Mel Blount

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1989

University: Southern

Induction Year: 1989

“I didn’t want to be second to anyone,” Mel Blount said when he was elected to the Pro Football hall of Fame in 1989—his first year of eligibility.

The man with the clean-shaven head, menacing glare and intimidating style was the cornerstone of the Pittsburgh Steelers “Steel Curtain” defense when the team won four Super Bowls between 1974 and 1980.

Halfway through his pro career, the National Football League paid Blount the supreme compliment. They changed the rules because of him, outlawing the bump-and run style that made Blount the most dominant cornerback in the league.

It didn’t matter, because no defensive back adjusted to the new rules more quickly than Blount. He simply started playing farther behind receivers, baiting quarterbacks to throw in his direction by appearing to be beaten. But when they took the bait, he was there to break up the pass or make the interception.

Blount had a club record total of 57 interceptions, earned All-Pro honors three times and played in five Pro Bowls. When he retired, he had played in more regular-season games (200) than any other player in Pittsburgh history. Playing despite a separated shoulder, he missed only two of a possible 219 games.

In 1975, when the Steelers won their second Super Bowl, Blount was the NFL defensive Player of the Year and his teammates elected him the team’s Most Valuable Player.

Blount was born on a farm near Vidalia , Georgia , in 1948, the youngest in a family that had 11 children. He played college football at Southern University of Baton Rouge.

“I enjoyed having played my collegiate football in Louisiana ,” Blount said when he was voted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1989.

Nicknamed “Supe” (which was short for “Supper”), Blount played both cornerback and safety at Southern. He made the All-Southwestern Athletic Conference football teams. In his senior year at Southern, The Sporting News predicted he would be one of the top prospects in the draft, and named him to its All-American team in 1969.

The Steelers wasted no time grabbing Blount in their watershed 1970 draft, taking him on the third round after making Bradshaw the first small-college player ever chosen as the No. 1 selection in an NFL draft.

A consensus choice for The Sporting News All-NFL team three years in a row (1975 through 1977), Blount intercepted at least six passes in four seasons despite the fact that quarterbacks rarely threw in his direction after he led the NFL with 11 interceptions in 1975.

Seven years after he retired, Blount was still tied for eighth place in career interceptions with 57—and that didn’t include two in Super Bowls. He was the first player to intercept two passes in a Pro Bowl game (1977).

“When you create a cornerback, the mold is Mel Blount,” said hall of Fame linebacker Jack Ham, a Steeler teammate.

“He was the state of the art for his style of play,” said Dwight White, another “Steel Curtain” standout.

“He would manhandle the wide receivers, take them and throw them out of bounds,” said former Steeler linebacker Andy Russell. “Al Davis and Don Shula and people like that said it wasn’t any fun to play the Steelers because you couldn’t make a first down, so they changed the rules.”

Early in his career, Blount said he wanted to return to his Georgia farm after his playing days. But later changed his mind, and took a job in the NFL front office working with player relations.

On and off the field, Blount was not a man to be trifled with. After Steeler coach Chuck Noll warned his players to maintain low profiles with the press on their first trip to the Super Bowl, Blount exercised his freedom of speech and made headlines by telling writers nobody was likely to confuse the Minnesota Vikings with the old Green Bay Packers—or the new Pittsburgh Steelers. Noll was livid, declaring the interview room off limits to Blount.

They had another clash at the start of the 1977 season, when Blount held out and filed a grievance against the Steelers with the NFL Players Association because Noll had included Blount as an example of the “criminal element” in the NFL during testimony in a case involving Raiders’ George Atkinson.

“I want to play where my talent will be appreciated and respected within the organization,” said Blount. “No one wants to play for a coach who calls him a criminal.”

That dispute was finally resolved to the satisfaction of all parties concerned, setting the stage for two more Super Bowl victories.

The Cowboys had been critical of Blount and Jack Lambert for overly physical play in the Super Bowl X, when Blount put wide receiver Golden Richards out of the game with broken ribs.

When the same two teams reached Super Bowl XIII, the controversy surfaced again during the war of words preceding the game. Cowboys receiver Drew Pearson told writers, “I’d definitely go at Me Blount and make him work. There are certain things you can do against him. I can see those things clearly.”

With the score tied at 14 and the Cowboys driving in Pittsburgh territory late in the second quarter, they weren’t so clear to Roger Staubach. He took the bait, and Blount’s interception set up a touchdown pass from Bradshaw to Rocky Bleier just before halftime. That put the Steelers ahead to stay.

In 1983, Blount incorporated the Mel Blount Youth Home, a non-profit organization, and established a boys’ home at his quarterhorse farm near Vidalia.

“Nobody said life was going to be easy,” he said. “Nobody said every day would be a sunny day. We have our ups and downs. We have our hurdles we have to overcome. These are the kind of things I try to pass on to these boys. You can be anything you want to be. The mark of an individual is how he functions under pressure.”