Fifty years, six rings and a life well loved

Bob McCartney was just four months into a full-time job with the Steelers when he was asked to help photographer Les Banos shoot a game at Three Rivers Stadium. It wasn’t just any game. It was the Steelers’ first playoff game in franchise history.

McCartney, who grew up in Mt. Lebanon and had been a ball boy at training camp since he was 16, was working as an assistant to equipment managers Tony Parisi and Jack Hart. He did whatever he could to help — fit players with shoulder pads, put decals on helmets, even tape ankles.

It wasn’t what he thought he would be doing. After graduating from Wheeling Jesuit College in West Virginia, he had intended to go to law school. He also thought he would be drafted during the Vietnam War in 1972 because his draft lottery number was 55. But, during his last physical after being called up for service, it was discovered McCartney was allergic to bees, which designated him as “4F” — unfit for military service.

The date was Dec. 23, 1972. One of Banos’ assistants was out of town so he asked McCartney, who had limited experience shooting film at training camp, if he could man a camera in the end zone at Three Rivers Stadium. How tough could it be?

“I got nothing to lose,” McCartney said. “Why not?”

McCartney, the son of an IRS agent, had four magazines of 400-foot film, a normal amount for shooting a game. But, with two minutes remaining in the game against the Oakland Raiders, McCartney realized he had run out of film. Unsure what to do, he packed up his equipment and headed for an elevator to take him to the locker room. When he got to ground level, he stopped in Banos’ office, which was a triangular-shaped room with a rectangular window behind home plate, to drop off the tripod. At that moment, he heard the crowd erupt.

“I’m inside looking through that window and, all of a sudden, the crowd roars and Franco is coming at me,” McCartney said. “Tony [Parisi] is standing in the corner of the end zone, he’s got his arms up in the air, and Franco is running right at me.

“I went running out of the room, I didn’t know what to do. We had just won the game, so I head to the locker room and pull open the locker room door and Mr. Rooney is standing there. And he looked at me and he said, ‘Bob, it was a great season. It’s too bad we lost.’ And I’m like, ‘Mr. Rooney, we won the game. We won. We won the game.’”

The Immaculate Reception, one of the greatest plays in the history of the NFL. And the man who would go on to handle all their video operations for five decades ran out of film.

“That’s my claim to fame,” McCartney said. “That was my first game and I don’t have the play.”

‘I provide the books’

Like the Immaculate Reception, McCartney is celebrating his 50th anniversary with the Steelers, making him the team’s longest-tenured employee. His title is director of video and facilities, which means he has been in charge of the film and video department since 1973 and overseen the day-to-day operation of the team’s South Side offices and practice facility since its construction in 1999.

But even that does not begin to tell the number of different roles he has performed through the years.

Along the way, he served as a ball boy at training camp with Art Rooney II and Tom Donahoe; got knocked over a fence by Dan Rooney during what was supposed to be a tag-football game at Saint Vincent College; drove back and forth every night from Latrobe to Oakland to have practice tape processed; sold season tickets; attended the annual NFL draft, where he was responsible for handing in the card with the Steelers’ pick; and thought he might die when a plane crashed right in front of him in the upper deck after a playoff game in Baltimore.

In that time, he has collected six Super Bowl rings, putting him in select company. Only four other members of the organization — Dan Rooney, Bill Nunn, Joe Greene and former ticket and office manager Gerry Glenn — have six Super Bowl rings.

But all that is expected to come to an end. McCartney, 72, said the 2022 season will probably be his last with the Steelers. Travel and late-night games have conspired to take their toll on the man everyone knows as “Mac,” who has outlasted everybody in the organization in terms of service.

“When you look at it, if you love what you do, the time flies,” McCartney said. “I never thought I’d see 50, but then again I just saw Franco in the hallway and it’s hard to believe Franco caught the Immaculate Reception 50 years ago in December. You get wrapped up in this business. I’ve lived this business. The Rooneys have always been good to me. You do what you love and the time flies, one season rolls into another.”

McCartney has two grown children — Kate, 40, a mother of three living in enemy territory, Cleveland; and son, Rob, director of pro scouting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He discussed retiring a couple of years ago with his wife, Gail, but that’s when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred and it actually caused him to put his decision on hold.

“It gave me something to do,” McCartney said. “It gave me cause to get up in the morning, go to work and do what I love.”

It might be a stretch to suggest the Steelers started winning Super Bowls shortly after McCartney was named the full-time director of video in March 1973, three months after the Immaculate Reception. He was working in the ticket department when former coach Chuck Noll called him into his office and told him he wanted him in charge of videography. Noll saw what film study did for preparation when he coached with Don Shula in Baltimore and Sid Gillman in San Diego.

Beside driving from Latrobe to Oakland every night during training camp to get film processed — and running out of film at the most significant moment of the Immaculate Reception — McCartney knew nothing about videography. After all, he wanted to be a lawyer.

At the time, the video department consisted of practice being shot with Dan Rooney’s Kodak Brownie camera that cost $1. Banos, who shot high school football on Friday nights and Pitt football on Saturday afternoons, videoed the Steelers games on Sunday. Noll wanted more.

“I said to Chuck, ‘I don’t know anything about film,’ and he said, ‘You know more about film that anyone else we have right now,’” McCartney said.

Just like that, the Steelers had a film guy for the next 50 years.

Noll sent McCartney to Baltimore for two weeks to learn the business from the Colts videographer, Art Eich. Eventually, Eich sold one of his film processing trailers to the Steelers, which they parked near Gate B at Three Rivers Stadium. That was McCartney’s home for more than 25 years until Dan Rooney asked him to take on another role — oversee the construction of the office and practice facility on the South Side.

In many ways, McCartney helped modernize the way the Steelers did business with practice and game video. And a strong case can be made it changed their fortunes on the field.

“The coaches are the teachers, the players are the students, and I provide the books,” McCartney said. “I provide the learning tools.”

One close call

There have been many highlights through the years, though one, in particular, stands above the others: Sitting in the press box in Oakland Alameda Coliseum, in the moments after a 24-13 victory against the Raiders on Dec. 29, 1974, realizing the Steelers were going to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history.

“I was working for two years and it was like, OK, I’m going to the Super Bowl,” McCartney said. “Then you come back next year and do the same thing. In 1976, it was probably the best team we ever had, and we lose.”

The Steelers lost in Oakland that year, 24-7, one week after they hammered the Baltimore Colts, 40-14, because their top three running backs missed the game due to injury — Harris, Rocky Bleier and John “Frenchy” Fuqua. It also was one week after McCartney wasn’t sure he would even be alive to travel to Oakland.

Just 10 minutes after the playoff victory against the Colts, Donald Kroner, a former charter pilot, crashed a rented Piper Cherokee into the empty upper deck at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, losing a wing in the process. McCartney was in the photo booth with Eich, the Colts’ film guy, when the plane came flying into the stadium.

“All of a sudden I see this plane coming down and he’s right in front of me at the 50-yard line and his wings are going like this,” McCartney said, twisting his hand in front of him. “I snapped the camera on, thinking I’m dead. If this guy turns right, I’m dead.

“I see this guy trying to climb, I can hear him trying to climb, and he stalls the plane and belly flops the plane into the stands. I was that close.”

Unlike the Immaculate Reception, McCartney got that on film.

“I still have it some place,” he said.

Now, with the Steelers and the NFL ready to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception, the play conjures a different memory for McCartney. After five decades of doing just about everything except coaching for the Steelers, he sees the end of his run coming at him like Franco Harris on that December day in 1972 — shortly after he ran out of film.

“I had a seat on the 50-yard line and nobody ever stood up in front of me on a Sunday afternoon,” McCartney said. “That’s the hardest part — I’m not going to have a seat on the 50-yard line anymore. I’m not a part of what’s going on. It’s in your blood. That’s the hardest part, realizing it’s coming to an end.”

Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac.