Author: Michael MacCambridge Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press ISBN: 0822982803 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 504
Book Description
Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls and presided over one of the greatest football dynasties in history, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the ‘70s. Later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his achievements as a competitor and a coach are the stuff of legend. But Noll always remained an intensely private and introspective man, never revealing much of himself as a person or as a coach, not even to the players and fans who revered him. Chuck Noll did not need a dramatic public profile to be the catalyst for one of the greatest transformations in sports history. In the nearly four decades before he was hired, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the least successful team in professional football, never winning so much as a division title. After Noll’s arrival, his quiet but steely leadership quickly remolded the team into the most accomplished in the history of professional football. And what he built endured well beyond his time with the Steelers – who have remained one of America’s great NFL teams, accumulating a total of six Super Bowls, eight AFC championships, and dozens of division titles and playoff berths. In this penetrating biography, based on deep research and hundreds of interviews, Michael MacCambridge takes the measure of the man, painting an intimate portrait of one of the most important figures in American football history. He traces Noll’s journey from a Depression-era childhood in Cleveland, where he first played the game in a fully integrated neighborhood league led by an African-American coach and then seriously pursued the sport through high school and college. Eventually, Noll played both defensive and offensive positions professionally for the Browns, before discovering that his true calling was coaching. MacCambridge reveals that Noll secretly struggled with and overcame epilepsy to build the career that earned him his place as “the Emperor” of Pittsburgh during the Steelers’ dynastic run in the 1970s, while in his final years, he battled Alzheimer’s in the shelter of his caring and protective family. Noll’s impact went well beyond one football team. When he arrived, the city of steel was facing a deep crisis, as the dramatic decline of Pittsburgh’s lifeblood industry traumatized an entire generation. “Losing,” Noll said on his first day on the job, “has nothing to do with geography.” Through his calm, confident leadership of the Steelers and the success they achieved, the people of Pittsburgh came to believe that winning was possible, and their recovery of confidence owed a lot to the Steeler’s new coach. The famous urban renaissance that followed can only be understood by grasping what Noll and his team meant to the people of the city. The man Pittsburghers could never fully know helped them see themselves better. Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work tells the story of a private man in a very public job. It explores the family ties that built his character, the challenges that defined his course, and the love story that shaped his life. By understanding the man himself, we can at last clearly see Noll’s profound influence on the city, players, coaches, and game he loved. They are all, in a real sense, heirs to the football team Chuck Noll built.
Author: Gary M. Pomerantz Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451691629 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 480
Book Description
Drawn from personal interviews with the players themselves, a chronicle of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, who won an unprecedented and unmatched four Super Bowls in six years, tells a story of victory, fortitude, and the brotherhood of players.
Author: Bill Cowher Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1982175796 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
An emotional memoir from Hall of Fame, Super Bowl winning former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers and current CBS analyst, Bill Cowher.
Author: Chad Millman Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 110145993X Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
A stirring portrait of the decade when the Steelers became the greatest team in NFL history, even as Pittsburgh was crumbling around them. In the 1970s, the city of Pittsburgh was in need of heroes. In that decade the steel industry, long the lifeblood of the city, went into massive decline, putting 150,000 steelworkers out of work. And then the unthinkable happened: The Pittsburgh Steelers, perennial also-rans in the NFL, rose up to become the most feared team in the league, dominating opponents with their famed "Steel Curtain" defense, winning four Super Bowls in six years, and lifting the spirits of a city on the brink. In The Ones Who Hit the Hardest, Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne trace the rise of the Steelers amidst the backdrop of the fading city they fought for, bringing to life characters such as: Art Rooney, the owner of the team so beloved by Pittsburgh that he was known simply as "The Chief"; Chuck Noll, the headstrong coach who used the ethos of steelworkers to motivate his players; Terry Bradshaw, the strong-armed and underestimated QB; Joe Green, the defensive tackle whose fighting nature lifted the franchise; and Jack Lambert, the linebacker whose snarling, toothless grin embodied the Pittsburgh defense. Every story needs a villain, and in this one it's played by the Dallas Cowboys. As Pittsburgh rusted, the new and glittering metropolis of Dallas, rich from the capital infusion of oil revenue, signaled the future of America. Indeed, the town brimmed with such confidence that the Cowboys felt comfortable nicknaming themselves "America's Team." Throughout the 1970s, the teams jostled for control of the NFL-the Cowboys doing it with finesse and the Steelers doing it with brawn-culminating in Super Bowl XIII in 1979, when the aging Steelers attempted to hold off the Cowboys one last time. Thoroughly researched and grippingly written, The Ones Who Hit the Hardest is a stirring tribute to a city, a team, and an era.
Author: Mark A. Noll Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 1467464627 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 323
Book Description
Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award (1995) “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship. While nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have so many evangelicals failed to sustain a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of “high” culture? Over twenty-five years since its original publication, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has turned out to be prescient and perennially relevant. In a new preface, Noll lays out his ongoing personal frustrations with this situation, and in a new afterword he assesses the state of the scandal—showing how white evangelicals’ embrace of Trumpism, their deepening distrust of science, and their frequent forays into conspiratorial thinking have coexisted with surprisingly robust scholarship from many with strong evangelical connections.
Author: Andy Russell Publisher: Sports Publishing LLC ISBN: 9781571672353 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
Andy Russell, two-time Super Bowl Champion and seven-time Pro Bowler with the great Pittsburgh Steelers' teams of the '70s, writes about his career and his teammates on these great teams. Russell writes, " The stories about my teammates are not a recounting of their many records, awards, and other sporting achievements, but instead recollections of some of my personal interactions with them." Lynn Swann, Mel Blount, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Greene, Chuck Noll, Jack Ham, Rocky Bleier, Jack Lambert, Franco Harris and more are included.
Author: Michael MacCambridge Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0307481433 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 610
Book Description
It’s difficult to imagine today—when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity—but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. In the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age. America’s Game traces pro football’s grand transformation, from the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, to the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, this is an essential book for any fan of America’s favorite sport.
Author: Dale Grdnic Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1613214693 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
The Pittsburgh Steelers rank as one of the NFL’s truly legendary franchises, and this book, written from the fan’s perspective, provides readers with unique stories about the players and coaches who took part in many of the greatest and most euphoric victories in the team’s history. Among the games covered are Franco Harris’s “Immaculate Reception” that beat the Oakland Raiders in the playoffs, the four Super Bowl and AFC Championship Game victories in the glorious decade of the 1970s, and the incredible 2005 playoff run that was capped by the team’s fifth Super Bowl title. Grdnic notably delivers credit to Chuck Noll and acknowledges his remarkable talents in draft selections; taking Hall of Famers from 1969–1972 and finally in 1974 selecting four Hall of Famers in one draft year. The Pittsburgh Steelers 1974 draft year, to this day, has not yet been surpassed. Among other games reviewed are Bill Cowher’s first victory as Steelers head coach in 1992, a stunning overtime win against rival Cleveland Browns in 1976 under rookie quarterback Mike Kruczek and Ben Roethlisberger’s first win as a starting quarterback in Miami. This newly revised edition examines the Steelers’ most recent Super Bowl win in 2009 as well as their agonizing defeat in 2010. This is not just a book about one team but a highly detailed examination of an American legacy through the eyes of its devoted fans.
Author: Michael MacCambridge
Author: Gary M. Pomerantz
Author: Bill Cowher
Author: Chad Millman
Author: Mark A. Noll
Author: Andy Russell
Author: Andy Russell
Author: Michael MacCambridge
Author: Dale Grdnic
Author: Sam Toperoff