‘Burgh’s Best to Wear it, No. 65: Pitt's Joe Schmidt grew tough playing sandlot football vs. convicts

The Tribune-Review sports staff is conducting a daily countdown of the best players in Pittsburgh pro and college sports history to wear each jersey number.

No. 65: Joe Schmidt

Joe Schmidt did not play in the golden age of Pitt football.

In his three varsity seasons, the Panthers won 10 games — total. In his four years on campus (1949-52), he played for four head coaches.

A remarkable assortment of injuries appeared to limit his pro potential, but Schmidt often played — and played well — through pain. He was a late-round draft choice of the Detroit Lions in 1953 — the last pick in the seventh round, which would make him Mr. Irrelevant today.

But Schmidt was anything but irrelevant.

He grew up in Mt. Oliver and went to Brentwood High School but before that played sandlot football with adults.

Wrote Myron Cope in the Saturday Evening Post: “Joe began playing rough, tough football against full-grown men on the sandlots of Western Pennsylvania when he was only 12. Joe was a tackle on the St. Clair Veterans, a team that was otherwise made up of men who had served in World War II. He was a big boy then, weighing 175 pounds, but he didn’t have a whisker on his chin.

“When the St. Clair Veterans visited the Western State Penitentiary to play a team of convicts, he had to lie about his age to get inside the prison walls.”

Contacted at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Schmidt, 88, said he really was 14 or 15, but playing against convicts “scared the (heck) out of me.”

“But I held my own, and we beat them.”

At Pitt, Schmidt was an All-American middle linebacker (1952), despite a string of injuries that included a broken wrist and separated shoulder, two knee injuries in successive seasons and two broken ribs. After tearing knee cartilage in the ’52 opener, he played two weeks later against Notre Dame, suffering a concussion that put him in the hospital for 10 days.

”I just wanted to play against Notre Dame,” he said. “I didn’t worry about anything.”

On that day in South Bend, Schmidt’s legend was cemented. Before the game, he asked coach Red Dawson and his staff to the leave the room so he could speak to the players.

Notre Dame was one of the best teams in the nation, but Schmidt wasn’t especially impressed.

“We were as good as they were, even better (in some cases),” he said. “I just wanted people to play to their capabilities and play together.”

Schmidt’s words found their mark.

“Joe said a few things I’m not going to repeat,” teammate Merle DeLuca said in Pitt historian Sam Sciullo Jr.’s book, “University of Pittsburgh Football Vault.”

A two-touchdown underdog, Pitt won 22-19, its first victory against the Irish since 1937 and the only time they beat a Notre Dame team coached by the legendary Frank Leahy. Before his injury, Schmidt returned an interception 60 yards.

With the Lions, Schmidt was named All-Pro every year from 1954-1963 and captained the Lions’ 1957 team — the franchise’s last NFL champion to date.

Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame running back Paul Hornung called Schmidt “the best linebacker in the league.”

Another Hall of Famer, running back John Henry Johnson, said of Schmidt, “He’s always in the way.”

Schmidt was head coach of the Lions from 1967-1972, compiling a record of 43-35-7 and leading the team to its only playoff appearance in the 1970s.

In 1973, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the first Pitt player so honored. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000.

Pitt retired Schmidt’s jersey No. 65 in 1997, and he is the clear choice as the best Pittsburgh athlete to wear that number, as chosen by the Tribune-Review sports staff.

Other 65s of distinction:

• John Guzik, a consensus All-American guard for Pitt’s football team in 1958.

• Offensive tackle John Jackson, a 10th-round draft choice who started all 16 games in six of his 10 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers.