A stately bench overlooking Chuck Noll Field at St. Vincent College has a small, rectangular plate on the back of it that reads, on three lines, “Bill Nunn, Jr. Steelers Super Scout 1924–2014.”
Nunn, who passed away less than a week before the 2014 NFL Draft, sat in that location for years, watching the Steelers practice and chatting up legends like Joe Greene.
The memorial is fitting for several reasons. Like Nunn, it is understated. And, like Nunn’s enormous contributions to the Steelers and the NFL, you have to look a little closer to appreciate it.
A sportswriter for the famed Pittsburgh Courier who knew and covered the likes of Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Joe Louis, and Muhammed Ali, Nunn joined the Steelers part time in 1967. He became a full-time scout shortly after the Steelers hired Chuck Noll as their head coach in 1969 and the organization committed fully to building through the draft.
Nunn nurtured a pipeline to historically black colleges—he had picked All-American teams from those schools for the Courier for years, revealing his eye for talent—and is responsible for the best end-around in franchise history.
It came in 1974, when a group of scouts worked out Alabama A&M wide receiver John Stallworth in advance of the draft. Stallworth ran a pedestrian 40-yard dash on a wet field, underwhelming the scouts who were eager to get a close look at the small-school prospect.
All of scouts left the following day except for one. Nunn, feigning an illness, stayed back and took Stallworth to a track, where he turned in a considerably faster time in the 40-yard dash.
Nunn also asked the Alabama A&M coaches for Stallworth game films with the assurance that he would return them as soon as possible.
He mailed them back eventually but not before the Steelers went into the draft with better intelligence on Stallworth than any other team. That convinced Art Rooney Jr. that the Steelers could wait until after the first round to take Stallworth, even with Noll pushing for him over wide receiver Lynn Swann.
The bench that overlooks Chuck Noll Field at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, is dedicated to the late, great Bill Nunn, one of the most significant figures in Steelers history.
Rooney, who ran the scouting department, persuaded Noll to wait on Stallworth and the Steelers ended up with both him and Swann, getting the former in the fourth round.
Nunn also convinced the Steelers that year to sign an undrafted linebacker from South Carolina State named Donnie Shell. That draft and the free-agent signings of Shell and tight end Randy Grossman put the Steelers over the top, and they won four Super Bowls over the next six seasons.
“I have to make a confession,” Rooney Jr. said of Shell. “I always said I scouted him too, [but] I went and looked at the old scouting reports years later and my name wasn’t on the thing. That was a Bill Nunn creation.”
Nunn remained a key voice in the Steelers’ scouting and draft rooms until he passed away of complications from a stroke at the age of 89. His contributions to the NFL as a pioneer are chronicled in The Color of Sundays, written by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review investigative reporter Andrew Conte.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without someone like Bill Nunn blazing the trails in the scouting world for African Americans,” Buffalo Bills general manager Doug Whaley said. “I’m in awe of the guy.”
Whaley joined the Steelers as an intern after playing football at Pitt and working in the business world. He ascended through the scouting ranks with the Steelers and eventually rose to director of pro personnel.
He became the Bills’ general manager in 2013 and landing the job only made Whaley appreciate even more what Nunn had done for him—before the two ever met and after that.
“He’s sorely missed and I was blessed to have him as a mentor because he set the stage for me professionally and he helped me personally as a dad and a human being,” Whaley said. “We loved when he came up to [training] camp and spent the night. It would be like Boy Scouts sitting around a campfire listening to a guy tell stories. It was ridiculous.”
So is one of the Steelers memories that Whaley cherishes most.
When the Steelers made the Super Bowl in 2008, Whaley drove Nunn to Tampa, Florida, from Pittsburgh since the latter had stopped flying. Whaley could be forgiven as he listened to Nunn if he felt like one of the characters at the bus stop in Forrest Gump, sitting next to someone who had participated in so much history.
“Stories about how he would hang out with the Rat Pack in [Las] Vegas and football stories,” Whaley said. “I can see it like it’s yesterday.”
Whaley would like to see one more chapter added to Nunn’s remarkable story: induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“If you look at his impact, not only for the Steelers organization and being the head personnel scout for one of the great organizations with four Hall of Famers (in the same draft) and then winning six Super Bowls with the teams, he’s got to be part of the conversation,” Whaley said. “For him to open that pipeline to the historically black colleges when integration wasn’t really a big part of college football and get those guys noticed, he was a conduit.”
EXTRA POINTS
Color Was Never an Issue with Chuck Noll
Art Rooney Jr. had heard exhortations from coaches at historically black colleges for years to just give their players a chance. So when Chuck Noll interviewed for the Steelers’ head coaching job in 1969, Rooney asked him a pointed question: What is your stance on black players?
“He said, ‘I don’t care what color they are. Are they coachable and are they decent people?’” Rooney said.
Rooney, who headed the Steelers’ scouting department, was even more impressed when Noll said he would fire any assistant coaches who didn’t buy into that philosophy. “To me,” Rooney said, “that was a tremendous thing.”