The Ones Who Hit the Hardest

by Chad Millman

  Abel’s biggest concerns were layoffs, foreign imports, and a decline in U.S. productivity. He was convinced that all three of these were occurring for one reason only—the threat of a USWA strike. Every three years, Abel had witnessed the big steel buyers (automakers and heavy machinery) ordering massive amounts of steel prior to a contract negotiation between the union and the steel manufacturers. Worried that talks between the two would break off and lead to a strike, GM, Ford, Chrysler, and the others would make sure they had enough steel on hand. The result would be a wild period of “hedge buying” that created massive demand six months before contract talks began. Then, once a deal was complete, the demand for steel would plunge. It put Abel in the awkward position of cheerfully announcing a wage increase just days before the big eleven manufacturers, with no future orders in hand, announced layoffs, which would often approach a quarter of the entire workforce.

  Another effect of the possibility of a strike was increased imports of foreign steel. While the USWA and the big steel manufacturers were successful getting a 10 percent tariff on steel coming into the U.S., the demand during the hedge-buying period was often too high for U.S. mills to meet. Even when the U.S. mills ran at their highest possible capacity twenty-four hours a day, they could not meet demand. So orders would go to foreign markets, and once a manufacturer established a relationship with a foreign producer—many of whom were notorious for demanding long-term supply contracts—they felt all the more comfortable buying abroad. With imports flooding U.S. markets during a negotiation, stockpiles of surplus steel built up. The surplus would often last a full six to eight months after the USWA contract was settled, and it often took a full year before all 500,000 steelworkers were back at work. Since each contract was three years long, the process would soon begin all over again. Imported steel in 1965 accounted for 10.4 million tons. By 1971, it had reached 18.3 million tons.

  With regular layoffs and increased competition from foreign steelmakers, the youngest generation suffered the most. The “last one hired, first one fired” refrain became a popular one. The newest workers had no seniority and so, in the unique vernacular of Pittsburgh, they loafed around and waited to be recalled. On his drive into the city every morning, Abel would see the crowds of young men hanging around the Carson Street bars, drinking at the crack of dawn. When the young men got back on the job, it took time for them to get back in the swing of things. Once they did, the supply of steel would rise, demand would remain constant or even dip, and the cycle would repeat itself. Many of the men came to expect their “mini-vacations” and often questioned the very nature of their work. USWA statistics in 1970 showed a turnover of 187,000 jobs a year.

  Abel had to consider the needs of steel manufacturers. If there were no mills, there would be no workers. But as the 1971 contract negotiations began, he had to deliver for his men. And what the old guard wanted was more money and more benefits. When he tried to get a deal together before the massive hedge buying began, the steel companies would not listen. Abel was forced to threaten a strike to get them to the table. Once he did, the hedging was unprecedented. Steel buyers bought an astronomical 17 million tons of hedge before the 1971 contract was ratified. A more radical USWA president would have pushed a national strike and refused to fill orders. But Abel thought a strike would be disastrous. Japan and Germany would happily supply the hedge, further weakening U.S. Steel production. While Abel delivered a massive 30 percent increase in wages over the next three years, as well as a cost-of-living increase, the glut in the market put a stop to orders. More than 105,000 seething young steelworkers, most of them from western Pennsylvania, lost their jobs.

  They filled the local bars and drank ten-cent drafts, wondering why the old guard had sold them out.

  25

  IT WAS DICK HOAK’S JOB TO FIGURE OUT WHAT FRANCO HARRIS could do. The Pittsburgh native and Penn State alum, whose brothers and father worked in the mills, had retired as the Steelers all-time leading rusher after the 1970 season. He had taken a job as a high school football coach at a catholic school in West Virginia, where his team went 1-9. “But I liked it,” says Hoak. “I could have stayed there forever.”

  Instead, shortly after drafting Harris, Noll called Hoak and asked him if he wanted to come back home and coach the Steelers running backs. “It just so happened I had an offer from the Pitt coach to come work for him, too,” says Hoak. “When I told him about the Steelers he said I’d be crazy to turn them down. So I took it. Good thing, too. Pitt went 1-9 that year and everyone got fired.”

  Hoak wasn’t hired until after the Steelers had drafted Harris. The first time he ever saw him on the field in person was at training camp. It didn’t go well. Harris played in a college all-star game and arrived at camp a week late. During those first few practices, he was constantly caught by tacklers behind the line of scrimmage. Instead of hitting the hole he was biding his time, looking for a place to cut back against the grain that was never there. “He wasn’t setting camp on fire,” says Hoak. “Some of the guys were looking at each other like what the heck?”

  “When I first saw him I didn’t think he was going to make it,” says Russell. “He would stop before he hit the hole. He would backtrack, go left, go right. He wouldn’t hit the hole. I thought, what’s he doing?”

  Harris never bought into the kill-or-be-killed mentality of football. He liked running, he liked eluding. When he watched films of opponents’ defenses he always found himself focusing on the running back instead of the linebackers, trying to imagine himself making the same moves he was watching on screen. While most guys compartmentalized their lives, becoming someone new and scary on the field, Harris was the same on and off the field. A thinker in pads. With his curly hair and dark beard and chiseled nose and olive skin, he took on the look of a Grecian philosopher. Just because it was a contact sport didn’t mean you had to crave contact. “The art of running is being able to change and do things because what you thought would be there is not there,” Harris once told NFL Films.

  It took one exhibition game for his coaches to realize that Harris wasn’t the problem in practice, it was his teammates. “We went down to Atlanta for an exhibition,” says Hoak. “We put him in the game and we run this play where he is supposed to go around the left end. He starts over there and there is nothing there. Then all of a sudden he puts his foot in the ground, cuts back to the other side, and runs seventy-five yards for a touchdown. These little defensive backs are chasing him and they can’t catch him. When he took off down that sideline you said, ‘holy cow.’

  “After that, the coaches sat around and thought about why he looked so bad in practice. Well, in practice sometimes guys don’t go full speed. So if he started cutting back there was nothing there because these guys weren’t going all out and they’d be sitting in the lanes, so there was no place to run. You get in a game and these guys are pursuing, it’s a different story. After that exhibition game Chuck just came up to me and said, ‘Dick, don’t over-coach him.’”

  Still, Noll didn’t start Harris right away. He’d usually bring him in off the bench sometime in the second quarter. But by the seventh game of the year—after Harris had rushed for 138 yards and two touchdowns on just fifteen carries against the Bills—he was Pittsburgh’s primary offensive weapon. “Every time Franco ran for a hundred yards my wife would make him a lasagna,” says Pittsburgh’s then trainer Ralph Berlin. “For a while it seemed like she was making him one every week.”

  During his first few years as coach, Noll’s constant tinkering with his roster had dramatically changed the makeup of his offensive line. While the trend in the league was to put big beefy men up front, Noll wanted his guys to be smaller and faster. His preferred method of running the ball wasn’t to overpower a defensive line, it was to use a defender’s aggressive nature against himself by executing trap blocks. In a trap the offensive lineman doesn’t initially block the defensive lineman across from him. He just lets him go, while another offensive lineman pull
s from his position and blindsides the onrushing defender.

  But the most important key to a trapping running game is to have a runner who’s patient enough to wait for those blocks to develop. The Steelers hadn’t had that until Harris arrived. “It’s not a forty-yard dash coming out of your stance,” says Hoak. “You had to run under control and see what was happening. If you were out of control you would run right up your guard’s back. That is what made us so good. Franco had great vision—he could see the whole field and feel people around him. He was a great trap runner.”

  “We didn’t have big, bull-you-over linemen like Kansas City or Oakland,” says Harris. “Our guys were small, and all the traps worked perfectly for me. It was tailored to my running style—I was lucky with that. At the point of contact, once the ball is hiked, there is nothing but chaos, and where the hole is supposed to be, half the time or more it’s not there, and there’s so much chaos that you have to be able to have your keys and read and respond. I was fortunate enough that I was good at that.”

  Harris not only made the offense more explosive, he made it more respected. No longer did the defense have to keep opponents out of the end zone and then pray the offense didn’t screw up. There was competitive balance on the team. Practices were more intense. And that elevated everyone. Through the first month of the season, the Steelers were 2-2, with wins over the Raiders and Cardinals and losses to the Cowboys and Bengals. But in the fifth game of the year, they introduced themselves to the league as grown-ups in a 24-7 home win against Houston. The offense, led by Harris’s 115 yards rushing, gained 295 total yards, 249 of those on the ground. And the defense gave up only 108 yards total, with no passing yards. None. The next week they beat New England by thirty. Then it was Buffalo by seventeen. The week after that they played the Bengals again. They had won three in a row, but Cincy was the defending division champ. It was no contest. The Steelers went up 26-0 by halftime. When Harris scored the last touchdown of the game, late in the fourth quarter, he iced a 40-17 win.

  That Bengals game was the fourth of seven straight in which the Steelers would gain more than 200 yards on the ground. Their dominance was so obvious to everyone watching the NFL that, after the game, Steelers guard Bruce Van Dyke was named the AFC’s Offensive Player of the Week. On one play against the Bengals he pulled to trap block a linebacker, fell, got back up and, from his hands and knees, lunged at a defensive back to make another block. Even for an offensive lineman, it’s hard to stay anonymous after an effort like that.

  The next weekend Pittsburgh beat the Chiefs, just three years removed from their Super Bowl win, and who, along with the Dolphins, were considered the class of the AFC. It was the kind of win no one in Pittsburgh had ever dreamed could happen, perennial losers beating up one of the best teams in football. Even more remarkable, it was the fifth straight Steelers win.

  Two weekends later the Steelers were closing in on an accomplishment that had once seemed impossible for a franchise that couldn’t win a Pee Wee title: clinching a division championship. Really, it should have been easy. They were in Houston, facing an Oilers team that was 1-11. But L. C. Greenwood was out with an injury. Two of the five starters on the offensive line—Jon Kolb and Gerry Mullins—had the flu. Later in the game, Van Dyke would injure his leg and be pulled. A fourth starting offensive lineman, Jim Clack, injured his ankle. To top it all off, Bradshaw left the game with a dislocated finger. Running backs, even ones as talented as Harris, are only as good as their offensive line. And this line—this team—was in trouble.

  At halftime, the score was tied 3-3. But when the Steelers came out for the second half, “Joe Greene just took it over,” says Hoak. “He was sacking the quarterback, getting the running back, forcing fumbles. I don’t know if I can say I ever saw a defensive lineman control a game. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  Greene had five sacks that day and two forced fumbles, both of which led to Steelers field goals. He also blocked an Oilers field goal attempt. “I decided this was our chance, we were so close,” says Greene. “And I just didn’t want to lose.”

  He didn’t. And neither did the Steelers. They toppled the Oilers that day, 9-3. And the next weekend, after beating the Chargers in San Diego 24-2, they were 11-3 and crowned AFC Central Division champs.

  26

  AS BIG AS ANYTHING HARRIS OR GREENE DID ON THE FIELD, there was another phenomenon at Three Rivers in 1972. In support of it, people marched on the stadium, in groups eighty-strong. They wore green army helmets with the Italian flag painted on the side. They carried hollowed-out loaves of Italian bread, stuffed with bottles of red wine. There were plastic wineglasses with stems in their bags, along with enough meat and cheese to feed, well, an army. Which is what this group of fans called themselves.

  Al Vento, a pizza man, and Tony Stagno, a baker, and their families had been going to Steelers games for as long as there’d been a team. From Forbes field, to Pitt Stadium, from bad to worse to “Can it be worth it?” But when the team moved to Three Rivers, they bought tickets anyway. And hatched an idea. “We looked around the stadium and there were no banners, there was no enthusiasm,” Stagno told NFL Films. “Someone we were sitting with said, ‘It’ll take an army to get fans going.’ We said, ‘Okay, we’ll be the Italian Army.’”

  Every game they sat in their section, with two seats reserved just to hold the food, wearing their Italian Army helmets and waving Italian flags. Other signs sprouted up around Three Rivers: GERELA’S GORILLAS, for kicker Roy Gerela, or DOBRE SHUNKA, which meant “Good Ham” in Polish, to honor Jack Ham. But no one could compete with the roar of the Italian Army. Especially after Stagno and Vento anointed the Steelers half-Italian running back as their leader.

  As a rookie, even while ripping through defenses, Harris was as unassuming as he had been on Penn State’s campus. “We loved his style because we were old-school guys who were taught you didn’t talk to the crowd and ask them to applaud,” says Russell. “Franco would run, pick up his yards, and never play to the crowd. He was old school, and we loved that.”

  Harris didn’t even bother buying a new car that first year, and the one he had was often in the shop. Many times he hitchhiked or took the bus home from practices and games. So when Vento and Stagno wanted to talk to him and ask if they could rename their uprising “Franco’s Italian Army,” he wasn’t too hard to find. “They just approached me about it after a game one day early in the season,” says Harris. “I said, ‘Sounds good to me.’ Never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would get as big as it did.”

  It wouldn’t have, had Harris not blown up the way he did. Once he became a starter, he began a streak of eight straight hundred-yard-or-more rushing games, breaking the record that had been held by Jim Brown. He finished the year with 1,055 yards and was voted into the Pro Bowl by his peers. But mostly, in the same way he brought the offense and defense together by putting them on equal ground, his talent turned Three Rivers into a melting pot. Signs all over read RUN, PAISANO, RUN. There was an Israeli Brigade of the Italian Army and an African-American Brigade and Irish one, too, that christened the running back “Franc O’Harris.”

  By season’s end, when Harris was introduced before games, the scoreboard flashed the words “Franco’s Italian Army,” and 50,000 people roared until their throats were raw, waving red, green, and white Italian flags that had been passed out before the game. Even the players couldn’t ignore it. “What’s this red, green, and white, man? What’s that? Red, green, and white?” Joe Greene asked on he sidelines before a game once.

  “That’s the Italian flag, maaaaan,” Harris responded, as chill as the Pittsburgh air that winter afternoon.

  “My season kept getting bigger and bigger and the fans really started to connect with us,” says Harris. “At that time the army kept telling its story, and it grew of such significance that people from around the country joined it, and people are calling out to me.”

  The Monday before the Steelers division-clin
ching game against the Chargers, Noll flew the team out to Palm Springs, to get it acclimated to warm weather and the time change. Vento and Stagno decided that, since the team was out there, the unofficial mayor of Palm Springs and the number-one Italian in the world, Francis Albert Sinatra, should be drafted into Franco’s Army as a one-star general. They begged Steelers announcer Myron Cope to make it happen.

  After a couple days, Cope had grown frustrated trying to track down a contact for Sinatra. Six different people had said they could help him, that they were Sinatra’s top lieutenant, and none had come through. He was having drinks with a buddy one night and said, “I’ve had it, I’m not wasting any more time on this project.”

  “Waste a little more,” his buddy said, pointing to the door as Frank Sinatra walked through it. Sinatra was escorted to a back room as Cope scribbled a note as fast as he could. It read:Dear Frank:

  We are press and front-office bums traveling with the Steelers. We do not wish to disturb your dinner except to say this: Franco Harris, who as you probably know is a cinch for Rookie of the Year, has a fan club called Franco’s Italian Army. Franco is half-black, half-Italian. So a baker named Tony Stagno started Franco’s Italian Army and is its four-star general. The Army hopes you will come out to practice tomorrow to be commissioned a one-star general. There will, of course, be an appropriate ceremony in which you will be given a general’s battle helmet, and there will be ritual dago red and provolone cheese and prosciutto, and there will be much Italian hugging and kissing.