Legendary coach Chuck Noll passes away ...

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WestCoastJoe
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Just read this. Very sad. More in a bit.

On my iPad. Will clean this up a bit later.

But first, about the reconciliation between Bradshaw and Noll ...
Dapper Dan Dinner: Bradshaw-Noll reconciliation inspires crowd
Monday, February 10, 2003

By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

On a night when college basketball grabbed an unprecedented Pittsburgh spotlight by sweeping the top honors as Dapper Dan Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year, the star of the show was none other than Terry Bradshaw.

Well, it wasn't as much a show as it was a Bradshaw pulpit.

A quarterback's confessional.


Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw enjoy the moment last night. (Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette)

Bradshaw, the most storied of Steelers quarterbacks, stood last night on a dais in front of 1,700 patrons at the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers. He spoke for 19 minutes like a Louisiana preacher, mesmerizing the congregation. Most of all, he poured out in the direction of his presenter for his induction into the Dapper Dan Charities Pittsburgh Hall of Fame and his coach through his Hall of Fame career, Chuck Noll.

He apologized profusely.

"If I could reach down in my heart, I would say I'm sorry for every unkind word and thought I ever had. I mean that. I'm ashamed about that. It was ... my wrong, my childness, my selfishness. Having said that, it kind of cleanses me. I miss my coach. I love my coach. I miss Chuck Noll."

With that, Bradshaw received his third standing ovation and threw his right arm -- the throwing arm that helped to lead the Steelers to four Super Bowls and eventually forced him into retirement -- around Noll.

Yet the main ballroom's air was most charged last night by Bradshaw's moment.

While then-CBS booth partner Verne Lundquist was Bradshaw's presenter at his Hall of Fame ceremony a decade and a half ago, Noll got the chance to introduce him last night. Bradshaw had requested that of Dapper Dan officials.

"Tonight is a real, real pleasure for me," Noll told the crowd. "I was asked to do something I did 30 years ago [after the 1970 draft] --introduce this young man."

"Wow, how cool is this?" Bradshaw began. "I am so glad to be back. It's been way too long. One of the great things about life, as we grow up and mature, we become wiser.

"I'm sure, Coach, I drove you a little bit crazy. You were trying to pass on your brilliance. I just wanted to play. I didn't want to read coverages -- cover-four and stuff. I didn't want to audible. I sure didn't want to run the football. I just wanted to throw it.

"People say we had trouble. I created that. I wasn't as much mad at you, Chuck, as I was mad at me. The problems were never really problems. Coach Noll never let them be problems. They were my problems. Even sitting by him tonight, I'm still trying to please him. I guess that's the little child in me."

Bradshaw added that few knew the entire story, such as the time Noll offered Bradshaw -- amid his second divorce -- the opportunity to live in the coach's house until he got back on his feet.

"This is my home," he said of Pittsburgh. "I'm glad that I'm back. You don't have to ask any more questions."

"No more 'When will Bradshaw come back to town? When will he come back to the Steelers' embrace? When will he make up with Noll?'

"It's dead from this time on."
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
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WestCoastJoe
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That is how I saw it.

I recall Bradshaw as a youthful draft choice, worried about his hair loss. Great talent though. I was a big fan. I thought Chuck Noll was not an ogre abusing him. Terry seemed immature.

Noll got the maximum out of Bradshaw. And the Steelers were an awesome team.

So glad they reconciled.

Terry was so gracious in his comments as shown above. I thought his public whining for decades was awful.

Good rapprochement. :thup:

Noll is in a better place now. Off this mortal coil.
"If I could reach down in my heart, I would say I'm sorry for every unkind word and thought I ever had. I mean that. I'm ashamed about that. It was ... my wrong, my childness, my selfishness. Having said that, it kind of cleanses me. I miss my coach. I love my coach. I miss Chuck Noll."

With that, Bradshaw received his third standing ovation and threw his right arm -- the throwing arm that helped to lead the Steelers to four Super Bowls and eventually forced him into retirement -- around Noll.
While then-CBS booth partner Verne Lundquist was Bradshaw's presenter at his Hall of Fame ceremony a decade and a half ago, Noll got the chance to introduce him last night. Bradshaw had requested that of Dapper Dan officials.

"Tonight is a real, real pleasure for me," Noll told the crowd. "I was asked to do something I did 30 years ago [after the 1970 draft] --introduce this young man."

"Wow, how cool is this?" Bradshaw began. "I am so glad to be back. It's been way too long. One of the great things about life, as we grow up and mature, we become wiser.

"I'm sure, Coach, I drove you a little bit crazy. You were trying to pass on your brilliance. I just wanted to play. I didn't want to read coverages -- cover-four and stuff. I didn't want to audible. I sure didn't want to run the football. I just wanted to throw it.

"People say we had trouble. I created that. I wasn't as much mad at you, Chuck, as I was mad at me. The problems were never really problems. Coach Noll never let them be problems. They were my problems. Even sitting by him tonight, I'm still trying to please him. I guess that's the little child in me."

Bradshaw added that few knew the entire story, such as the time Noll offered Bradshaw -- amid his second divorce -- the opportunity to live in the coach's house until he got back on his feet.
It does not het any better than that. :thup:

Amazing openness and honesty from Bradshaw, who has always worn his emotions right there on his sleeve. Pretty much the opposite of Noll. LOL
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
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WestCoastJoe
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HOF coach Chuck Noll, who won 4 Super Bowls, dies at 82
By Josh Katzowitz | NFL Writer
June 13, 2014 11:44 pm ET. CBS

Chuck Noll, the Hall of Fame coach who led the Steelers to four Super Bowls in the 1970s, died Friday at the age of 82, according to numerous reports out of Pittsburgh, the Associated Press and CNN.

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Noll's wife, Marianne, found him unresponsive at 9:45 p.m. ET. She called 911, and paramedics pronounced him dead at 9:55 p.m.

Noll had stayed out of the public eye in recent years, because, as CNN writes, he had suffered from Alzheimer's and heart problems.

In 1969, he took over a Steelers squad that had produced only two winning seasons in the previous nine years, and Pittsburgh promptly went 1-13 in Noll's first season. But by 1972, Noll (along with quarterback Terry Bradshaw, a 22-year-old running back named Franco Harris and one of the NFL's best defenses) led Pittsburgh to an 11-3 record and the franchise's first playoff appearance in 25 years.

From 1972-79, the Noll led the Steelers to an 88-27-1 regular-season record without ever missing the playoffs and while winning Super Bowls IX, X, XIII and XIV. Overall, he sported a 209-156-1 record, and he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1993.

“Chuck Noll is the best thing to happen to the Rooneys since they got on the boat in Ireland,” Art Rooney Jr., the oldest son of Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr., once said, via the Trib Review.

Among those on Noll's coaching tree are Jerry Glanville, Tony Dungy and Broncos coach John Fox.

“I think he's the greatest guy I've ever been around,” Fox said last February, via the Steelers official website. “He was very calm, very technique- and fundamental-oriented. He was not a screamer. He wasn't up or down. I think his biggest thing is that he was the same guy every day. He was not an ego guy like, ‘Look what I'm doing.' He was a great mentor, I know that.”

“Coach Noll was a tremendous technician in the individual fundamentals of football, which was something very important to him,” Fox continued. “I still believe it comes down to blocking and tackling, even at this level. Sometimes, we lose sight of that with the schemes and stuff. I really think it's about staying even keel, not experiencing the highs and lows that a football season can bring to you. And really, the technique. Not so much the ‘want to' but the ‘how to' play football.”
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
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WestCoastJoe
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http://www.edmontonjournal.com/sports/C ... story.html
Chuck Noll, Hall of Fame coach who led Pittsburgh Steelers to 4 Super Bowl titles, dead at 82

By Will Graves, The Associated Press June 14, 2014

FILE - In this Jan. 6, 1980, file photo, Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll glances toward the scoreboard clock during the closing seconds of AFC championship game against the Houston Oilers in Pittsburgh. Noll's Steelers beat Houston, 27-13, to earn a berth in the NFL football Super Bowl. Noll, the Hall of Fame coach who won a record four Super Bowl titles with the Steelers, died Friday night, June 13, 2014, at his home. He was 82. The Allegheny County (Pa.) Medical Examiner said Noll died of natural causes. (AP Photo/File)


PITTSBURGH, Pa. - Chuck Noll, the Hall of Fame coach who won a record four Super Bowl titles with the Pittsburgh Steelers, died Friday night at his home. He was 82.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner said Noll died of natural causes.

Noll transformed the Steelers from a long-standing joke into one of the NFL's pre-eminent powers, becoming the only coach to win four Super Bowls. He was a demanding figure who did not make close friends with his players, yet was a successful and motivating leader.

The Steelers won the four Super Bowls over six seasons (1974, 1975, 1978 and 1979), an unprecedented run that made Pittsburgh one of the NFL's marquee franchises, one that breathed life into a struggling, blue-collar city.

"He was one of the great coaches of the game," Steelers owner Dan Rooney once said. "He ranks up there with (George) Halas, (Tom) Landry and (Curly) Lambeau."

Noll's 16-8 record in post-season play remains one of the best in league history. He retired in 1991 with a 209-156-1 record in 23 seasons, after inheriting a team that had never won a post-season game. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.

Noll worked so well with Steelers President Rooney that the team never felt the need to have a general manager. When he retired, and was replaced by Bill Cowher, only four other coaches or managers in modern U.S. pro sports history had run their teams longer than Noll had.

"Chuck Noll is the best thing that happened to the Rooneys since they got on the boat (to America) in Ireland," Art Rooney II, the former Steelers personnel chief and the son of the team founder, once said.

A former messenger guard for his hometown Cleveland Browns who earned the nicknamed Knute Knowledge — as in Knute Rockne — Noll was an assistant with the San Diego Chargers and Baltimore Colts for nine seasons. Then he accepted what seemed a dead-end job in January 1969 as coach of the NFL's least-successful organization.

Art Rooney Sr. often hired friends and cronies as coaches, and only two of the Steelers' first 13 coaches had winning records. At the time Noll took over, the franchise was 105 games below .500 in its history.

Noll, hired only after Penn State's Joe Paterno turned down a $350,000, five-year offer, was different from any Steelers coach before him. He immediately brought intelligence, toughness, stability, confidence, character and a can-do mindset to a franchise accustomed to constant upheaval and ever-changing personnel.

Asked at his first news conference if his goal was to make the Steelers respectable, Noll said, "Respectability? Who wants to be respectable? That's spoken like a true loser."

Perhaps not the most colorful coach behind the microphone, Noll could often be counted on for memorable, motivational one-liners that became rallying cries. Phrases like "A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning," and "Before you can win a game, you have to not lose it," and "The thrill isn't in the winning, it's in the doing," spoke volumes about what Noll was trying to accomplish. They went over well in a football-crazed region of Pennsylvania.

The day after Noll was hired, the Steelers drafted defensive lineman Joe Greene. He was the first of the nine Hall of Famers selected during the Noll era. Four of the others were drafted within Noll's first four seasons: Terry Bradshaw, Mel Blount, Jack Ham and Franco Harris.

Four more arrived in the first five rounds of the 1974 draft: Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and Mike Webster. And the 1971 draft, though it produced only one Hall of Famer (Ham), generated seven starters.

While the Steelers surprisingly won their opener under Noll in 1969, beating Detroit, they lost their final 13 games that season, and their first three in 1970. By then, some were questioning Noll's hiring.

The Steelers' turnaround began in earnest in 1970, the year they moved into the AFC after the NFL and AFL merged. They drafted Bradshaw with the No. 1 pick, moved into Three Rivers Stadium after years of being a secondhand tenant of Pitt Stadium and Forbes Field. They won five of eight during one stretch.

By 1972, the year Harris arrived to give them the ground game Noll sought, they were championship contenders with an 11-3 record and a we've-turned-the-corner attitude. Noll had long since run off underachievers and pushed the Rooneys to bring in the players he wanted.

"He'll argue a point with you and keep yelling, 'No, this is right, you're wrong,'" Dan Rooney said. "Sometimes you have to say, 'This is the way we're going to do it.'"

The first traditional playoff game in Steelers history on Dec. 23, 1972, also signalled what was to come. The Steelers were in control of the John Madden-coached Raiders most of the game, until quarterback Ken Stabler scored in the final two minutes to put Oakland up 7-6.

With the Steelers down to fourth-and-10 on their side of the field, Bradshaw lofted a pass downfield intended for Frenchy Fuqua. As Fuqua and safety Jack Tatum converged on the ball, it bounded high in the air for what looked to be a certain incompletion. Instead, Harris, trailing on the play, caught the ball nearly at his shoe tops and raced into the end zone for an improbable touchdown.

The play would quickly become known as the "Immaculate Reception."

Noll's Steelers did not win the Super Bowl that season — they lost to unbeaten Miami on a fake punt in the AFC title game.

But, with their roster completed by their remarkable 1974 draft, they finally became NFL champions and did it three more times by January 1980.

Still, Noll's best team might have been in 1976, when the Steelers rebounded from a 1-4 start to go 10-4 — even with Bradshaw injured and out most of the season — by playing the greatest stretch of defence in NFL history.

The Steel Curtain shut out five of their final nine opponents while yielding only 28 points. At one point, they didn't allow a touchdown for 22 quarters.

However, Harris and Rocky Bleier, 1,000-yard rushers that season, were injured in a playoff game against Baltimore. Without a running game, they lost the AFC title to Oakland.

A year later, Noll wound up in a federal court trial. He accused Raiders defensive back George Atkinson, who had levelled Swann with a brutal hit the season before, of being part of the NFL's "criminal element."

Noll prevailed, but there were hard feelings when, under oath, he included Blount as also being part of that criminal element. The Steelers went 9-5 that season, but rebounded to win the championship in the 1978 and 1979 seasons.

When all the talent began to retire, the championships ended. Great drafts gave way to poor ones. The Steelers won only two playoff games and no conference championships in Noll's final 12 seasons, missing the post-season eight times.

Noll never was much of a yeller or screamer, though he had his moments. He confronted Oilers coach Jerry Glanville at midfield and warned him about the team's borderline-legal blocking techniques.

"He didn't feel like it was his job to motivate," Bleier said. "It was his job to take motivated people and give them a direction and get the job done."

When he retired, Noll always said he would never coach another team and he didn't.

In 2007, the football field at St. Vincent College, the Steelers' longtime training camp home in Latrobe, was named for Noll, even though he played at and graduated from Dayton.

Born in Cleveland, Noll attended Benedictine High School, where he played running back and tackle, winning All-State honours, before gaining a scholarship to play for the Flyers. He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh's biggest, most traditional rival, in 1953.

At 27, he retired as a player from the Browns in 1959.
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
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WestCoastJoe
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Not a rah rah guy. Not a screamer or yeller. But a great judge of talent. So many Hall of Fame players drafted and developed, starting with Joe Greene, his first draft pick. A motivator in his own way. Great attention to detail. Intelligence and character were hallmarks of his leadership. Somewhat stern and distant, but greatly respected.

Looking at the scoreboard in the final seconds of a 27-13 AFC championship victory over the Houston Oilers. Pretty much the way he approached the game. Quiet. Satisfaction evident.
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
South Pender
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Nice thread, Joe. Thanks for getting this up for the forum. I never knew about a feud between Noll and Bradshaw, buy Terry's comments were really impressive, authentic, and mature.

Chuck Noll was certainly one of the all-time great NFL coaches. I really liked his personal style.
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WestCoastJoe
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South Pender wrote:Nice thread, Joe. Thanks for getting this up for the forum. I never knew about a feud between Noll and Bradshaw, buy Terry's comments were really impressive, authentic, and mature.

Chuck Noll was certainly one of the all-time great NFL coaches. I really liked his personal style.
Thanks, SP, and you are welcome.

I was a Bradshaw fan, a Steelers fan, a Harris fan, a Greene fan, a Noll fan, all of them. And I was greatly disappointed in Terry's public whining for decades about Chuck Noll. It seemed so immature. And Chuck Noll never said a word.

But what a reconciliation! I don't think I have ever heard such a heartfelt plea and apology as that from Bradshaw. A mark of his character to fess up so completely in the rapprochement. :thup:

Athletes! LOL And there was Noll, always calm and cool, way above the emotion.

With so many poor role models nowadays, we can take satisfaction from some of the great coaches, in any sport. John Wooden at UCLA. Noll. Lombardi. Landry. Bill Walsh.
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
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