Legendary Steelers coach Chuck Noll dies

http://triblive.com/sports/steelers/6081467-74/noll-football-steelers

“He was not a pizzazz guy. He knew where he was, where he was going and where he wanted to go and how to do it,” Rooney Jr. said. “He had a very, very strong moral compass. ... My dad respected that.”

Noll was a reluctant celebrity and turned down only one interview request, longtime Steelers publicist Joe Gordon said. That came from Howard Cosell.

“He never really considered Cosell a serious journalist,” Gordon said. “Any other time, regardless of the circumstances, he was always accommodating.”

Noll rejected many offers to appear in commercials, some of which could have been financially lucrative, Gordon said.

“He preferred to be a football coach and not a celebrity,” Gordon said. “After a while, they stopped calling because they knew he wasn't interested. If he would have had his way, after the game on Sunday, he would have just picked up his briefcase and gone home.”

Noll was loyal to his assistants and those who worked around the team at Three Rivers Stadium, said former defensive assistant coach George Perles.

“He always took the grounds crew people on the plane to away games and the families to the championship games,” he said.

Noll, a food and wine connoisseur who flew his own plane and sailed his own boat, separated his personal life from football.

His family lived in Upper St. Clair for many years, and Noll's son, Chris, played football and soccer at the high school. Noll seldom attended the games, but his son said it was not from lack of interest.

“They were trying to give me my space,” Chris Noll said. “They would sneak in once in a while. They made a decision not to put that kind of pressure on me.”

The younger Noll remembers coming home from football practice as a freshman and telling his father the team needed a long snapper.

“He took me out in the driveway and showed me how to do it,” he said.

Chris Noll, director of communications at Miss Porter's School, a private, all-girls institution in Farmington, Conn., where he also has been a teacher, soccer coach and computer specialist, said his father seldom talked football at home.

“After (Steelers) games, we would stop someplace to get something to eat, and we didn't talk about the games at all,” he said. “It was a pretty clear separation.”

Longtime assistant coach and former Steelers running back Dick Hoak said Noll maintained certain values, and family came first.

“That came before football, and football was after that,” Hoak said.

Many times, when the NFL Draft lasted until late into the night, Noll ended the day by bringing out his favorite bottles of wine and sharing them with team officials and reporters. He also enjoyed discussing politics and loved classical music and photography.

“He was very intelligent,” Hoak said. “He knew a lot about a lot of things.”

One year at training camp, he conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony during a live performance.

“He relished the opportunity,” Gordon said. “I never saw him so happy as when he was conducting the symphony.”

#sports - #football - #history - #blog_jr