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Between them, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys won five Super Bowls in the 1970s. The Steelers cultivated a blue-collar image; the Cowboys, though dubbed “America’s team,” carried a more glamorous aura. The authors trace the rise of the teams through the decade. The Cowboys had some success in the sixties but no championships. The Steelers had been woeful for decades. When the Steelers hired Chuck Noll as head coach for the 1969 season, their fortunes began to change. Noll opted to build carefully and gradually through the college draft; meanwhile, Landry and the Cowboys were the first NFL team to supplement in-person scouting with computer analysis. In the course of telling the story, the authors—who interviewed 30 former players, coaches, and assistants—portray the Steelers as a lifeline to an industrial city losing its manufacturing base and the Cowboys as the darlings of the Texas oil boomers. Interspersed throughout are dozens of anecdotes about how Noll—and his stoic counterpart, Tom Landry—motivated and built the two dominant franchises of football’s golden age. Exciting, informative reading for NFL fans with an interest in the league’s history. --Wes Lukowsky

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A stirring portrait of the decade when the Steelers became the greatest team in NFL history, even as Pittsburgh was crumbling around them.

In the 1970s, the city of Pittsburgh was in need of heroes. In that decade the steel industry, long the lifeblood of the city, went into massive decline, putting 150,000 steelworkers out of work. And then the unthinkable happened: The Pittsburgh Steelers, perennial also-rans in the NFL, rose up to become the most feared team in the league, dominating opponents with their famed "Steel Curtain" defense, winning four Super Bowls in six years, and lifting the spirits of a city on the brink.

In The Ones Who Hit the Hardest, Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne trace the rise of the Steelers amidst the backdrop of the fading city they fought for, bringing to life characters such as: Art Rooney, the owner of the team so beloved by Pittsburgh that he was known simply as "The Chief"; Chuck Noll, the headstrong coach who used the ethos of steelworkers to motivate his players; Terry Bradshaw, the strong-armed and underestimated QB; Joe Green, the defensive tackle whose fighting nature lifted the franchise; and Jack Lambert, the linebacker whose snarling, toothless grin embodied the Pittsburgh defense.

Every story needs a villain, and in this one it's played by the Dallas Cowboys. As Pittsburgh rusted, the new and glittering metropolis of Dallas, rich from the capital infusion of oil revenue, signaled the future of America. Indeed, the town brimmed with such confidence that the Cowboys felt comfortable nicknaming themselves "America's Team." Throughout the 1970s, the teams jostled for control of the NFL-the Cowboys doing it with finesse and the Steelers doing it with brawn-culminating in Super Bowl XIII in 1979, when the aging Steelers attempted to hold off the Cowboys one last time. Thoroughly researched and grippingly written, The Ones Who Hit the Hardest is a stirring tribute to a city, a team, and an era.