A Football Life-Chuck Noll

emerson probably put it best when he said uh your actions speak so loudly i can't hear what you're saying and i'd like to keep it that way you don't know what that means you're gonna be a football player when you grow up today is the best day of your life [Music] football is kind of an interim between college and getting into your life's work you never did any endorsements you never had a coach's show you never went on to do anything on television are you ever going to write a book no why not no uh you know coaching is a very personal thing and any correction has to be made subtly and quietly and not broadcast to the world we're here tonight to talk about the life and the legacy of chuck noll we're going to bring up the author michael mccambridge as well as three very special guests who know all about the emperor chaz michael i'll start with you about this what obstacles did you have it was difficult in a couple of levels because outwardly chuck was not one of your more colorful characters also chuck was not the only member of his family who was private by nature talking about some of these things talking about some of the obstacles chuck had faced was painful for them at times but i think they felt it was time for chuck's story to be told for years chuck knows story had remained a closed book despite the fact that his accomplishments spoke volumes as head coach of the pittsburgh steelers he transformed a long-suffering franchise into one of sports greatest dynasties well there's no doubt that chuck created a new standard that didn't exist with the steelers prior to him being here [Music] he is the only head coach to go a perfect 4-0 in super bowls winning the titles in an incredible six-year span this well could be the best football team in history right now [Applause] whatever's right he is one of the winningest coaches of all time guiding pittsburgh to more than 200 victories over 23 seasons i rate chuck noll within the top five coaches that ever coached in the national football league yet throughout his life and even after his death in 2014 the hall of fame coach remained a mystery a man who revealed little of himself to the public or to his own players we respected him for sure but i don't know anything about it none of us do we we just sit back and just try to figure it out ourselves even while we were playing it was just strange we had this aura about him you know they used to call him the emperor well you kind of felt like you were in the presence of football royalty i mean it was very very intimidating and he could just look at you and make you lose bladder control i don't know i could imagine having a great time with chuck not that i ever did [Laughter] he was not a warm and cozy sort of guy he'd come around and he'd go you know thank you are you okay uh nice game it was like he read somewhere that you need to thank your players you know for the job they did he believed that we shouldn't read the papers he believed that we should treat the media like mushrooms uh keep them in dark and feeding feed them manure [Laughter] what about the oakland new england game did you watch any of that we saw part of it yes and what were your impressions of oakland's performance that day uh well it really uh doesn't matter what my impressions are i usually don't make them public anyway you know i always said if chuck had his way on sunday after a game he'd just pick up his briefcase go home and drink a nice glass of wine and listen to classical music no interviews no other activity other than the game itself he was not a self promoter i mean he did one advertisement in his entire time here i always had the feeling that you know our players were in there for a very short time and if there were any endorsements or anything outside of football that was to be done you know they should do it you know because i was in there for a long haul and i didn't need that outside stuff i didn't need the endorsements you know they did when it comes to keeping his feet while noel's players became the game's most recognized names and faces the coach could often be forgotten we've heard about bud grant and his uh sterling personality but what is the chuck knox chuck knox was the coach of los angeles about chuck noll i know that's a good one one more time we've heard about it even into the 70s and 80s he was still getting mail addressed to chuck knox you would see newspaper headlines in which his name was misspelled k-n-o-l-l and this is even after he started winning super bowls he was a puzzle sometimes and i'd ask some questions i'd get the same answers the reporters did frustrating i was excited to read michael's book because i learned more through the book than i would for living with him here is one of the great coaches in professional football history but yet for whatever reason he's not up on the mount rushmore with lombardi and alice and shula and landry i do think he was a product of his time and his upbringing he was born in cleveland during the depression to a relatively stoic german-american family and this was america pre-oprah you know you didn't discuss your feelings you didn't spend a lot of time wallowing and how does this feel for you how does this feel for me i love you was not something that was said a lot around the knoll household no we weren't very emotional people let's put it that way i mean we didn't go around hugging one another either and that stuff the knolls rarely shared their feelings or their problems with the outside world [Music] we were in our junior year in high school and all of a sudden i heard scuffling next to me and chuck fell out of his chair and he was thrashing on the floor and i jumped out of my seat and i grabbed him because he was like pounding his head on the floor and i tried to put my hand under his head i was shocked what many of his friends didn't know was that noel suffered from epilepsy his occasional seizures would continue into early adulthood [Music] it had to be a constant worry that he knew that if he was going too long without taking these pills he was going to have a problem and i think that chuck was hesitant in case something were to happen about going too many places unless he knew the people well and that's i think one of the reasons he was so private growing up in this very insular environment in which family was everything he wasn't going to spend a lot of time being in touch with his feelings and that's the man who became the head coach of the pittsburgh steelers [Music] chuck noll would play a huge huge role in my life and teach me so much about the game of football i love coach noel as a coach because he was an instructor and he taught you what to do and how to do it and for me that's what i thought coaching was all about everything that i put into practice as a head coach really i took from coach knowle concentrate on those little things in our first meeting he said there was more to life than just football and he wanted to help us find our life's work you have to remember football is kind of an interim between college and and getting into your life's work chuck knoll began seeking out his life's work at the university of dayton you know his degrees were in education he loved it and if he hadn't been drafted by the browns he would have taught school noel was selected by his hometown cleveland browns in the 20th round of the 1953 draft he played seven years as a linebacker an offensive guard under hall of fame coach paul brown brown's intellectual approach to coding suited the cerebral knoll cleveland coach paul brown sends guard chuck knull into the game with the play paul brown would remind his players this is not what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life you need to be thinking about your life's work chuck loves football he knows football he loves teaching he knows teaching and at the end of 1959 he settled on his life's work knoll's coaching career started as a defensive assistant for the chargers in the new american football league coaches walt hackett chuck noll planned the defense for the coming season he spent six seasons under hall of fame coach sid gilman here we go before joining hall of famer don schulistaf with the nfl's baltimore colts as defensive coordinator noel helped build a suffocating defense one that made the colts overwhelming favorites over the jets in super bowl three the new york jets are the world champions they have upset the baltimore cult and beat them handily here today that was just a nightmare it was really awful for him i don't think he ever got over it did he talk about it later in life no we didn't talk about the ones we won either the next year noel became head coach in pittsburgh where he took over a franchise that had never won a postseason game well i think when you have a 37-year history of not good it's going to take a little longer even then to uh to work out of that because you're always bucking the heritage when he was hired he said i've been watching the game films and i can tell you why you've been losing you could have heard a pin drop in this room and he said the reason you're losing is you're not any good and i have to get rid of most of you and we were oh my goodness the first week of training camp i'm waiting for chuck and he pulled in and he said come in the house i said all right and he said you need to know this just prepare yourself this is a terrible team so it's going to be a very tough year maybe longer just know it in 1969 the 37 year old rookie head coach led the steelers to a win on opening day pittsburgh then lost the remaining 13 games of the season it was a battle of passing attacks being only slightly more effective than an aerial attack in a 1935 jock sutherland offense on the sideline coach chuck noll muttered something unprintable while the team struggled to find its footing noel remained grounded in the fundamentals i never forget he took me and he said when you're standing across from the tight end i want you to move your right foot two inches wider and one inch back i'm like what that's gonna help me yes trust me and it did help it made it harder to hook me chuck was into which shoulder do you hit him with what foot are you on when you hit him with where do your hips go after the hit where are your hands doing after the hit see that's what chuck emphasized he would tell you that my job is to teach you how to play this game correctly i will never give you a motivational speech if i have to motivate you i will fire you we played the orders every year twice and once at three rivers someone on orders left the playbook and the clubhouse guys found and they brought it to chuck and in our meeting that we always have on mondays you know chuck said this is a playbook for the houston orles we have another game to play with those guys he said you see this dropped it in the trash and he said it's not important what they do the most important thing is what we do he didn't care about bulletin board stuff we didn't get involved in hyperbole playing last we didn't get involved in board defensive tackle joe green was knowle's first draft pick in 1969 and would become the cornerstone of the franchise the coach reshaped the roster and as the talent improved so did the win totals by knoll's fourth season pittsburgh was a playoff team over knoll's first six seasons the steelers drafted nine future hall of fame players including one who would test the coach's patience as a teacher chuck drafts terry bradshaw and the steelers get what every dynasty needs which is a franchise quarterback and chuck gets what would become in the years ahead his greatest coaching challenge [Music] question for mike the author uh terry bradshaw yeah i did uh over 300 interviews for this book and the one person who did not want to talk to me was terry bradshaw so it's clear that on terry's side there are still some hard feelings he may now listen i'm saying there's a lot of thing i'm talking to you this i will not talk about him after this interview okay i only am doing this because i feel like if it's important that i do it i don't want to i don't want to be negative on a man that i had so much respect for but i'm letting you on the inside roll five welcome the first time you ever met chuckle stewart's cook what are these coach knows um actually i met coach knows when i came in the first time for the press conference talked to him about five minutes and i said i haven't spent a whole lot of time with coach knows in 1970 terry bradshaw arrived in pittsburgh a raw rookie out of shreveport louisiana how about that i don't know why he drafted me i never was his kind of guy i'm cows and horses and dogs and he was wine and russian literature and stuff i have no clue i didn't know anything about reading coverages i did everything on the fly in college i frustrated him i was a kid that needed a pat on the back not an astute and that's what chuck did to me he chewed my ass he had a thing about putting his hands on me and that was his control and i he grabbed my face mask and embarrassed you know what out of me and i think he thought he needed to be hard on me because i was a mama's boy and hey let's go out there and there was a good time today boy you know and to corral me and to focus me how would you describe your relationship with terry business like you know it was all business uh you know i think you see a lot of terry on tv right now he's fun-loving you know kind of devil may care and we couldn't have that in our quarterback it had to be you know we got to get this done and this is how we're going to do it and uh i think it worked you know he may not have liked it but it worked i feared the hell out of him like him no i didn't like him yeah i couldn't stand him he couldn't stand me and i wish the hell he'd traded me that situation was a one-way street chuck had no animosity towards uh terry this is the irony of it all chuck i thought he would treat every player the same the only guy who i thought that he may have you know insulated some of the issues away was bradshaw terry did a good job in third down conversion so terry was the only guy where i thought you know chuck just treats him just a little bit different you know i'll take some of the pressure off him rest be damned my take on it was that chuck did everything he could to protect and help terry be a positive and confident player on the football field so i don't understand what the beef is about there's a such a large part of me just wished he just reached out and hugged me one time maybe that's what maybe i'm one of those kids that wanted his daddy to say i love you you know and i never got that so i'm pissed terry has said i just wanted sometimes to get a hug yeah i didn't get many he wasn't demonstrative with his affection he was there but he wasn't gonna show it you had to kind of perceive it did i respect him absolutely when i think about chuck he made me tough in 1974 bradshaw helped lead the steelers to the afc championship game they would meet the oakland raiders who had just beaten the two-time defending champion dolphins in a thrilling divisional playoff in the post game john madden of the raiders made a comment to the effect of that's what happens when the two best teams in football get together oh when he heard that quote chuck was furious it was a genuine you know how dare you kind of thing and so he said it to his players and we were in the room like this and chuck was talking and he said that you know the the people out in oakland says that uh the best two teams played yesterday and i want you guys to know that the best team in pro football is sitting right here in this room and i'm sitting in one of these little chairs for you know first graders and i kind of rose up out of the chair without putting my feet on the ground and that was the first time in i think my sixth year that chuck ever said anything that resembled a locker on speech a motivation thing and that game in my view was one that day no way they were going to win they didn't have a chance [Music] in super bowl nine the defense knoll had built smothered minnesota and the quarterback he had toughened sealed the win here [Applause] [Music] terry bradshaw has had his greatest three games in a row when he had to have him in the playoffs [Music] being carried off they were about the worst team in pro football when he took over i would say their best years are ahead of them [Music] we're going to relax and enjoy it uh for just a short time and then get on to next year and then be ready for next season all right that's right it comes around the next season pittsburgh won its second straight super bowl title [Applause] i think the thing that helped me understand chuck's view of the world was a comment that he made at one point that at the end of a game or the end of a season win or lose he didn't exalt he felt as though somebody had stuck a pin in him congratulations again a great victory i think he's almost he was depressed after the winning super bowl for ev all of them he worked so hard he was depressed he worked so hard and for him it was about the doing he spent all season working toward the skull and now what i don't know what i'm going to do i have business to take care of at home then i'll find out make plans we've only got plans for tomorrow which is to get on a plane and go back to pittsburgh was your father dull no he wasn't dull he was actually pretty entertaining small family party he'd be the one leading the party he would almost never talk about football at home i mean for him football was one part of his life but it wasn't his life he clearly separated the two he wanted to make sure that home was home his dad at home he wasn't a football coach at home we took the month of june off because he felt so strongly about time with with chris we always knew that june was ours [Music] for chuck noll family vacations weren't just a chance to get away they were an opportunity to quench his lifelong thirst for knowledge when we were first married he was taking down some wallpaper and he was not happy so i said i will read to you so i sat on the floor and i read to him and it started something that lived with us for 50 odd years and in all the years of our marriage i read out loud to him [Music] more knowledge leads to more enjoyment the more things that you're aware of you have to be aware of something before you can enjoy it you know he wanted to talk to me one time about uh the battle of gallopoli because i was from istanbul turkey chuck gave me a lesson one day on um islam he didn't just learn about something he wanted to master it he got curious about wine and he wanted to learn all about it i'm inclined to the cabernets or the bordeaux's from france in california 1970 was a great year well i heard he played the ukulele and that surprised me played the recorder saying you sing a lot of traditional songs mountain dew you get a line i get a poll i remember being in training camp and all of a sudden chuck popped in and so there was a car in room so he picks it up and he starts playing it i mean like not just plucking it he was playing it and playing it very well he goes oh this is a this is a very nice guitar okay it sets it down all right see you guys and then he conducted the symphony and it wasn't like some of those guys get up and symphony's conducting them he was on in time violins brought into brass you know roll to chuck knowles when we interviewed chuck noll he would walk over and look at our camera equipment brandon pamela one day he looked at me and said is that an air flex camera it's this aeroflex what do you got an airflow yeah it's a new sr flex i had no idea the guy was very knowledgeable about cinematography and photography we were doing photography he knew all there was to know about photography [Music] he had a dark room in his home in upper sinclair and also our team photographer had a dark room up at training camp at saint vincent and often at night after he had the coaches meeting chuck would go down with the photographer in the dark room and help him develop some of the photos i mean his curiosity about things was incredible he called me one day and he said hi i said what did you do and he said i bought an airplane they're going to teach me to fly it's okay you see the most interesting man in the world in the renaissance man i mean they got the wrong guy he's chuck nolt noel's willingness to try new things extended to his football team [Applause] though the city still relished its reputation for fierce defense and a power running game by 1978 noel knew that the strength of the team lay elsewhere our first two super bowls our defense was dominant and our offense was more like a goal line offense our offense picked up considerably our passing game was much better it was not just a running game noel unleashed his quarterback who responded with an mvp season terry bradshaw led pittsburgh to super bowl 13 where he threw four touchdown passes and was named the game's mvp you know i i said one thing to our football team after the game and i sincerely believe it i don't think we've peaked yet and we're looking forward to even bigger and better things yeah congratulations back to you dick [Applause] a year later the steelers returned to the super bowl as heavy favorites to win their fourth championship hold it up we've got a two minute commercial before we go out and they won't let us take the field so that's one of those hang it loose here a little bit all right noel maintained his calm despite an unexpected halftime deficit one of my favorite memories is half time we were losing he was jogging off and he kind of jogged at the cameramen it was fun to see him do that and it was my father that's when i know because that's who he was it also showed level of confidence that they were losing but he was relaxed and he felt really good where they were in the fourth quarter noel would call the game's decisive play i'll go over to the sideline chuck says look it pushes a camera guy away first of all and chuck put in this play open right 70 slot hook and go ran it all week in practice never completed it hated it he says look i know you don't like this play but he says we're only going to beat these guys by throwing the ball deep i said okay so i trusted him bradshaw pumping firing downfield there goes stallworth [Applause] so chuck's play won us that football game and couldn't have done that without both of us trusting one another which i know i did you know and i'm sure he did too after our fourth super bowl we hadn't even come home yet and he said you need to get ready we're old and we're tired and we haven't had high draft choices we've got tough years ahead of us [Music] as the 1980s began the pillars of the steelers dynasty started to leave often with little sentiment from their head coach told chuck i couldn't play you said okay that's it i went in to you know tell him i was going to retire and he said that's good and i wish you a lot of luck and and thanks that's it which is so pure chuck he kept a distance because he felt he had to that's the only way he could be objective i think he was extraordinarily fond of a lot of his players that perhaps they didn't know it i'm going to leave her as a man replacing his aging veterans would prove difficult still chuck noll guided the steelers three straight playoff seasons in the early 80s going as far as the afc championship game in 1984 but starting in 1985 the steelers missed the post season in four consecutive years and the division the stoic knoll once dominated now featured a new generation of flamboyant head coaches i think he looked down on those kinds of people you know these were you know guys coming in shooting off their mouth they hadn't won anything to kind of earn his respect he didn't like lanville because glanville was a showboat he was always boasting how about when we play pittsburgh here the day after that game when we play we'll have a chuck no look-alike and the winner the winner will put up here and we'll throw eggs at him how's that was totally anticipated chuck just did his job he just despised glanville in 1987 the unflappable knoll boiled over they played hard they played on the borderline dirty and then he started hitting us late and they were doing cheap shots when they crossed the line chuck wouldn't put up with it well that's when he went across the field and i was from me to you when it happened because chuck went over and grabbed him and [Applause] that i'm said that's just not behavior you saw from coach noll but you know he was a tough guy i really thought chuck was going to punch glenvale i respected him i would never argue with him in the middle of the field he's too great a man too great a coach but we'd put a burr under his saddle be able to have a guy like that so mad at you can't wait to play that's an honor that he thought that much of us [Music] in 1988 the steelers hit rock bottom they would go five and 11 knolls worst record since his first season the steelers have had what six punts blocked this year it's a national football league record embarrassing for you because it's embarrassing yes it looks like we've never had a day of practice it was the worst exhibition of football that i've seen in a long time that we'd have trouble with for the grade school team you know what we have to do is donate our salaries because that wasn't professional football you get the first sense of doubters there was a sense that the the sharks were circling the water and that the game had passed him by what would determine whether or not you decided you should come back again would there be something so bad i won't even answer that question all right pressure further intensified when the steelers opened 1989 with the worst defeat in franchise history ball taken away from him here they come in going into the end zone it has been disastrous the next week they were blown out again by another division rival but no rallied his team and the steelers won five of their last six games to clinch a playoff berth here they go the oilers versus the steelers in the afc wild card game bad blood between these teams and bad blood between coach chuck nolan coach jerry glanville [Music] one of the nfl's great grudge matches would be settled in overtime just inside the 41 the ball is down gary anderson kicks it [Applause] hall for some reason decides we've just won the super bowl and he's trying to pick chuck knoll up belton's around his leg and chuck's hitting chuck always kept everything in great perspective see nobody's getting carried off here it's one game we got a few more games before we start carrying coaches off we knew deep down inside that he'd like nothing more to come in here and beat houston especially with glanville being a coach i know him in glanville aren't the best friends so i had one for chuck it would be the final postseason win of knoll's career i think it was one of the best coaching jobs for a single season in the history of professional football because you had a team that was not terrifically talented coming off a very difficult season he got so much out of that team by the early 90s chuck knowles life's work in coaching was drawing to a close 91 we knew going into the last few games that that was going to be it you could just tell there was a different energy the last two weeks there was a different energy with him that intensity that was always there it wasn't there at the end they told my mother this is a super bowl game but i'm just too tired you know i'm done and i think that was the end of the season he just said i can't do it anymore he just said it's time there he is the emperor is this coach chuck knowles final game as coach of the pittsburgh steelers on the final sunday of the 1991 regular season noel coached his steelers to victory over the team he once played for the cleveland browns he wanted this one badly and chuck noll has a winning day on this the conclusion of his 23rd season is it his last after 39 years in it i have to step back and see what the flowers smell like for a little bit it was time to retire you know his line time to get off my life place work since you've been doing your life's work what comes after life that's the nature question 64 000 question for him it was kind of a bittersweet yes i'm done but chuck thanks a lot again he always looked forward so now what's next [Music] he hadn't been free in a fall since eighth grade you know so it was really a time of excitement for us true to his nature noel kept a low profile in retirement making only the occasional public appearance [Music] we didn't have too long before all the other things kicked in all his physical problems they've gone on vacation they remember being frustrated because he was forgetting things that was really obvious eventually noel was diagnosed with alzheimer's disease yeah i was a sadness in not healthy [Music] something like that i still read aloud i read articles like out of the smithsonian that i could read in one sitting rather than books i read constantly for hours and hours we did it to the end and the night that he died he helped me fix dinner picked out the wine picked out the music had lovely dinner he went to bed and i went back to check him about an hour later and he was gone [Music] it was a beautiful mass and and dignified the whole thing which suited him there was so much dignity about him there was so much honesty his never ending never ceasing curiosity about life and about people i thought it was so amazing [Music] he's had such a lasting legacy on us you saw what it meant to be a good husband you saw him the way he adored marianne and the way he treated her and you know it was like wow okay that's what you do there were lessons in life not just football that have impacted me to this day without chuck my time as a pittsburgh student would not have been nearly as enjoyable as or successful i just believed that it wouldn't have happened without him so for me he gets all the credit he was the greatest man i ever met he was the greatest teacher and a greatest leader he is so instrumental in my life in so many ways not just inside the white lines me as a parent you know me as a person and if there's a legacy you know it's it's that that chuck touched each and every one of his players he made a difference in people's lives some would say chuck noll made a difference for an entire city i mean you've got to understand the standards they were born in 33 and until chuck came along zero playoff ones chuck comes along boom one of the great dynasties in sports history i don't think he ever ever ever has gotten our gifts of credit for being one of the top three or four coaches in the history of the nfl you know maybe it wasn't exciting enough maybe we weren't flamboyant enough but we won and that's what you're supposed to do this very private man in this very very public job managed to transform not just a franchise but i think a case can be made that chuck knoll helped change the way that pittsburgh saw itself and the time when the steel industry was buckling and the region was on the ropes it's difficult to overstate just how important that was in that chapter of the history of pittsburgh pennsylvania is he not mentioned in the same breath these days as vince lombardi or tom landry no he's not would he be okay with that i think he probably would if you look at the measure of chuck knowles life you find a man who overcame a lot and found his life's love and found his life's work and at the end of the day i don't see how you can read that life as anything other than a happy story

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Length: 43min 26sec (2606 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022