Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette filed an interesting piece on what it was like to cover Chuck Noll.

Like many kids my age, I was a Steelers fan during the ’70s. After reading Bouchette’s story, I have an even higher regard for Noll.

Bouchette writes:

Noll could be intimidating, Noll could be unquotable, Noll could be uncooperative.

Yet I gradually learned during the seven years I covered him as Steelers coach is that Noll also was among the most interesting people I ever wrote about. While he may have had little to say, when he said it, it meant something. He also treated everyone with respect, even reporters, whether they worked for the New York Times or the Indiana Evening Gazette.

Later Bouchette wrote:

We were never pals or anything like that, and I continued to write stuff he wished I had not, like the time he hired an assistant coach he thought was coming directly to the Steelers from his job as an assistant at California. In fact that coach had just taken a job as a head coach at San Francisco State and did not tell Noll that (today, that would be impossible). Noll fired him as soon as he found out. There also was the time he fired some assistants after the 1988 season because he was ordered to by Dan Rooney, only I wrote who was being fired before some of the assistants were informed.

Noll never took those things personally. He knew I and others like me had jobs to do and as long as we did them competently, he said nothing. While Noll was coach, I could walk up to any assistant coach at any time and interview him – even in his office, as I was doing with Hoak on that day in 1985. That doesn’t happen anymore.

And some memories:

I have a few personal favorite moments of mine about Noll that are not newsworthy but experiences I will always remember:

— Late in his career, he and others gathered in a room at Saint Vincent College that was called either the beer room or the “5 o’clock club.’’ It was open to coaches, the media, scouts, and visiting coaches and scouts. On this particular evening, a group of visiting football coaches from Japan were in attendance. Noll spent much of his time in that room that night getting into various stances such as a three-point — as he might have when he was a pulling guard for the Cleveland Browns – to show the Japanese coaches some football technique. It was pure Noll.

— He and I walked together across a baseball field atop the hill back to the old Bonaventure dorm at Saint Vincent (where Noll, like everyone else, had a room with no air conditioning). As we did, a boy ran up to Noll and asked him for his autograph. Noll asked the boy his name. “Jim Brown,’’ the boy answered. Noll replied, “I knew someone else by that name,’’ signed his autograph and that was that. To this day, that kid may not know who Noll meant.

— Early-on in my tenure covering the Steelers, the NFL held its March meetings in Maui. Because of the time difference, our work was done mostly by mid-afternoon and, at the suggestion of Noll, I sometimes would snorkel right off the beach at the hotel where we stayed. The next day, I’d describe to him the ocean life I saw. On our final day there, I returned from breakfast and bumped into Noll and his wife, Marianne. We chatted and they informed me they were going snorkeling in a little bit and would I like to join them. I politely declined, said I had some stuff I had to do. I really wish I had said yes.