The historical fact is, until the Rooneys started autographing his paychecks, Bill Nunn Jr. had virtually no use for the Pittsburgh Steelers, neither as an organization nor as a force for social justice, and least of all as a football team.
But as the saying goes, a lot can happen in half a century or more, and the man most likely to posthumously become the franchise's freshest member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame is both dearly missed and deeply admired by everyone associated with the club's historic transition, the one Nunn helped ignite in the early and mid-'70s.
Nunn, who died in 2014, is a Hall of Fame finalist in the contributor category that requires an 80% approval by voters who typically convene at the Super Bowl. For the one-time basketball star at West Virginia State, Nunn's induction is widely considered a layup.
Working in the sports department of the highly influential Pittsburgh Courier after college and eventually its managing editor, Nunn's dislike of the local NFL team was more than just the standard indifference clung to by the average fan of that era.
"Bill resented the Steelers," said Joe Gordon, who started in the club's PR shop the year after Nunn arrived in 1968. "He had no affinity for them. He felt they ignored all the Black colleges; it was very personal with him. The Courier had a Black All-America team and Pittsburgh hosted a banquet for them every year. The Steelers were never present at those banquets."
Art Rooney Sr., who knew Nunn's father because, well, The Chief knew everybody, encouraged his son Dan to talk with young Bill Nunn, a prospect over which Nunn was fairly underwhelmed. He would enumerate for Dan Rooney his criticisms but probably left out that one about how the league had a checkered history on granting Black reporters access to NFL press boxes, not that there would have been any point in the Steelers restricting anyone from watching their singularly dreary brand of football.
It was only after Dan convinced Nunn that the Steelers would give all those Black players a chance if they could enlist Nunn's help in finding them, especially at obscure colleges throughout the South and Southwest, that Nunn began to waiver.
And boy could he find them.
Sometimes it seemed like the more obscure a player was in the college ranks, the better was Bill Nunn's shot at landing him. He was part talent evaluator, part trick-shot artist. No wonder he'd been offered a tryout with the Harlem Globetrotters.
He found Dwight White at something called Texas A&M-Commerce and Ernie Holmes at Texas Southern _ half the frontage of the Steel Curtain. His contacts and knowledge extended to football outposts like North Texas State (Joe Greene) and Arkansas AM&N (L.C. Greenwood) He found uber-talented but star-crossed Joe Gilliam at Tennessee State. He talked the Steelers into signing Donnie Shell (Hall of Fame Class of 2020) out of South Carolina State in 1974 after Shell had gone undrafted through 17 rounds. The crown jewel among Nunn's discoveries was probably John Stallworth, who'd been galloping through obscurity at Alabama A&M. Nunn and scouting/personnel director Art Rooney Jr. were able to convince head coach Chuck Noll, who wanted to take Stallworth with the first draft pick in '74, that Stallworth would still be available later. That is how what's likely the greatest draft in league history came together _ 1) Lynn Swann, 2) Jack Lambert, 4) John Stallworth, 5) Mike Webster. Add the undrafted Shell, and it means that Rooney Jr.'s staff obtained five future Hall of Famers in one procurement cycle.
"The first time I met him was when I had to interview him, even though my father had pretty much decided he was getting the job," Art. Jr. told me the other day. "I remember thinking I was having this guy forced on me because of maybe my father's political friendships, and Bill was looking at me like he was being forced to talk to this rich guy who had a job because his father gave it to him. He was probably more right than I was, but I had a passion for personnel and we became very, very close friends.
"He was always so sharp, so quick, and a lot of fun. I always believed anything Bill told me."
Bill and Rooney Jr. once met at a scouting meeting in Washington D.C. As Art Jr. tells it, booze was lot cheaper in the nation's capital in that era, and Nunn had purchased some to take home. Some meaning enough to fill a car trunk.
"We were flying down the Turnpike and a cop stops us," Rooney said. "I'd forgotten about the trunk. But Bill goes right into, 'Hello officer I'm Bill Nunn with the Pittsburgh Steelers and I have with me Mr. Art Rooney (he didn't say Jr.) and I'm trying to get Mr. Rooney back to Pittsburgh for a very important board meeting so I'm sorry if I was going too fast _ would you like to meet Mr. Rooney?'
"We'd just won a Super Bowl. There was no way that cop didn't know that I wasn't my father, but he let us go. Bill said, 'I wasn't worried about the ticket. But you know they always want to look in the trunk. If they'd have got me with all that booze they'd have confiscated and who knows what else?' He was so smooth, so quick."
He performed myriad missions for the Steelers over the years beyond scouting. He was even, at one point, their training camp manager.
"I remember he was very important in that role too because Black kids from small colleges, some away from home for the first time, had a chance to confide in him," said Gordon. "I remember L.C. Greenwood and some other players sitting with him on the curb outside the dorm at Saint Vincent at night. They had nothing else to do. It was all so strange and foreign to them, so Bill helped with their development in that sense as well."
Perhaps the greatest contribution of this Hall of Fame worthy "contributor" was that his expertise in evaluation and scouting forced the entire league to follow his lead when it came to expanding opportunities for Black athletes.
How wonderful it would have been had his dear wife, Frances, been in Canton next summer to articulate just how much better her late husband had made the game.
Frances found out about Bill's nomination early on Aug. 25. She died that night. She was 93.
