When Rob Ruck moved to Pittsburgh in 1960, Pittsburgh was still the Steel City. But not for long. By the late 1970s, the city was struggling to maintain its identity as the mills began shutting down. Steel production and morale were at an all-time low, but during the 1970s, a transformation took place that would redefine Pittsburgh for generations to come.
Ruck, a sports history professor in the Department of History at the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, first came to the University of Pittsburgh as a graduate student studying the role that the Negro Leagues and sandlot teams played in Black Pittsburgh. Football, and sports in general, have long been a central part of the city’s identity. With the 2026 NFL Draft being hosted in Pittsburgh this weekend, we spoke with Ruck about the city’s significance in the history of professional football.
Rob Ruck
Rob Ruck
The National Football League was founded in 1920 but struggled to establish itself with a dozen squads folding, often during the season. According to Ruck, the NFL may not have survived past the 1920s and 1930s without the addition of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. At the time, the NFL was not nearly as popular as college football and had failed to gain traction. The league needed Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but due to Blue Laws in Pennsylvania, it was unable to host events on Sundays. Nor could the Pirates or the Pittsburgh Symphony. However, by 1933, cities were allowed to decide for themselves if they wanted to allow commercial recreational activities on Sundays, and both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia voted in favor, opening the door for professional football to grow.
“That's when Art Rooney and Bert Bell created franchises that not only became mainstays of the NFL, but brought the competitive balance, including the draft, that the league needed to survive and prosper and become, over time, the most rationally run and profitable league in American sports history,” says Ruck.
Art J. Rooney, smoking a cigar on the field
In the early days of the NFL, when college players were drafted, they were heading to bigger cities, leaving smaller market teams struggling to compete. Together, Rooney and Bell convinced the other franchise owners in 1935 to begin a program where teams would draft in the reverse order that they finished. This would help give smaller franchises a shot at signing better players and staying in the game. Initially, the draft had a limited impact due to low pay and job insecurity in the NFL. Over time, however, the draft became a cornerstone of the league’s structure, helping to create the competitive balance that makes the league what it is today.
Rooney further leveled the playing field in the 1960s by advocating for sharing revenues from broadcasts evenly. This meant that smaller-market teams, like the Steelers, could be more competitive.
Despite Pittsburgh facing economic decline in the 1970s, the spirit of its people never wavered. That spirit helped lead the city to a meteoric rise in the 1970s, when it earned its reputation as the “City of Champions.” The Pirates captured two World Series titles, the Pitt Panthers won a National Football Championship in 1975, and the Steelers claimed four Super Bowls in six years.
Terry Bradshaw (L) Art J. Rooney (R)
“The new image of Pittsburgh was based on sport,” Ruck said. “This was a city where people worked hard and played harder, where they lost but persevered, and in the end became the best at what they did. If you look at cities of comparable size, so forget about Chicago and New York City, there's no city in the 20th century that had the across-the-board record of excellence that Pittsburgh had in sport.”
(L) The Homestead Grays Baseball Team (R) Honus Wagner
(L) The Homestead Grays Baseball Team (R) Honus Wagner
Pittsburgh’s sports legacy is rooted in its sandlots and neighborhoods. Rooney himself came from an Irish Catholic working-class family on the North Side, while Negro League teams like the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords were built by steelworkers from the Homestead Steel Works and the sons of families who came north during the Great Migration. For Ruck and for the city of Pittsburgh, sports are more than just games. They are a way of life, born and bred from blue-collar workers, and are just as much a part of our culture as perogies and fish fries.
“A lot of the story of Pittsburgh sport that made it so important to people was because it was the girls and boys, the men and women of the city, who made that story,” Ruck said.
If you are interested in studying sports history at Pitt, read more about the Sport Studies Certificate.