April 25, 2006
by Scott Pitoniak
Democrat and Chronicle
There was no hoopla or glitz surrounding the event, as there
is today.
No wall-to-wall television coverage.
No commissioner stepping to the podium to tell us that the
Bills have selected so-and-so from such-and-such college, and that the Jets are
now on the clock.
No big-hair bigmouths dissecting the picks as if they were
laboratory frogs in formaldehyde.
No, the NFL draft was quite different back in Pat Stark's
day 52 years ago — a gentle summer breeze rather than a full-blown tornado.
"Night and day," recalls Stark, the longtime
Walworth resident and University of Rochester football coach who was drafted out of Syracuse by the
Pittsburgh Steelers in the second round in 1954.
"In fact, it wasn't even called a draft."
Stark had a distinguished career for the Orange as a
quarterback, once throwing a school-record four touchdown passes in a game against Fordham. The February after his
senior season, Stark received a phone call from Steelers coach Joe Bach, a
soft-spoken, deeply religious man who once played on Fordham's famous
"Seven Blocks of Granite" line with the legendary Vince Lombardi.
Bach said the Steelers had selected him, then drove up to Syracuse to meet
Stark and his family.
Unlike today's NFL teams, those of the 1950s operated on a
shoestring budget. There weren't any full-time scouts, so coaches and general
managers relied on what they read in sports
sections and feedback they received from football people they knew.
One of the Steelers assistants was a friend of SU assistant
Rocco Pirro and called a few times to inquire about Stark before selecting him.
Pirro also had connections from his playing
days in the Canadian Football League, so the Toronto Argonauts also
wound up selecting Stark.
"I was thrilled because I always dreamed of playing
sports professionally," says
Stark, who lettered in football, baseball and basketball at SU. "With both
of them choosing me, it became a situation similar to being recruited by
colleges, only in this situation there was money involved."
It was pocket change by today's standards, but good
money back then.
At a time when the NFL's minimum salary was $5,000, Stark
signed with the Steelers for $8,500.
He was going to get married that summer before heading to
the Steelers training camp at St. Bonaventure, and he called the team's general
manager to see if he could get a $300 advance.
The GM told Art Rooney about the request, and Pittsburgh's
affable owner grabbed the phone and told Pat that the Steelers were going to
send him $1,000 as a wedding gift.
Stark saw action as a backup to Steelers quarterback Jim
Finks. But after the sixth game of the 1954 season, Stark's NFL career came to
an abrupt halt when he was drafted by another organization — the U.S. Army.
He spent 18 months in the service, and when he received his
honorable discharge he contemplated resuming his pro playing career. Those
plans changed when Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder offered him an assistant's
job.
"Ben was a pretty persuasive guy," Stark says,
chuckling. "He said, 'Boy, you are going to get into coaching eventually
anyway, so it might as well be now.'"
So he returned to his alma mater in 1957, and three years
later he won a national championship ring with the Orangemen.
After stints at Rhode Island and Harvard, Stark took over
the UR head coaching reins in 1969 and spent 15 years leading the Yellowjackets
football team.
"If the Army hadn't called back in '54, who knows what
might have happened?" he said. "I definitely would have had a longer
playing career in the NFL, but I still would have wound up in coaching. That's
where my heart was. I have no regrets."