By Jim Gehman, Engagement Insider
Back when you were in high school in the Buffalo, NY suburb of Orchard Park, you wanted to be a fullback. But…
“My head coach, Harris Weinke, thought I was an offensive lineman. And I said, ‘No, I wasn’t.’ But then he said, ‘Okay, we’ll make a deal. You can play fullback until you fumble. And on the next play, you’ll be on the offensive line.’
“Well, I fumbled and he was true to his word. I don’t think there were too many carries before I ended up on the offensive line.”
Staying on the offensive line at Syracuse, what was your reaction after being drafted by Pittsburgh in 1980?
“Oh, I was automatically thrilled. I just thought it was the greatest thing in the world until all of a sudden I realized that they probably have the best offensive line in the world, as well.” [Laughs]
You go to training camp with the Steelers, a team which had just won the second of back-to-back Super Bowls, and four of the last six. Intimidating?
“Well, I think if you’re sitting there when the vets arrive and you see Joe Greene and Jack Lambert, Mel Blount, Franco Harris, Terry Bradshaw, and a guy with arms like legs, that being the late, great Mike Webster; you start to feel very puny, very small.”
You mentioned Bradshaw and the others, but then there’s also Coach Chuck Noll.
“He was unbelievable. I mean, the man was a living legend.
“When he first came to work me out at Syracuse, he’s showing me how to do a punch as an offensive lineman, punch out at him. He was becoming frustrated because I wasn’t getting it, and he said, ‘Punch me like you mean it.’ So he gave me a move on the next one and I was scared to death. I lashed out and my punch bounced off his shoulder and hit him right in the grill.
“He’s bleeding from his mouth, and he looks at me and I see the bulldog eyes that I would see for the next decade anytime I screwed up, and he just kind of smiled quietly as the bonfire faded and said, ‘Now that’s a punch.’” [Laughs]
With the Steelers for 10 seasons, 1980-89, and the Minnesota Vikings for two, 1990-91, what makes you most proud of your NFL career?
“I’m just gratefully humble for having been able to spend 12 years of my life playing a sport that I loved since the age of seven. My mom tells a story that I quietly took her aside one time when I was seven, and told her I was going to play professional football. I’m just grateful for the time I spent in the NFL. The Steelers franchise has been awesome to me. The Rooney’s have been great to me. And Minnesota was a nice experience.”
After football, you owned a gym, competed in martial arts and a World's Strongest Man contest. You also got into the ring to box former IBA Super Heavyweight Champion Butterbean. And then you got into the less contact field of radio broadcasting. How’d that happen?
“You go into broadcasting when you have no other marketable skills. [Laughs] Actually, I was in my gym, enjoying what I was doing, and my buddy, Tunch Ilkin, we were drafted together back in 1980, he had crafted a broadcasting career out for himself already, and he said, ‘You’ve got to try this.’ I said, ‘Nah,’ and he kept bugging me. So I did and it just became something that was fabulous.”
Besides co-hosting the Tunch & Wolf Show with Ilkin daily on Pittsburgh’s 970 ESPN, you are also both color analysts for Steelers’ games – he in the booth with Bill Hillgrove, and you on the sideline.
‘It’s great to be down there on game day and experience that what you loved so much as a young man. The way we work the broadcast is, Tunch will big picture what’s going on, and then I try to small picture what he’s talking about and bring out some details.
“That could be various twist stunts by the defensive line, what the offensive line’s doing, some of the specific matchups that you might see. I’ll try to give a micro picture of what the macro is. You try to give the fans the best view from behind the facemask and take them where they are not able to go.”
You also host the popular Craig Wolfley Podcast.
“I enjoy it. During the (football) season, Tunch sits in with me, and then I’ve got other guys that do it. It’s fun to produce and it’s really fun to be able to do something which kind of stretches you a little bit. It’s a lot of football, but there are other things that capture your imagination out there. You never know what it’s going to be.”
What’s the best thing about being Craig Wolfley today?
“The best thing is that I’m a man who follows hard after Jesus, who loves his family. I’ve been blessed with six kids and my third grandchild’s on the way. It’s just good to be alive and enjoy that.