nine of Noll's 22 starters are in the Hall of Fame. They were bodacious, and acted that way. "We had gizzards," defensive end Dwight White (now deceased) told me after he retired. In the current Steelers' grown-up blandness with the press, I kept picking up just a hint of Eddie Haskell.

Maybe I overreacted to all those prohibitions. Prohibitions? How can you hang around a football team and give in to a raft of prohibitions? I know I had special dispensation in '73, but, hey, I wanted to know what was going on. I would put on Steelers sweats and mess around on the field during practice, catch an occasional pass. I hung with the original Art Rooney and with current offensive coordinator Todd Haley's father, Dick, who washe's stooped but still flashes the Rooney twinkle. He's talking about the Immaculate Reception. "Everybody in Pittsburgh is sure they were there for it," says Dan, who was running the team at the time. "They probably saw it on TV"—in fact they couldn't even have done that if they were in Pittsburgh, because before 1973 all home games were blacked out—"but they're sure they saw it here. Even if they weren't alive."

Interesting word choice, here. The Immaculate Reception occurred nowhere near Dan's current office but more than four miles away, in old Three Rivers Stadium. That's where, until 2001, the Steelers played and practiced and dressed and lifted weights and watched film and had offices and ate soup and sandwiches in a little kitchen. I don't remember any