Atkinson versus Noll

The Rivalry of the Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers was intense enough until a series of events took it to new heights in legal matters between Safety George Atkinson and Head Coach Chuck Noll. Join us for the details of this turbulent scandal in football history

The mid-1970's were dominated by two teams in the AFC, the Oakland Raiders and the Pittsburgh Steelers. These two teams didn't like each other and they met on multiple occasions during the seventies for big games which had a direct path to the Super Bowl. The 1976 season saw this rivalry go in an extremely odd direction at the heigth of each teams success.

Let's first identify our parties involved.

George Atkinson a Raiders player that came out of Morris Brown College played Strong Safety and returned some kicks for the Oakland team. Atkinson was a Super Bowl Champion (Super Bowl XI) and made multiple AFL All-Star appearances and NFL Pro Bowls. George was an enforcer on a very punishing defense. One must remember that in that era of pro football, contact between defensive backs and wide receivers was less enforced and somewhat unrestricted by rule. Atkinson was not the only DB to lay out hits on receivers in the NFL but he was one of a handful of safeties and corners that could lay some wood into potential pass catchers.

Chuck Noll was the Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers through out the 1970's, taking his team to four Super Bowl Championships. Noll was a fomer player for the Cleveland Browns and he adopted much of the no-nonsense approach that his fomer coach Paul Brown displayed during Brown's legendary coaching career. He wanted his players to play and hit hard but did''t care for any extra shenanigans like celebrations or cheap shots. Noll's view of spiking footballs and TD dances were to tell his players, " Act like you have been there before!"

So as you can see these two men had a collision course brewing as they were part of the the two best teams in football and had the same aspirations, to win championships. The Raiders and the Steelers games of that era were a two dogs with one bone relationship. The story of this affair really started in the 1975 AFC Championship game when Atkinson nailed Steelers star wide receiver, Lynn Swann with a forearm shiver to the back of the head that gave Swann a concussion.

History repeated itself during a regular-season game in 1976 when the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Raiders met. Atkinson hit an unsuspecting Lynn Swann in the back of the head with a forearm smash once again, even though the ball had not been thrown to Swann. The Steelers and their fans were livid over the hit. The next day, Noll took an indirect shot at Atkinson, telling the media, “There is a certain criminal element in every aspect of society. Apparently, we have it in the NFL, too.”

The media saw an opportunity to get quotes out of the generally man of few words, who was obviously impassioned about this play during the press conference. They pressed him further and got this quote, "We usually hit people straight on, nose-to-nose. There's nothing wrong with hard-hitting football, but not when your back is turned. It's something that has to be straightened out. I don't think that's football … We play football. We don't want to get involved with criminal actions."

This infuriated the Raiders Safety to the point of him filing a Defamation suit against Noll in court. Atkinson was not only going after the Steelers coach as he filed a $3 million slander and libel lawsuit against Noll, the Steelers and a journalist from his own town, the Oakland Tribune's columnist, Ed Levitt, had written in September 1976 that Atkinson "could've killed Swann instead of giving him a concussion. He could be facing a murder rap."

The case ended up going to trial with the jury finding the veteran Coach not guilty of the defaming of the opposing player. The stangest thing though was that during the trial Noll identified his own player, Mel Blount to also be of the "criminal element," causing Blount to hold out the following season and file his own lawsuit against Noll which was eventually dropped.