Steelers-Cowboys rivalry always a classic conflict of styles
Digest Correspondent
“The Dallas Cowboys.”
Those words were spoken in the heat of the day, during an afternoon practice at Saint Vincent College. It was the summer of 1980, my rookie year, and we were preparing to go to Dallas to play the Cowboys in the preseason finale. Just as the Steelers had done in 1978, and 1979. And of course, those were seasons that ended with Lombardi Trophy presentations.
Chuck Noll apparently liked to finish off the preseason with a game in the fiery heat and humidity of Dallas, Texas, and do so in August. Sort of “make it as miserable and as hard as you can” to end another Noll training camp, which always was an exercise in pain tolerance and misery all by itself.
The tone of the voice speaking those thre words was that of apparent disgust, as if the very thought of the Cowboys, or even mentioning their name, was an insult to the hallowed grounds of Saint Vincent College, where back-to-back Super Bowl seasons were born in 1974-75 and then again in 1978-79.
The speaker was my offensive line coach Rollie Dotsch, a hardened and grizzled veteran of the NFL coaching profession. And a
