Bob Labriola's Top 10 Steelers

[papillon]

Re: Bob Labriola's Top 10 Steelers

The Steel Curtain reached its zenith in 1976 after the Steelers started 1-4 and lost their quarterback Terry Bradshaw. Then, sparked by Greene’s relentless ferocity, the defense dominated the next nine games, allowing just two touchdowns and 3.1 points per game. The Steelers went on to repeat as Super Bowl champions, and won again in 1979 and 1980.

The Steelers didn't win a championship at the end of the 1976 season. I always thought that was a shame, after that turnaround and dominating defensive season. They had won two Super Bowls PRIOR to that season (IX and X), but in the season referenced above, they lost the AFC Championship game to the Raiders (Franco and Rocky were both out due to injuries). At the end of the 1978 and 1979 seasons, they won Super Bowls again (XIII and XIV).

Chuck Noll just didn't have enough time to put in a one back offense using Reggie Harrison I believe. The Raiders beat them pretty good in that game. It happens.

Pappy

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: Bob Labriola's Top 10 Steelers

NFL Network special on Steelers misses mark on two counts

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2010 03:00 PM WRITTEN BY BOB SMIZIK


Len Pasquarelli shouldn’t need an introduction to most fans of the NFL. He is a Pittsburgh guy who had to leave town when he couldn’t find newspaper work -- shame on the Press and P-G for that -- and finally ended up at the Atlanta Journal Constitution covering the Falcons and then to Internet work. He’s one of the best in the business and now works at The Sports Xchange.

Like many of us, he was taken aback by some of the oversights on The NFL Network’s show about the 10 greatest Steelers. But he was as annoyed with who the network failed to interview as much as with who it omitted from the top ten list. -- Bob Smizik


By Len Pasquarelli
The Sports Xchange

Forget that Hall of Fame members Jack Ham and Mike Webster somehow didn’t make the cut on The NFL Network’s list of the top 10 Pittsburgh Steelers players of all-time for the Christmas Eve special.

Ignore the fact that Ernie Stautner and Jack Butler didn’t even merit a mention. Or that, we’re guessing for the sake of propriety, the filmmakers didn’t interview Dan Rooney, or Art Rooney Jr., or Art Rooney II, the former of whom has witnessed first-hand virtually every player who has ever graced the Black and Gold. Or that the top 10 Steelers were apparently the top 10 from the Super Bowl Era only.

Such lists – and here I pause to damn my favorite late-night talk show host, David Letterman, for having popularized a quantitative menu now embraced by editors of every media stripe – are subjective, after all. They are the New Age substitute for the old neighborhood bar debate, because it’s not P.C. anymore to wander down to the corner establishment and belly up to the bar for a cold Iron City. Top 10 lists drive traffic because of the inexplicable-but-fervent knee-jerk commotion created by them. As a former boss apprised me that, in the Internet Age, traffic is significantly more revered than content.

This is the sorry devolution, folks, of journalism: It’s a whole lot easier now, and far more profitable, to conjure up some top 10 list that percolates emotions than it is to pen a few well-crafted paragraphs to do the same.

And so, to all the good ‘burghers getting worked up over what are perceived as snubs by the NFL’s pricey electronic arm, well, save your bile.

Here’s the real failure of the Steelers’ top 10 list: The absence of either Vito Stellino or Ed Bouchette, or both, as commentators on The NFL Network’s choices. Between the two – and, in the interest of full disclosure, I concede that both are among my closest and most admired friends in this ever-changing business, and so, yeah, we’re prejudiced – they have chronicled the Steelers for roughly 40 years. And as latter-day Boswells, they have witnessed and reported on all six of the franchise’s Super Bowl victories.

But for whatever reason, The NFL Network producers didn’t have a single shred of celluloid of Stellino or Bouchette musing on the choices. Oh, they had a bunch of NFL observers, some of them local, most from other cities. And most of them are solid guys, good buddies, known for a long time. The others are certainly expert, very knowledgeable about the NFL, and are mostly admired by yours truly.

But it would have been a lot more legitimate to The Steelers Nation had the network interviewed, say, Joe Gordon or Ed Kiely, longtime team public relations directors, and regarded as unofficial team historians. And it would have validated the effort even more had Bouchette and Stellino been included.

People make much, and rightly so, of the impressive subset of standout centers the club has employed over the past three-plus decades. But faithful readers have been informed of the Steelers’ exploits almost as seamlessly by Stellino and Bouchette, and they should have had a voice in the project. Not in choosing the 10, because neither would have agreed to such an exercise, but rather in elaborating on it.

I live in a city, Atlanta, where they generally treat history as if it were the modern reminder of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s torching the town. My wife, also a Pittsburgh native, has accurately suggested that, once a building gets to be 20 years old in Atlanta, it is either imploded, exploded, or reduced to wrecking ball grist. In my hometown, they embrace history (sometimes to a fault, since on my ventures home to Bloomfield, I swear that some of the same guys are standing on the same street corners they did 30 years ago), and the Steelers are part of the history. And there aren’t many familiar with the history of the Steelers more than the tandem of Stellino and Bouchette.

The former is a dean of NFL reporting, some insist the conscience of the league. Other than his restless knee syndrome (insider’s allusion for all those who have sat in a press conference and watched Stellino grill the commissioner) and perhaps his signature voice, Stellino might seem rather innocent. Unless, of course, you’re on the receiving end of one of his inquisitions. No one dares ask the difficult question, or ignores the elephant in a room, more than Stellino does. At the same time, few are as thorough as Bouchette, a dogged reporter and shamefully underrated writer.

In fairness to The NFL Network, Bouchette related that, at the annual NFL meetings last March in Orlando, a representative from the top 10 Steelers project did ask him to sit down for a taping. But it was on the day head coach Mike Tomlin acceded to a Bouchette interview request, so there was a conflict. Bouchette asked if someone could get back to him, and no one ever did.

Stellino, who was unaware of the show, was never even asked, he said.

One can argue that The NFL Network was wide right in not including players such as Stautner, Butler, Ham, Webster, Andy Russell, Dermontti Dawson, L.C. Greenwood, Louis Lipps, Donnie Shell, Mike Wagner, Ben Roethlisberger, Buddy Dial, Jimmy Orr, John Henry Johnson, or others we’ve probably missed. But one of the beauties of the Steelers is that they had so many worthy players through the years that a simple top 10 list couldn’t possibly suffice.

But this much can’t be argued: By not including Bouchette and Stellino in some role in the show, the network fumbled at the goal-line.

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