The Ones Who Hit the Hardest: The Steelers, the Cowboys, the '70s, and the Fight for America's Soul
Between them, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys won five Super Bowls in the 1970s. The Steelers cultivated a blue-collar image; the Cowboys, though dubbed “America’s team,” carried a more glamorous aura. The authors trace the rise of the teams through the decade. The Cowboys had some success in the sixties but no championships. The Steelers had been woeful for decades. When the Steelers hired Chuck Noll as head coach for the 1969 season, their fortunes began to change. Noll opted to build carefully and gradually through the college draft; meanwhile, Landry and the Cowboys were the first NFL team to supplement in-person scouting with computer analysis. In the course of telling the story, the authors—who interviewed 30 former players, coaches, and assistants—portray the Steelers as a lifeline to an industrial city losing its manufacturing base and the Cowboys as the darlings of the Texas oil boomers. Interspersed throughout are dozens of anecdotes about how Noll—and his stoic counterpart, Tom Landry—motivated and built the two dominant franchises of football’s golden age. Exciting, informative reading for NFL fans with an interest in the league’s history. --Wes Lukowsky