SI Archives - Steelers of the 70s

Over at si.com, they have decided to put ALL the articles from old issues of SI online and available for free. This is the magazine that has pretty much set the standard for sports writing (let alone photography) over the last 50 years and now you can read all of the old greats for free. We may all know about the famous articles like Sidd Finch and many have recently visited to read Myron Cope's submissions, but there are many many articles that didn't cover the Super Bowl or World Series or some other event and have long been forgotten or inaccessible unless you owned all the back issues. And there are some great articles that we now have the chance to relive.

I'll go through some of these on a team by team or topic by topic basis, picking out what I really liked, starting with our Steelers of the 70's:

• CURTAIN CALL FOR THE STEELERS (Nov 5, 1979): Dr. Z captures the spirit of the Cowboy/Steeler rivalry, not by writing about a Super Bowl but by covering a regular season game between the two that was played the season after Super Bowl XIII. The beginning sums it all up:
  

  The Pittsburgh Steelers are a bunch of roughnecks with money in their pockets. The Dallas Cowboys figured that if you want to take it away from them, you don't use a blackjack. You use three shells and a pea. So, in the great computer room in Dallas, Tom Landry punched the button marked Steelers, the machines whirred and hummed, and the printout came out titled: Finesse. Subheading: Trickery.
  
  Look at what the Cowboys were up against. The Steelers' defensive line has a tackle called Mean Joe and an end called Mad Dog. Their middle linebacker has almost no teeth. Their right linebacker is named Dirt. And their quarterback...man, if Terry Bradshaw ain't limping and bleeding, the argument hasn't even started.
  
  The computer told the Cowboys what to do, but here's the funny thing about computers. They can't cut down a linebacker or move out a defensive tackle; they can't get down in a four-point stance and fight off a double-team. And when the verdict was in at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh last Sunday, when the Steelers had stopped every bit of flimflammery and gimmickry the Cowboys threw at them and had knocked Roger Staubach out of the box while winning by a 14-to-3 score, Mean Joe Greene, the elder statesman of the defensive line, drew a deep breath and pronounced in that deliberate way of his, "Dallas is a team that tries to fool you. They wait for you to make a mistake. Well, what happens when they don't fool you? Can they blow you out?" And he looked up and paused for a moment. "I think not."

• From the same issue: "The Brutal Trip Down": Want to know about Joe Gilliam's tragic life and times? Here it is.
• Dr Z has a knack for intros. This one from "Pittsburgh Made Them Face The Music" (Sept 17, 1979):
  

  The Monster had been holed up in the dark closet, along with the old high school graduation suit and the scrap-books. Every now and then you'd hear some noises, but it hadn't really bothered anyone lately. Oh, you knew it was there all right, but no one in his right mind was going to open the door to make sure.
  

• Myron just passed away and we all heard about his creation of The Terrible Towel, now read about the "True Tales of The Terrible Towel" that Myron wrote in SI in 1979 (July 30, 1979).
• The Steeler/Raider rivalry of the 70's was unparalleled. Here's a recount of the last game of 5 straight years the teams would meet in the playoffs. This time the Raiders won what was billed as WWIII: "Revenge for the Raiders" (Jan 3, 1977).
• "A Living Legend Called Mean Smilin' Jack" (July 12, 1976). A young Jack Splat is profiled:
  

  According to Lambert's teammates and adversaries, he's the Grendel of the Gridiron, a cleated and bone-crunching blend of Caligula and King Kong who delights in snatching the soft parts from hapless backs and receivers and who performs open-heart surgery on the enemy using naught but his snaggled, bloody fingernails in lieu of a scalpel. He's not just meaner than mean. He's meaner than Greene!

• The season after winning SBIX, the Steelers took on the Oilers and the 'D' word was already being mentioned. "A Steel Bit Drills The Oilers" (Nov 17, 1975).
• "HE DOES WHAT HE WANTS OUT THERE" (Sept 22, 1975). A long profile of Mean Joe includes this:
  

  The last entry in the Steelers' scouting file on Greene says: "I would question taking a boy like this in the first round as he could turn out to be a big dog." This note was prophetic only to the extent that it might have conjured up the difficulties involved in trying to block a Doberman pinscher.

• Remember the College All Star games that the Super Bowl Champ would play every preseason? Here's a recap from the 1975 game - and the All Stars actually gave the Steelers some problems at the outset: "Twinkle, Twinkle - And Pffft" (Aug 11, 1975).
• Three Bricks Shy of a Load author Roy Blount Jr rejoins the Steelers as they march to and through New Orleans and SBIX in "You're A Part of All This" (Feb 17, 1975) and what a story:
  

  For a distance of what must have been a mile, all the way from the gate down the long corridor and through the baggage area and way on out into the parking lot, I proceeded like a loaded blood cell along a narrow artery through hungry tissues of people, who were jammed into every inch of space on both sides of us, and they were all cheering.

• In what some Steelers have called the best game they ever played and Joe Greene says that he was 'in a zone', the Steelers went to Oakland and won the AFC to get to SBIX: "The Defense Never Rested" (Jan 6, 1975).
• Even back in 1974, there was something unique between the Steelers and the city of Pittsburgh and its fans, it just presented itself a little differently before they won a SB: "A Strange Kind of Love" (Aug 5, 1974).
• A little more of the great writings of Myron: "The Immaculate Reception and Other Miracles" (Aug 20, 1973).
• Roy Blount profiles the Rooney sons in "An Unsentimental Education" (July 13, 1973). Interesting to read 35 years later.