Embrace the Legacy of Steelers’ Camp at St. Vincent
The Steelers celebrated their 50th anniversary at St. Vincent in 2015 and the history they have there is one aspect that makes training camp so special. The shared experience of living in dorm rooms (with a curfew) and of grinding through padded practices under an unforgiving sun, connects the great teams of the 1970s with the ones that won two Super Bowls and played in another from 2005 to 2010.
Consider that one of former Steelers defensive end Brett Keisel’s enduring memories from a career that included two Super Bowl championships involves Joe Greene and training camp.
“I’ll never forget being at the same training camp for several years with ‘Mean Joe’ and he was out there with us every day [as a camp assistant coach],” Keisel said. “That was the coolest thing to me, being able to go out and compete and go to the sidelines and ask him about whatever and him being cool enough to actually try and help you. The greatest ever just watching you trying to carry on the Steel Curtain tradition was a really cool thing. Everyone that got to be around him was better off for it.”
Art Rooney II has a Joe Greene training camp story too, but there is a reason why the Steelers president waited for years to actually tell it to “Mean Joe.”
It happened when Rooney was young enough to work training camp as a ball boy with Bill Nunn, who later became an actor with a long list of Hollywood credits on his résumé.
“Joe showed up in a beautiful green Lincoln Continental, and somehow Bill got the keys one night and we decided to take it for a ride,” Rooney told reporters at the start of 2015 training camp. “We only told Joe that story about 10 years ago. We figured that enough time had passed that we could disclose our little joy ride.”
Camp has produced countless stories such as that one over five decades. It also gave birth to the legend of Greene.
In 1969, Greene arrived to training camp a day after it started because of a contract dispute. The Steelers had selected Greene with the fourth overall pick and that alone would have made the defensive tackle a target at camp. When he showed up late it really rankled some of the veteran players, especially center Ray Mansfield.
First-year coach Chuck Noll did not ease Greene into camp, quickly tabbing him for the famed Oklahoma drill. The Oklahoma drill pits an offensive lineman and a running back against a defensive player, who has to beat a block and get the back on the ground. Mansfield, who would play 11 seasons for the Steelers and start on their first two Super Bowl teams, made sure he got the first crack at Greene.
“[Mansfield] thought he had kind of misbehaved when he didn’t sign right away,” former Steelers linebacker Andy Russell recalled, “and Joe Greene just destroyed him, just tossed him in the air, and Ray was a very tough guy and a very good player. He was shocked.”
He wasn’t the only one.
Greene took on all comers that day and dominated the drill. At one point, Ken Kortas turned to fellow defensive tackle Frank Parker and said, “Well, we might as well leave now.”
Kortas did just that.
The Steelers traded him before the start of the season, freeing up the No. 75 jersey that Greene took and made famous. Kortas became expendable because Greene spent his first training camp showing that he simply couldn’t be stopped—and not just on the field.
Every day before the Steelers practiced the players picked up a taped roll of linen that included socks, shorts, and a jockstrap from the equipment room, which also happened to be the office of St. Vincent men’s basketball and baseball coach Oland “Dodo” Canterna.
Longtime equipment manager Jack Hart had a system and he wanted players picking up their roll after lunch. One day Greene stopped by the equipment room on the way to the dining hall to get his roll.
Get it after lunch, Hart told him. No, Greene said, he wanted it now. Hart played the trump card—or so he thought—when he locked the office and went to lunch. Greene, after Hart had left, treated the door like some unfortunate quarterback in his path. He rammed a shoulder into it and all but took the door off the hinges. He walked into the office, picked up his roll, and went to lunch.
When word got to Chuck Noll about what had happened, the first-year head coach marched up to Greene and told the rookie he owed $500 for a new door. Greene didn’t object and “we got a new door the next day,” Canterna said.
What the Steelers already knew by then the rest of the NFL learned over time: Do not stand in Joe Greene’s way if he wants something.
And he wanted to win.
EXTRA POINTS
Gone But Not Forgotten
Brother Patrick Lacey, a fixture at training camps for five decades, didn’t just serve as a key groundskeeper after the Steelers made St. Vincent College their permanent summer home. Brother Pat did a little bit of everything at St. Vincent, serving as the campus fire chief as well as its bowling coach among other things. Brother Pat was a member of a handful of firefighting associations locally and throughout the state. He also coached bowling from 1970 to 1981 and led St. Vincent to an NAIA national championship in 1978. Lacey became close with the Rooneys and the Steelers wrote an obituary for the team website after Brother Pat passed away in 2010 at the age of 79. “Such a good man, such a prayerful guy,” Father Paul Taylor said. “He loved mowing that lawn and he was a plumber so if something went wrong in the dorm he had to be there.”
EXTRA POINTS
Pitching Quarters and Passing the Time
When Plato said, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” the Greek philosopher couldn’t have had St. Vincent College in August in mind. But that famous quote explains some of the ways the players entertain themselves while they are living in dorm rooms during camp. Jerome Bettis and his fellow running backs started a competition in which they would pitch quarters against a wall with the one coming closest to the wall winning. The game spread like a rumor, appealing to the players because of the element of competition. “It became a big ritual and other guys got involved and before you knew it, it became a big challenge,” said Bettis, who spent 10 training camps at St. Vincent. “Things like that kind of kept the time going because you’re just up there with each other so you had to find creative things to do to stay positive and those were the kind of things we did as a group.”