Editorial: Franco Harris and how to play the game
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Sports heroes don’t have much say in where they end up playing. It comes down to things like what team is highest in the draft and what positions that coach has to fill.
By the same token, the cities that play host to those teams don’t have a say in who will be coming to wear the local colors and play for hometown pride.
Sometimes it’s a bad marriage. An otherwise good player just isn’t a good fit for the coach or the team or the town.
But sometimes it’s magic.
Franco Harris was that kind of player — the one who just clicks into place like he was molded to fit. Harris, 72, died Tuesday.
This isn’t about his time being nurtured under Chuck Noll’s tenure as coach — although that certainly worked out. It isn’t just about his connection with the players around him — although it’s hard to imagine a more complementary squad than the heyday Steelers of the championship 1970s.
It’s about Franco Harris as the guy who came to Pittsburgh from New Jersey via Penn State and made the city his home. While he remained connected to his roots, he stuck around long after he left the field. He kept Pittsburgh as his home even after a move to the Seattle Seahawks in 1984 for his last season.
The Steelers drafted him in the first round. He repaid that with a lifetime of loyalty.
He gave back with businesses. He put his bachelor’s degree in food service and administration to work with Super Bakery and the whole-grain Super Donut that became a staple in many school breakfast programs. He was an owner of the Women’s Football Alliance team, the Pittsburgh Passion.
Harris was a supporter of so many charities, from the Special Olympics to the Pittsburgh Urban League to the scholarship-focused Pittsburgh Promise.
And he was generous with more than his money. He was willing to give his time, from putting in work with the organizations he supported to just noticing starstruck fans during dinner at a local restaurant and asking them if they wanted a picture.
Did he always get it right? Of course not. Harris wasn’t perfect. There was the falling out with Noll over the Seattle move. There was his full-throated defense of Penn State coach Joe Paterno after the Jerry Sandusky arrest and conviction.
But when Harris ran into problems, he often did it the same way he played football. He did it for his team, running full-tilt into the fight and standing his ground.
He will always be remembered as the last man to ever wear number 32 for the Steelers — a team that hasn’t put that jersey on another player since he took it off in 1983, because really, who else would feel confident wearing it?
And he will also be known for the Immaculate Reception. Not just that famous football play that happened days short of 50 years before his death. There was also the way he scooped up Pittsburgh when the draft threw the Steelers to him and how he carried the city with him every day after that.