"Pressure is something you feel when you don't know what you're doing." (Chuck Noll)
In January 1969, five months before my high school graduation, the Pittsburgh Steelers hired a young, unflappable coach named Chuck Noll to take the reins of a team whose history was distinguished mainly by 35 years of utter futility on the gridiron. During the course of that disastrous 1-13 season, the rookie coach made it clear to several of the team's veteran players that they simply weren't good enough to compete at the professional level. Noll even sat down with Steelers linebacker Andy Russell -- widely considered one of the team's best players at that time -- to tell him he didn't like the way he was playing his position.