‘The place to be’ on Saturday nights, Duquesne club football won national championship 50 years ago
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Players dressed for practice in a maintenance shed on Quarry Field on the South Side Slopes.
The field was a mixture of dirt, rocks, glass, maybe some green grass.
The coach handed out equipment from the back of his Cadillac.
Sometimes, only 11 players showed up for practice, but Duquesne coach Dan McCann understood. Class came first.
Yet there they were at Three Rivers Stadium, 50 years ago — Nov. 20, 1973 — playing for the national club football championship. A crowd of 3,724 attended, and gate proceeds benefited Children’s Hospital.
It was football with no scholarships. The university gave the team $10,000 per season, and McCann raised the remainder of what was necessary through his many friends, including Allegheny County Commissioner Tom Foerster.
“I always said we were a Division I team on a club budget,” All-American wide receiver Rod Hess said.
McCann worked diligently to find players, many of whom came from North Catholic, Central Catholic and Bishop Boyle. He also coaxed 27- and 28-year-old Vietnam veterans, who were attending Duquesne on the GI Bill, to join the team. As a perk for playing football, McCann, a salesman at the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, got players seasonal work running forklifts on the night shift.
“You have to improvise, big guy,” he liked to say, using the label he gave anyone whose name he couldn’t remember.
Players from that team gathered earlier this year to reminisce and pay homage to McCann, who died May 14, 2022, at the age of 88.
After graduating from North Catholic and Pitt, McCann somehow found time for football when he wasn’t at the brewery.
He coached at St. Joseph’s in Manchester and St. Sebastian Grade School before leading the North Catholic freshmen to three consecutive 9-0 seasons.
Through it all, he had a vision of returning football to Duquesne. The Dukes were a national powerhouse in the 1930s, producing All-Americans and winning two Orange Bowls, 33-7 against Miami in 1934 and 13-12 against Mississippi State in 1937. In the ’37 game, Ernie Hefferle, who later was coach at Tarentum High School and interim coach with the New Orleans Saints, caught the decisive touchdown pass.
The program was discontinued after the 1950 season when the Dukes were 2-8-1, playing with a roster that included several Korean War veterans.
Nearly two decades later, there was a campus movement to bring back football, and a club team was formed in 1969. McCann was hired as coach a year later.
The Dukes played at Three Rivers Stadium, South Stadium and J.C. Stone Field in North Park. Duquesne was the first collegiate team to play at Three Rivers, three months after it opened in 1970.
On Saturday nights, Hess said wherever the Dukes played was “the place to be.” The Sheiks, a social club at Duquesne, even put on a halftime show, using pots, pans and kazoos.
By 1972, Duquesne was ranked No. 3 in the nation and had a 72-6 victory against the College of Steubenville to its credit. Running back Steve Sherer scored five touchdowns in that game.
McCann coached the Dukes for 19 seasons, including their return to varsity football in 1979. He was no old-school coach, insisting on developing a strong passing game when everyone else was running the ball.
“Dan’s philosophy was the quickest way to get to the end zone was throwing the ball over everybody’s head,” said former Duquesne coach Terry Russell on a YouTube video produced in tribute to McCann. Russell played and coached for McCann and replaced him in 1984 when he took a medical leave of absence.
McCann’s aerial strategy paid off in the championship game in 1973 when quarterback Dave Thomas threw two touchdown passes in a 13-7 victory against Mattatuck Community College of Waterbury, Conn. Hess caught five passes for 104 yards and one of those touchdowns.
Mattatuck had more than twice as many players (65/32) and a decided edge in size. Duquesne guards Rocky Graziano and John Loosigan checked in at 175 and 165 pounds, respectively, whereas Mattatuck’s defensive linemen were as much as 75 pounds heavier. McCann was mindful of the weight disparity and went to the air, with Thomas attempting 29 passes.
Duquesne (10-0) nailed down the victory when Gary McHenry intercepted at pass at the 2 with 43 seconds left. Joe Alfier and Frank Hooper also recorded picks at opportune times.
After the game, Foerster paid for dinner for both teams at the old Pilot House riverboat restaurant on the Monongahela River.
The players understood that club football was on a different level. Yet Thomas, who transferred from Mississippi State, said he got hit just as hard at Duquesne. “Just not as often.”
Wide receiver Sammie DeMarco, who made two catches for 64 yards, said club guys played with a “chip on your shoulder.”
“You had to. Nobody knew what club football was. It had a bad (name), still does to this day — until I kick your butt on that field all the time.”
When players assemble to tell stories, all of them include memories of McCann, who built the program from nothing, with what they call a demanding, but compassionate, coaching style.
“I call him the Founding Father of the return of Duquesne football,” Jack McVay said on the YouTube video. “He’s George Washington. He’s Thomas Jefferson.”
Added John Rosato: “He made it a family. He was a tough dad in the family.”