Franco Harris: An Immaculate Man

I’m sure you’ve heard actors talk about a dream role turning into a curse, a part becoming so iconic people stopped seeing the three-dimensional person who played it. Same thing sometimes happens with bands: A song breaks so big it obscures the rest of their music to the point the musicians resent having to play it.

Not everyone is up to being a legend…but Franco Harris was. Matter of fact, he loved it.

A 22-year-old rookie provided the most famous play in the history of football, but the soft-spoken man behind that play transcended it. That’s in part because, after the Immaculate Reception but before he retired, Franco the Football Player had already done the work for him. At a time when running backs – not quarterbacks – ruled pro football, the guy with the big beard and bigger hip pads was on the shortlist of the best to ever do it. 

Long story short, Franco wasn’t just along for the ride, especially in those Steelers’ biggest moments. His running style was downright genteel by contact-sports standards – I recall some percentage of Stillers fans complaining he “danced arahnd” and “ran aht a bahnds too much” – but when Dallas Cowboys’ villain Hollywood Henderson called him a “powder puff” in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XIII, he responded by going into the huddle, demanding the ball, then running past Henderson & everyone else for a 22-yard touchdown. He scored twice in the ‘74 title game and once in the ‘75 title game, both in wins against Oakland (It’s not a coincidence the Raiders finally got past Pittsburgh in ‘76 while Franco was out with injury).

When the team delivered Pittsburgh its first Lombardi in Super Bowl IX, the Steel Curtain got the headlines, but Franco carried home the game’s MVP. By the time he retired after a dozen seasons (fine, 12.5…I still don’t like to acknowledge that half-season he spent in Seahawks’ blue) he was the second-leading rusher all-time, a nine-time Pro Bowler, a four-time champ, and is still the Super Bowl’s all-time rushing leader.

All that said, the football player eventually gave way to the man…and man, did this man embrace his place in the community as a business leader, philanthropist and wise elder to the next generation of Steelers. But because the community isn’t a monolith, it wasn’t always easy: Supporting Joe Paterno post-scandal and not supporting the Penguins’ bid for a new arena didn’t go over very well. (Hey, a lot of water goes under those golden bridges over the decades.)

More simply, though, Franco was just plain lovely. He embraced being an icon on the banks of the Three Rivers and beyond. There’s been a flood of tributes for Franco already, ranging from teammates to arch rivals, from two U.S. presidents to Rage Against the Machine’s guitarist. For the 50 preceding years, he paid tribute to countless fans with his patience, autographing & posing with & listening to their (our) perspectives on his singular moment…which he understood belonged to all of us.

Born nine months before the 1972 Divisional Round game and half a century later the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Tomlin says he’s met at least 75,000 people who’ve told him they were in Three Rivers Stadium that day. Hundreds of thousands more can tell you where they were when it happened. My father and two uncles were among the 50,000 or so there…but like so many other witnesses that day, none of them actually witnessed it. As they tell it, the whole thing happened too fast: When Bradshaw’s pass bounced backwards, it pulled their eyes away in disgust…but a beat-late roar from the crowd refocused them in time to see Franco running down the sideline. For the next decade, #32 and the Steelers never looked back.

Art & Dan Rooney, had of course, already brought in building blocks Noll, Mean Joe, Blount, and Bradshaw by the time Harris made it over from Happy Valley (and over concerns they should’ve drafted his allegedly superior Nittany Lion backfield mate, Lydell Mitchell), but as the elder Rooney once said, “Before Franco got here, we didn’t win much. Since he got here, we don’t lose.”

All those wins meant the rest of the country was talking about the Steelers and, therefore, Pittsburgh…and it wasn’t even to make fun of us! When the ’70s started, Pittsburgh’s steel industry, and, therefore, Pittsburgh, were dying. The city had become the go-to punchline as a place no respectable person would ever live. By the time ‘80s arrived, some of those steelworkers were sharing the cover of Sports Illustrated. We were prahd. Prahd of our team, and prahd of our city.

Believe me, I know it sounds hyperbolic and/or saccharine, but those Steelers really did turn around a provincial town’s broken spirit, and it started with that one broken play. Don’t take my word for it. The side-by-side statutes in the local airport tell the tale: George Washington next to Franco Harris, the Father of Our Nation and the player who birthed our dynasty.

Franco knew the Immaculate Reception had boosted a failing city’s morale when it needed, but now he’s left (at least) a few days too early.  Saturday night was supposed to be a celebration of that moment, but instead tens of thousands of Pittsburghers will gather like the English just did for their royalty. Pittsburghers will put on their Steelers bobble hats and endure frigid cold for the extra-large wake of a Hall of Fame player and prince of a man. 

It’s a terrible shame the Fort Dix, NJ, kid who became Pittsburgh’s adopted son won’t be there on Saturday (to vanquish the Raiders, of course), but for the last half century he kept that play, that moment in that city, his city, alive for so many. He never let it hit the ground.

For Franco Harris, it was the role of a lifetime.