From Steel Town to THE Football Town

Welcome to Steel Stories by US Steel. In this podcast, we go beyond the headlines, bringing you insights, ideas, and stories shaping how steel is made, used, and reimagined. Through conversations with industry leaders and innovators, we explore what it takes to keep forging the future of America. Hey, everybody, this is Ethan Epstein from U.S. steel Steel Stories. You know, Pittsburgh is a football town, but it's not just a football town, really. It is the football town. So today on Steel Stories, we're going to talk about why that is, how it affects life here in Western Pennsylvania and, you know, what does it mean to be the football town. We're going to start with Neil Zender, the executive producer of the Football Town, which is a new movie from NFL Films. Then we're going to talk to Wayne Wade. He is the head coach at Clairton High School for football. Clairton, of course, is a very important city in US Steel's operating footprint. Wayne is going to, you know, make us drop and give him 20, I'm sure, as any good football coach will. And then we'll wrap things up with Kurt Minor. Kurt is the chief of interpretation and the senior History curator at the State Museum of Pennsylvania. So we'll get a little football pass present. And I'd say, future Neil, thanks for joining the podcast. Great to be here, Ethan. Let's begin with what the movie is. You know, I don't think most of the people in the audience have had a chance to see it yet. I did. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what the movie is, what it's about. The Football Town is basically the story of what football means to people in Pittsburgh. And it chronicles one fall weekend in Pittsburgh and, and shows the heartbeat of football and in everybody in the community's lives, from Pop Warner games to Friday night high school games to Saturday pit games to the Steelers on Sunday, and how football sort of acts as a conduit to build the community, which is present everywhere in America, but it's especially present in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. All right. Yes, good. So let's start talk a little bit about the central thesis of the film, like why, what makes Pittsburgh the football town? I think when most people think of a football town, they think of a town where you can't. You can't think of the town without the team. In the National Football League, the teams are located in big, giant cities where the cities are so big and have so many characteristics that football is not the dominant characteristic in. In the personality of the city. And what makes Pittsburgh extraordinarily unique is. It. Is. It's an NFL town, and it's also a football town, where football is central to the identity of the city and the identity of the region and the identity of the people. What's the genesis of that extraordinary link between football and Pittsburgh? I think, you know, and, you know, we were very lucky when we started working on this project. The first thing we said, well, who's going to. Who's going to tell the story? And the person we dreamed of Getting was Pat McAfee, because he's from Pittsburgh and he understands Pittsburgh and he can explain Pittsburgh better than anybody else. And he was very excited to do this. One of the first things Pat McAfee will tell you is that Pittsburgh is a tough people town. And it's a tough people town because. Because of the history of steel in Pittsburgh and the type of people that worked in a steel mill and the type of person that. That takes. And you raise your kids in a certain way. If you work in a steel mill. And at a certain point, whether you work in a steel mill or not, that's the culture, and that's the. That's the way you raise your kids. And that tough people town mentality leads people to sort of say, I like football. Football's the perfect game for this. Baseball's great and basketball's great, but they're not. They're not a game for tough people. Football is. And so I think Pittsburgh embraced football in a way that other communities that were built on other industries maybe did not. And I think it's one of the most amazing things we discovered in making this that blew everybody away, is we started just listing off all the. All the people from Pittsburgh who have played in the NFL and made a huge impact, whether it's Aaron Donald or Mercury Morris, you know, the Darrell revis or my iron Mike ditko, like the. The list goes on and on and on. You look it up, and more than 750 people from Western Pennsylvania have been drafted to play in the NFL. Based on the size and population of western Pennsylvania, that's a higher percentage of people per capita than any other region. Like, western Pennsylvania doesn't just make steel. It makes football players because it's the culture, and it's the culture because it's. It's. It's a steel community. Now, you and your crew got a chance to actually explore some of the facilities of U S. Steel while. While making this movie. Can you talk a little bit about your experience, your cruise experience, going in the mill? I mean, how Was that for you? What, what talk about that. We never got to film in a steel mill before. So our, our director of photography, Germany, he was so excited to go shoot in a steel mill. Then we went and shot at the Edgar Thompson Works, which was an incredible experience. You know, we were in the blast furnace, we were in the bob shop. We were in the continuous caster. Like when you stand on, you know, whatever the, the ledge above the continuous caster and you feel like the heat coming up on your, your face, it's, it's an incredible thing and it really, I don't know that a person can, you know, it was, it was, it was fun for the shooters to document a steel mill and the process of making steel and what people do to make steel in the same way that they shoot football and use the same, you know, slow motion techniques and macro lenses and things like that to show the, show the process and show what happens and show what it, it takes. Well, Neil Zender, Writer, Director, the Football Town thank you so much for joining us. It's been great. Thanks a lot. Thanks. Now we are joined by Wayne Wade, who is the head coach of the Clairton High School football team. Coach, great to have you. Thanks for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. I'm glad I can be a part of so, so Coach Wade, I understand you are like Mr. Clairton basically, right? So can you talk a little bit about your, your connection to the area and, and what you do there today? Well, my connection is, is, you know, ever since I was born, born and raised here in this town and played sports in this town pretty much all my career, starting at 5 years old, finishing my senior year at high school playing all three sports. I was a three sport athlete here. Went to the University of Akron on a full football scholarship. That was in 1990. And came back in 97 and started coaching. And I've been here since 90 back since 97. And you know, we talk about how Pittsburgh, all of Western PA really is sort of has a special connection to football. Now you said you're a three sport athlete, so I guess that's basketball, baseball and football. Yes, but all great sports, of course. Would you, would you agree, do you think there's something special about Clairton, about Pittsburgh and football? Would you agree with that? I would agree with that. There's so much rich tradition in small towns like Clairton here in Western Pennsylvania. When you talk about Pennsylvania football, you can't talk about football unless you talk about Western Pennsylvania. There have been so many great athletes from Western Pennsylvania. You know, you can go back as far as Joe Montana and guys like Dick Buckus and, you know, it's just rich tradition in these small towns, and it continues to carry on. Do kids aspire to be on the football? You know, what's. What's every. How. How does that intertwine with everyday life in the Mon Valley and in Clairton? Well, I think it starts with the success that we continue to have. So everyone wants to be successful. And when the kids here in this town first start playing football at five and six years old, their dream and aspirations are to be a Clairton Bear, to one day be on the field as a Clairton Bear, representing the school. And what skills? You know, obviously, there's the skills on the gridiron itself, but, like, what life skills? What academic skills? What do you think the. The players are sort of learning as life lessons about from their time on the football team? Well, there's. There's a lot that goes into football, and I think that's why, if you ever talk to any football player that's ever played, especially on a professional level, how many lessons you learn through the game. And to come from a small town like Clairton, what's it. It's impoverished, you know, a lot of blighted properties, not a lot of resources. We don't have the best of facilities, all of those type of things. You know, we learned that adversity is always going to be there in life. And for us, sometimes it's more adversity than others have to deal with. And I think that's what makes a Clairton football player. You know, that toughness, that grit that will to, you know, just want to do your best because, you know, kind of the hand is not always even. And coming from a small town like this, like I said, the kids, they love it. You know, it's interesting, when you were talking about the qualities that, like, kids or professional athletes get from football, you're talking about, like, grit needing to overcome adversity. I think that also describes a lot of people that work in the steel industry and in a place like Clairton Coke works. So can you, you know, just sort of switching gears a little bit, though? Obviously, I think they're related. Can, as a. As a native son of Clairton, can you talk a little bit about what US Steel's presence means, obviously, to the Mon Valley, but to Clairton specifically? Well, back in the day when US Steel was really booming, it was a great resource for this community. A lot of families in this community used US Steel Coming out of high school as a career. Yeah, but it was a tough career. It was put your, you know, steel hat on, you know, you're in your blue uniform, you come home dirty, you have to leave your clothes at the door, you know, type of job. And you knew it was tough. But that's what created, I think, the toughness not only in the town, but also within the football program. You know, another mantra we have at US Steel is safety first. In fact, we invented that phrase back in 1908. I'm curious how that translates to football. How do you make sure that the students stay safe playing a rough game like football? Well, if you look at the game over the last 15, 20 years, you can definitely see the game evolve, and players are getting bigger, stronger, faster. So we have to continue to evolve with that and in dealing with the safety, how to tackle what a tackle looks like, you know, not using your helmet as a weapon, all of those type of things we teach and preach daily. Yeah. In our drills, you know, weekly in our practices. So, you know, that it goes hand in hand with just playing the game. You have to play the game the right way. I keep thinking, like, you're. I feel like all this. These things you're saying about football have real parallels with steel making, because it's the same. Like, you have to reinforce safe procedures in steel make, like, every day, every week. Like, you can't relent. Right. You just have to always beat that drum. Yeah. Right. And for me, some of the elders here in the community that help out, that are part of, you know, giving back, they were once still workers. Yeah. So they kind of understand that. And to hear their stories about going to work every day and the procedures and policies and things that they would have to do daily to make sure they came back out of that meal, you know, when. When that horn went off. Yeah. You know, you just hear that and, you know, with the game of football, like I said, evolving bigger, stronger, faster players, you know, safety is always our first thing at hand. One final question I'm curious about. So what's one thing that you would want to tell me about life in Clairton? Life in the Monville. It doesn't have to be football, doesn't have to be steel. Just like, what makes life unique there. That it's a tough town, but there's a lot of great people here, and this town prepares you for life. Yeah. That's a great answer. Well, thank you so much. Oh, thanks for having me. I truly appreciate it. Now we have Dr. Kurt Miner. Kurt I see you are not in a gym. That's where the coach was just now. But you are here with us. Thank you for joining us. Kurt, what is your official job title with the state of Pennsylvania? I'm the Chief of Interpretation and senior History Curator here at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, which is part of the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission. Fantastic. And we are here to have you interpret, you know, a. A fact, I would say, about Western Pennsylvania, which we've been discussing throughout this podcast, including with NFL Films, with a coach at Clairton High. What is it about Western PA and football? Well, thank you, Ethan. It is a. It is absolutely a great question. So history is definitely part of this story. You have to understand that there's a much deeper tradition in football than the 1970s and the winning championships from the Pittsburgh Steelers. So that really, you do have to use history to shed light on this. So we have that popular history. But I think what's more interesting is the way that scholars and folks, social scientists in particular and geographers, have tried to, no pun intended, tackle this question. And one of the first really serious studies of this was conducted back in the 1960s by a guy named John Rooney, who found, who did a national study of the hometown origins of college football players between 1961 and 1967. And what he found was pretty remarkable at first level. It was what you would expect to see when you do that large scale study that most players were from really big cities like New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. But when you start to control for per capita, he found this really interesting association between what he described as 12 football counties that were, five of which were in Western Pennsylvania, three were in Ohio and two were in West Virginia. That was what he called the football belt. And you could very easily transpose that on top of steel towns, which, which he actually did. So he saw this very strong correlation between steel towns and football producing on average, two times what the nation was producing at that point. So it was a really impressive overproduction. So he observes a phenomena, he is able to quantify it. But when it comes to explaining it, that's where we're still left with a bit of a puzzle. It took another researcher to take Rooney's same data and then drill down on another level to try to identify what it was about those football counties that distinguished them from, from other parts of the country. And that's where it gets really interesting, because he found, this researcher found both tangible and intangible factors or variables that you could cite that made those counties different from the rest of the country, you had a number of things like strong traditions of high school football. That's an intangible factor. You also had strong support from local industries. And probably the most important thing that they drilled down in finding the one, the strongest variable was the percentage of the population in those counties that were employed in manufacturing, and not just any type of manufacturing, but single industries. And when you think about single industries, steel comes to mind. Those. Those steel towns were. Were often, in fact, perhaps always single industry towns. And for whatever reason, that was the most important determining factor of a strong football county. And so based on that, you have to really begin to believe that there is, again, this very strong correlation. But that only gets you so far because. Because again, you're identifying correlations and not causation. So I think with causation, you have to look at some of those more intangible factors that you can certainly see in western Pennsylvania historically and even to this very moment. Do you want to identify those A and B? I mean, could you look at something like the topography of the land? I mean, I'm just saying, because there are other parts of the country that have single industry. You know, like. That's a great point, Ethan. And the way I would describe this is kind of what I think some social scientists still refer to as the Goldilocks effect or the Goldilocks principle is what western Pennsylvania, and to some extent eastern Ohio and the pan handle of western West Virginia had, was just the right amount of everything at the right time. So they, yeah, other. Other places had high schools, large high schools that were supporting big football programs. But what western Pennsylvania had in particular were these large high schools that were nestled very closely together. That made for very strong rivalries between those. Those towns. And that started to feed on itself. And that's what I think is quite interesting is the role that tradition plays even after those conditions that, again, western Pennsylvania had, you know, especially in the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s, started to become a little less. Less strong, you know, so that, you know, that, you know, the population centers started to disperse a little bit. People started moving out of the mill towns into the suburbs. And yet the tradition remained very strong. And you can see some of this tradition in what we call the built environment in western Pennsylvania. One study found that that region had high school football stadiums that rivaled those of small colleges in terms of their capacity. And the capacity exceeded student enrollment by like 15 to 1, which is really, really remarkable. And that, to me, is a measure of the strength of community support and the value they placed on that. There's also really important to recognize the role that football played historically back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, in terms of the reward that was offered to people who could play well, it meant they could exchange that athletic prowess and athletic talent for a college degree. There was a great study in the 1950s as part of the study of what was called the Pennsylvania Fall Harvest, which was about all the recruits that were coming out of Pennsylvania that found in the town of Donora they had a student pop graduating class of 125 students, girls and boys, 17 athletic scholarships. I mean, that's remarkable. That's a remarkable turnout. And the explanation at the time, which I still think is true, is that there are a lot of these football acted as an elevator out of the mills, out of the mining areas and into college, especially during that period of time. And you got to have to factor that in as well. So it sort of stands to reason then, if the sort of football culture of Western Pennsylvania were to decline, it would probably be because the region we're going undergoing a cultural and demographic shift. I would think that is true and it will be interesting. We look back as historians, but it'll be interesting to observe how things move forward as the region does inevitably change. Well, Curb Miner, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for joining us. Great. Thank you, Ethan. It's been great talking with you this afternoon. Well, thanks everyone for joining Steel Stories. I think this episode really showed that football is deeply connected to Pittsburgh. But more than that, and obviously of deep importance to us, it's deeply connected to steel making as well. And likewise, steel making is deeply connected to Pittsburgh. So I think I've drawn a little circle for you right there to end the episode. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you next time on Steel Stories. Steel Stories is produced by US Steel. The views expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of US Steel. To learn more about our people, our capabilities, and where steel is headed Next, visit us steel.com you can find steel Stories on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's ahead. Thanks for listening.