Bob Labriola

It was born in 1935. It was in a ballroom at the Fort Pitt Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh, and it started with an idea that was presented by Commissioner Bert Bell.

The National Football League was in its infancy, and the cost of player acquisition was spiraling out of control for a bare-bones business fighting to survive in a battle for a piece of the sporting public's entertainment dollar with Major League Baseball, boxing, horse racing, and college football.

Bell's idea was for the league's teams to select from a pool of eligible players to secure those players' negotiating rights, instead of continuing to engage in a bidding free-for-all with the other franchises. The order of selection would be in reverse order of the previous season's standings, with the rationale being that it would to allow the lesser teams a way to become competitive. Competitive games, it was believed, were better box office.

When put to a vote, the measure was approved unanimously.

The Fort Pitt Hotel is long gone, but what those owners discussed and implemented in 1935 stabilized the business of professional football and was a step toward turning the National Football League into the powerhouse it is.

The NFL Draft has evolved into one of the league's signature events, not on the same level as the Super Bowl, but arguably the most-hyped, most-watched, most-coveted non-game event in all of professional sports. The 91st edition of the NFL Draft will be staged on April 23-25 along Pittsburgh's North Shore, just across the river from where it was born.

Bringing the 2026 NFL Draft to Pittsburgh has been a multi-year project, and it's anticipated the event could attract 800,000-plus people to Western Pennsylvania and generate millions of dollars in revenue for the region. It was a massive undertaking to convince the NFL to select Pittsburgh's bid back in 2024, and then the real work began: getting things ready to be a gracious host for a three-day world-wide extravaganza with millions watching it live on NFL Network,NFL+, ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN Deportes.

The NFL's inaugural crack at the drafting business was just months after it was born, and it happened on Feb. 8, 1936, at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia. It contained 9 rounds and 81 total picks, and 53 of those players selected (65.4 percent) responded with "no thanks."

Jay Berwanger, the 1935 Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Chicago, was the No. 1 overall pick, and he chose a career in business. Same for Notre Dame's Bill Shakespeare the first-ever pick by Art Rooney Sr.'s Pittsburgh franchise. Another player, an end from the University of Alabama named Paul "Bear" Bryant, chose to pursue football as a profession, but as a college coach over a chance to play for the NFL's Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Steelers are 1 of 8 franchises to have participated in each of the previous 90 NFL Drafts Chicago, Green Bay, Detroit, Washington, the Cardinals, Philadelphia, and the New York Giants being the others and their personal history with the picking of players has run the gamut.

At times they executed it poorly, as happened in the early years when in one draft they picked a center in the first round instead of Hall of Fame QB Sammy Baugh; and in another when they passed on a Hall of Fame center in the first round and instead picked a local kid from Pitt.

There were other times when the Steelers simply ignored it, as happened during the 8 seasons from 1957-64 when Coach Buddy Parker traded away 4 No. 1 picks among a total of 14 of the team's top 40 overall selections.

But starting in 1969, the Steelers used the NFL Draft to transform the franchise from "tough-but-never-good-enough lovable losers" into a powerhouse that punished opponents to the tune of 6 Super Bowl wins in eight appearances and to join the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys at the top of NFL history in terms of total playoff appearances.

That turnaround began on Jan. 28, 1969, when Chuck Noll ignored the popular sentiment to use the fourth overall pick on Notre Dame QB Terry Hanratty, from Butler, Pa., and instead installed the cornerstone of a dynasty by picking North Texas State DT Joe Greene. And then moving forward in conjunction with Bill Nunn's artistry in mining nuggets from the HBCUs and the steady hand of Art Rooney Jr., Noll assembled a team that won 4 Super Bowls in 6 seasons and went back-to-back twice, which never has been done before or since.

In 1974, the Steelers put on a drafting clinic. In order to come away with 2 Hall of Fame WRs in the same class, they knew they would have to pick Lynn Swann in the first round because he played at USC, while John Stallworth was a largely unknown commodity from Alabama A&M.

That disparity was because Swann was a star in games being played on national television, and you couldn't find the Alabama A&M score in a newspaper unless you subscribed to the Pittsburgh Courier, where Bill Nunn had served as Sports Editor and personally picked the Black College All-America Team each year.

In those days, scouts working that part of the country traveled in a caravan, and it had gotten a slow time in the 40-yard dash on Stallworth during the visit to Huntsville, Alabama. Nunn doubled back to get Stallworth for a re-do on a drier track, then used his connections within the football program to get some previously-unshared game film. After Noll watched that film and read Nunn's report, he was convinced John Stallworth was a first-round pick.

But picking 2 WRs early in an era when the NFL was still all about run-the-ball, stop-the-run just wasn't done. The Steelers had to work their draft board to address other soft spots on the depth chart, and when the picking in 1974 ended they had added the final pieces of a team that won its fourth Lombardi Trophy at the end of the decade with a roster made up completely of their own draft picks and undrafted rookies.

After securing Swann with the 21st overall selection, they used their No. 2 pick in 1974 on Kent State linebacker Jack Lambert, who had the stuff to revolutionize the way middle linebacker was played at the professional level; then grabbed Stallworth with the first of their 2 picks in Round 4; and their No. 5 pick was Mike Webster, a center from Wisconsin, where he was both a team captain and an Honor Roll student.

When Nunn's reputation engendered South Carolina State Coach Willie Jeffries to recommend Pittsburgh to his undersized linebacker named Donnie Shell, the Steelers added a fifth Gold Jacket to their 1974 Draft Class. A generation later, the Steelers rosters that won the franchise its fifth and sixth Lombardi Trophies Super Bowl XL and Super Bowl XLIII also were built primarily through the draft even as the NFL had entered the era of free agency tied to a salary cap.

Fast-forward to the present.

From the 2026 NFL Draft on April 23-25, these Steelers need to come away with some pieces that lead to a more explosive offense, more depth in the secondary and on both lines of scrimmage. They have 12 picks to utilize in the effort to add quality and not just numbers. The roster then gets turned over to a new head coach and a new coaching staff that will be charged with mixing the new pieces with a group of holdovers that was 10-7 and won the AFC North Division a year ago.

And it's all going to take place in the city where the idea was hatched in 1935, in a region that has produced great players and great teams. Over time, Western Pennsylvania has showed it loves football more than any other sport.

It will become another chapter in the rich draft history of the NFL and of this franchise, and the plan is for it to be a lot of fun, too.