our core business was in the construction of municipal utilities in Oklahoma. In July 1972 I was involved in an industrial accident that ended this part of my working career.

Continue reading “Lee Folkins, Steelers Tight End, 1965”

First, you played six years for the Raiders before coming to the Steelers in ’97. What brought you to the Steelers – what made you decide to sign with Pittsburgh and who were the guys you bonded with early on the Steelers?

Jim Haslett was the defensive coordinator for the Steelers then. He was also the linebackers coach for the Raiders when I was there. He called me to Pittsburgh to offer me the position. I met with he and coach John Mitchell who as you know has coached many Pro bowl lineman.

What convinced me to come was when Coach Mitchell showed me the film of nose tackle Joel Steed destroying various offensive lines. I knew that I wanted to play next to that guy!

Continue reading “Nolan Harrison, Steelers Defensive Lineman, 1997-1999, Senior Director NFLPA”

O’Brien: Munhall’s own Jack Butler will Remain the Same Even in the Hall of Fame: 

Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien

          Jack Butler lives in a big house at the extreme end of town where Munhall says hello to Homestead.  He and his wife Bernie have been in that handsome brick mansion for about 50 of his 84 years.  It’s on 11^th Avenue, behind the iconic Homestead Library.

         Butler is basically a stay-at-home guy but he knows how to get to Main Street in Munhall.  He doesn’t know the name of the barber shop where he gets his hair cut in a conservative manner, but he knows the man holding the sharp scissors is named Carmen. He said the barber shop he favors is in a strip of shops, near the post office.

         “I don’t loaf there, or hang around bars there,” he said when we spoke on the telephone last week.  “I don’t get out much.  I don’t know that many people.  Some of the faces are familiar to me, but I can count on a few fingers my real friends.”

         He and his wife Bernie attend Mass every Sunday at St. Maximillian Kolbe in Homestead.  That used to be St. Anne’s.  I wondered whether the priests there might be saying prayers for Butler’s Hall of Fame selection.  I spoke to the church secretary, but she wasn’t familiar with Jack Butler, and the pastor was not present when I called.

        Butler obviously likes to keep a low profile.

         I asked Butler if anybody was stopping him in the street to wish him well about his Hall of Fame election.  “Not really,” he said.  “I am getting more attention in the way of phone calls from people in the media wanting to know how I feel about it.”

         I spoke to Butler and two of his good buddies in the same two-hour time frame on the telephone that day. They are a lot alike: self-deprecating decent men with a gleam in their eyes, men who like to promote other men.  They make you feel better.

We talked about Butler’s chances of being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in a voting that would take place last Saturday morning in Indianapolis, at the site of Super Bowl XLVI.

         Art Rooney Jr. and Jack McGinley Jr. were both optimistic of their friend’s chances.  Art Jr. is the second son of Steelers’ founder Art Rooney Sr., and he spoke to me from his winter home, a condominium apartment in Palm Beach, Florida.  Jack McGinley is the oldest son of Jack McGinley, who owned a beer distributing company in Lawrenceville as well as a minority position with the Steelers.

         He is a respected Pittsburgh attorney, a senior partner at Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellot in the U.S. Steel Tower.

         Art Jr. and Jack Jr. are both minority owners of the Steelers and big boosters of Jack Butler.  They both campaigned for his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  I have correspondence dating back to 2008 from Jack Jr. in my JACK BUTLER folder in my office files urging me to assist in the campaign

         “I have dinner with Artie about once a month,” said Butler, “and the McGinleys are great people, and have always been kind to me.  Their dads were two of the most wonderful men I’ve ever met.  Everyone knows what a great guy Art Rooney Sr. was, but Jack McGinley was right up there with him.”

         Butler, who starred as a defensive back and occasional receiver for nine seasons (1951-1959), was nominated by a special veterans committee for consideration for the honor.   

         “I never thought much about it,” Butler said of the Hall of Fame.  “It will be nice if I get in, but it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t.  I have other things to think about or worry about.”

         Butler was summoned to catch an airplane to Indianapolis on Saturday, after he was voted in by a selection committee.

         He was asked at a press conference later that day what it meant to him to be selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

         He caught himself saying the word “hell” and he quickly retreated to erase that in favor of “heck.”  He said the award would mean more to his family, and then he thought better of that and corrected that thought as well, confessing that it would mean a lot to him, too.  I had stressed to him that it was a big deal and that it would sink in once he was selected and inducted.

         That induction will come this summer at the sports shrine in Canton, Ohio, which bills itself as “the birthplace of pro football,” even though more recent research shows that Pittsburgh was actually the first place where someone was paid to play the game.  I told him they were expanding the Hall of Fame building in Canton so he could fit in.

          “There has been a sentiment among the voters,” said Art Rooney Jr., “that there were too many Steelers in the Hall of Fame.  That hurt Butler and L.C. Greenwood, Donnie Shell and Dermontti Dawson.”

         They introduced the new class of 2012 before the coin flip at the Super Bowl, and they lined them up alphabetically, and Butler came first and Willie Roaf, a lineman for the Kansas City Chiefs and New Orleans Saints, stood at the other end.

         Pittsburgh was well represented in the Hall of Fame lineup and our city is sure to be well represented with fans in Canton this summer.

         Dermontti Dawson, a center for the Steelers, and two former Pitt players, running back Curtis Martin and defensive end Chris Doleman were there, along with Cortez Kennedy, a defensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks.  Martin is from my hometown of Hazelwood and went to Taylor Allderdice High.  Doleman was on Foge Fazio’s football team when I was the assistant athletic director for public relations at Pitt in the mid-80s.

         Martin said on Saturday that he went out for football at Allderdice to avoid going to jail.  He wanted to get away from the gang activity.   

         Butler was the pale white guy on the left end, the one who looked like a deer caught in headlights.  He looked like he had just gotten off the boat from Ireland. He wasn’t sure whether to smile or cry, so he did neither.   

         “I think he was shell-shocked,” said a friend who saw Butler on TV when the 2012 Hall of Fame class was introduced, “but I know he was happy.”

         Besides, his left knee was hurting.  He hurt that knee making a tackle of Pete Retzlaff of the Philadelphia Eagles during the 1959 season.

         The injury and the follow-up surgery nearly killed him, and it cut short his pro playing career.  He’s had a hitch in his walk ever since.  He ranked as the NFL’s second-leading interceptor with 52 picks when he retired.  He played in four Pro Bowls.  He retired a few years ago from overseeing an NFL scouting agency.

         Butler still ranks second in interceptions in the Steelers’ record books to Mel Blount who had 57 interceptions.  Butler accomplished his mark in 103 games in nine seasons, while Blount was in 200 games over 14 years.       

         Butler holds the team record for interceptions in one game with four against the Washington Redskins in 1953.  He still holds the team record for return yards with interceptions with 827 yards, 98 more yards than runner-up Rod Woodson.

Butler intercepted ten passes one year, and nine in another year – when there were 12 games in a season — and returned several of them for touchdowns, including a game-winner against the New York Giants.  Maybe that memory came back to him as he witnessed the Giants’ exciting victory over the New England Patriots last Sunday evening.

         I mentioned to Butler that Ike Taylor, the cornerback of the Steelers, is regarded as a terrific pass defender these days, but that he can’t intercept passes to save his life, or to turn the tide for the Steelers in close games.   “He has wooden hands,” said Butler.

         Scouts talk that way, in short staccato sentences.

         Butler returned four interceptions for touchdowns, and picked up a fumble and scored six points as well during his stay with the Steelers.  Only Woodson, with five interception returns for touchdowns, topped Butler in that team category.

         Mel Blount and Rod Woodson both were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, but Butler has had to wait all this time.  His situation was similar to that of Dick LeBeau, the Steelers’ defensive coordinator, who got in last summer via a special veterans’ selection committee nomination. 

         LeBeau was boosting Butler for induction as well.

         Butler grew up in Oakland and Whitehall.  He and Frank Thomas, one of the Pirates’ most prodigious home run hitters, both came out of Oakland and went to Mount Carmel College, a seminary in Niagara Falls, Ontario.  It’s where they went to high school and it’s where they both decided they didn’t want to be priests.

         Both went on to play pro sports.  Both fathered eight children.  Jack and Bernie Butler have four boys and four girls and 15 grandchildren.   Jack went to St. Bonaventure College where the athletic director was Father Dan Rooney, also known as Father Silas Rooney, who was the brother of Steelers’ owner Art Rooney.

Joe Bach, who would coach the Steelers in two different stints, was the head football coach at St. Bonaventure.

         “We honored Jack with an honorary degree at St. Bonaventure’s two years ago,” said Jack McGinley Jr., a proud graduate of the Olean, N.Y., school and also the chairman of the board of trustees at his alma mater. 

         “So if he gets into the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” said McGinley with tongue in cheek, “it will be Jack’s second greatest honor.”

         Frank Thomas told me he used to sneak into baseball games at Forbes Field when he was a child.  Butler says he remembers going to one Steelers’ game at Forbes Field with his father and his uncle.  “I don’t remember much about the game or who they were playing,” said Butler.  “I was more interested in getting a hot dog and some soda pop.”

         That’s part of the charm of Jack Butler.  He’s not the easiest interview.  He won’t toot his own horn.  I recalled that he spoke several years ago at a testimonial dinner for his old teammate, the late Fran Rogel from North Braddock Scott, California (Pa.) and Penn State.

         “I’m not much a speaker,” Butler began his remarks that night at the Churchill Country Club.  He went on to offer a brief, but to-the-point and from-the-heart tribute for an old friend.  I was the emcee that evening, and I told Butler he was the best of a too long line of long-winded speakers.

         “They killed it with too many speeches,” Butler told Art Rooney, Jr., who was among those in attendance that evening.  Even so, it was a special evening for admirers and friends of Fran Rogel, who joined the Steelers the year before Butler. 

         Butler came to the Steelers as an undrafted free agent in 1951 and was the last player to make the 33-man squad.  He started out as a two-way end, but moved to the secondary because of an injury to a starting cornerback.

         Jack Butler, Art Rooney Jr. and Jack McGinley Jr. all take pride in their Catholic faith.  Art goes to Mass every morning.  They are spiritual men and they are throwbacks to another era, a simpler, better era.

         They speak humbly and positively and they employ expressions that have gone out of date.  “Get a hot meal,” Art Jr. will tell you if you have lunch with him at the St. Clair Country Club.  “I owe you a steak dinner.  I’m having a poor man’s sandwich.”

         They don’t use foul language.  With all the heroics in his Steelers’ career, Butler never would have thought of thumping his chest, or doing a specially choreographed dance in the end zone .  Butler would never behave the way ballplayers do today when they make a routine tackle, or catch a pass.

         Such histrionics, of course, annoy the hell – make that heck – out of people my age who remember when players didn’t taunt or attempt to terrorize their opponents, or get some time on the TV highlights that night.

         Butler and Art Rooney Jr. were both football scouts.  Butler started out helping with scouting college players for the Steelers, and then became the director of the BLESTO-V scouting organization, which was a combine that represented a half dozen NFL teams.  Art Jr. was in charge of the Steelers’ scouting department when they selected all those great players in the 70s when they were named the Team of the Decade, winning four Super Bowls in six seasons under Chuck Noll.

         They shared some of the same press boxes, exchanged observations and notes.  Butler and I spoke about scouting and he agreed that today’s scouts and personnel people tend to over-analyze prospects.

         “They get a big guy who is agile and can run the 40 real fast and jump real high,” said Butler, “and they think he’s a great prospect.  But he can’t play football.  He doesn’t know how to play the game.  I only cared if they could play football.  The rest of the stuff wasn’t important to me.

         “I wanted to know if they played well consistently.  Pro football players come in all shapes and sizes.  I wasn’t very big or very fast, but I’m very proud of playing in the league and giving back something of myself as a personnel guy.”

         I’ve checked out the home of the Butlers whenever I have visited the Homestead Library, still a must-see landmark above where the U.S. Steel Mill once flourished, long before there was a Waterfront Complex.

         The home was familiar to me because my sister-in-law, Diane Churchman, grew up in that same house.  Her name was Diane Thomas back then, and her two sisters, Judy and Carole, lived in that stately home.  They were Munhall marksmen, members of the championship rifle teams at Munhall High School.

         “That was a long time ago,” said Butler, still the good scout.

Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien has a book called “The Chief: Art Rooney and His Pittsburgh Steelers,” available at area book stores.  His website is www.jimobriensportsauthor.com

First, can you let readers know about life after football and your new venture ( Joccupation) – what is it, how did this get started and how is it  going so far?

Well, I stopped playing after I tore my hamstring in ’04. It required surgery to re-attach it. Due to the severity of the injury, it was one of those things – it damaged my speed and ability and the team had to make a financial decision to not keep me. I wasn’t a starter…they wouldn’t pay me after that injury to be a backup.

I had graduated from Vanderbilt and my degree helped me to become a teacher – I’m still teaching world history to tenth graders.

Continue reading “Ainsley Battles, Steelers Safety, 2000, 2004”

First, can you let readers know about your coaching career – how you got started coaching post-NFL and what you enjoy about it most?

I’m coaching high school football and track now. I’m working with the safeties on the football team and coaching long-distance runners in track.

I got started after I retired playing for New York. I went back and got my degree after I retired – I had thirty hours left – that was in ’97. I became a graduate assistant for Texas A&M and did that for a season.

After the year turned, I decided in January to live back in Dallas to spend more time with my wife. I think I just got burnt out from football as I think about it now. I had a moving company for a couple of years there before getting back into coaching in 2001 coaching high school football at a private school.

Continue reading “Gary Jones, Steelers Safety, 1990-1994”