Leo Nobile ate a lot better
the night he was inducted into the Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame
than when he made road trips with the Pittsburgh Steelers more than
30 years before. In those days, linemen like Nobile didn’t get high
pay and were served baloney and cheese sandwiches when the team
traveled by train to away games. Leo was a 220 pound guard for
the Steelers in the 1948 and 1949 seasons when the team had only 33
members and a lineman had to play both offense and defense,
sometimes for the whole game. His football career closely paralleled
that of his college roommate,
Red Moore of Rochester, who were
friendly rivals in high school and roommates at Penn State, where
both starred in the early days of World War II and then again after
the war. Leo was in service from 1943 to 1946 but returned to
Penn State that year. He played for the Washington Redskins in 1947
and for the Steelers in 1948 and 1949. Like Moore, he joined Alcoa
and worked for the firm until 1973. After that he was
activities director for the Western Pennsylvania Correctional
Institute.
Leo Nobile ate a lot better
the night he was inducted into the Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame
than when he made road trips with the Pittsburgh Steelers more than
30 years before. In those days, linemen like Nobile didn’t get high
pay and were served baloney and cheese sandwiches when the team
traveled by train to away games. Leo was a 220 pound guard for
the Steelers in the 1948 and 1949 seasons when the team had only 33
members and a lineman had to play both offense and defense,
sometimes for the whole game. His football career closely paralleled
that of his college roommate,