One team. Four Super Bowl championships. Twelve Hall of Famers. Two hundred interviews. They were the best to ever play the game: the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s. Three decades later their names echo in popular memory—Mean Joe, Bradshaw, Webster, Lambert, Ham, Blount, Franco, Swann, and Stallworth. They define not only the brother­hood and camaraderie of football, but what Americans love about their most popular sport: its artistry and its brutality. From the team’s origins in a horseplayer’s winnings to the young armored gods who immaculately beat the Raiders in 1972 to the grandfathers with hobbles in their gait, Their Life’s Work tells the full, intimate story of the Steeler dynasty. But this book does much more than that: it tells football’s story. What the game gives, what it takes, and why, to a man, every Steeler, full well knowing the costs, unhesitatingly states, “I’d do it again.”.

Introduction. Reverie & reality -- When the Chief was young. The Chief at the racetracks, 1937 -- Assembling the pieces. The Rooneys ; The man from the Courier ; Noll & Mean Joe ; The Rock & the Frenchman ; Immaculate -- An empire born. In the film room ; The 1974 draft ; Quarterback controversy : Brad, Rat, or Joe Gillie? ; The steel curtain ; Stall & Webby ; 1974 AFC title game ; Superbowl IX -- Steel empire. Days of empire : 1975-1981 -- Their life's work. Bar scene at Pro Bowl, 1982 ; Mean Joe ; Brad ; Franco ; Stall ; Webby ; The Rooneys -- Empire in twilight. It's still their town ; The legacy haunted ; Noll & the Ambassador ; The sauna, once more -- Postscript. Mere mortals.