It is fitting that the NFL will hold its annual draft spectacle in Pittsburgh with ESPN originating three separate draft shows and WTAE-TV providing wall-to-wall coverage leading into the draft. That’s in addition to massive media attention from other TV stations, sports networks, podcasters and a phalanx of print reporters. Believe it or not the idea for broadcasting draft coverage began with the late Myron Cope.
The draft wasn’t always a huge production. At one time it was simply a group of team reps, league officials and some telephones set up in anonymous hotel ballrooms.
In the 1960s, the Steelers had been consistent — consistently bad. Good players were traded for lesser players. While the team had a reputation for being tough, it didn’t show up in the win column. By 1969, the owners of the team, the Rooney family, had enough. They went out and hired Chuck Noll, who had been an assistant coach with the Cleveland Browns. Noll brought in an entirely new strategy. The team would be built by drafting young players who were carefully scouted and vetted. Conventional NFL wisdom said Noll’s plan was a recipe for more losing seasons.
1969 was also the year that the Steelers radio broadcasts moved from KDKA to WTAE. Conventional wisdom was that in a city dominated by the Pirates, the move by the Steelers from the huge 50,000-watt AM signal to WTAE’s more modest 5,000 watts was a sign that the team had accepted second-class status.
But WTAE had Myron Cope. An ex-newspaper reporter and writer for Sports Illustrated, Cope brought a newspaper reporter’s discipline to his broadcasts. He covered the city’s teams like a beat reporter. He would check in and drop in almost every day. Even though WTAE radio was new to the Steelers, Cope was already a familiar figure around team offices and locker rooms.
When the 1969 draft day came, there was little attention paid. No TV coverage. No “NFL Experience” for fans. Actually, no fans at all. Just a bunch of guys sitting around telephones looking at a bunch of names pinned to bulletin boards in a hotel room in New York City. In Pittsburgh, a bunch of guys, including Noll, in a room with some bulletin boards and an open phone line to that New York ballroom. Outside the room were two newspaper beat reporters — and Cope. The fact that Cope was there came only after he badgered the station’s program director to cover the event.
“Who cares,” he was told. But Cope persisted. Ultimately, WTAE wanted to make a good impression on the Steelers, so they relented.
When it was the Steelers’ turn to pick, Noll chose Joe Green from North Texas State University. Needless to say, the newspapers didn’t top the front pages with the draft pick. Cope dutifully called the pick into the newsroom at WTAE. It was reported on the air as almost an afterthought.
Green was a transformative player for the Steelers. Even though the Steelers only won one game in the 1969-‘70 season, Green’s performance on the field convinced Noll that he was on the right track. Suddenly, the draft became very important to the Steelers. Cope noticed and pitched the idea of hourly draft “reports” direct from the Steelers offices.
Broadcast draft coverage was born. WTAE began promoting the draft coverage, expanding it so that in addition to live reports during the day, Cope did a draft wrap, complete with interviews and fan reaction on his nightly talk show. By the mid 1970s the draft was a big deal in Pittsburgh and big for Cope, who was now reporting for both WTAE radio and WTAE-TV.
The broadcast world was changing. Now all NFL games, home and away, were on TV. The NFL was becoming the national pastime. With so much interest in the NFL and sports in general it was only a matter of time that an all sports cable network would come about. In its early days ESPN did not have the rights to any major league sports; however, management realized that if the network was to survive, it needed some sort of a tie to the NFL.
There is no record of exactly how the people at ESPN got the idea that covering the draft would work on TV, but several of the network’s early hires in the production department came from Pittsburgh. And by the time ESPN began its operations, it was well known that “building from the draft” could result in Super Bowls. Putting it on TV seemed logical. After all, Cope was doing it on TV and radio in Pittsburgh.
So here’s a toast to the draft and all it brings to our area. And a toast to Myron Cope, who first had the idea of putting it on the air.
John Poister is a longtime Pittsburgh broadcaster who is currently news director at WHJB-FM in Greensburg.