Eight o'clock on a morning cold as Pittsburgh. John Mitchell, assistant head coach, Pittsburgh Steelers, is at his desk. It is March, according to my research, about six months from the nearest NFL game, but it's 8 in the morning, so John Mitchell is at his desk, same as yesterday, just like tomorrow.
And in no sense has he just arrived.
This is the start of his 29th season on the Steelers coaching staff, the longest active tenure in the building, as well as the beginning of his 50th season in a career he entered mostly to help pay for grad school.
Old enough at 70 so that he can identify places on the calendar when football used to actually go away for a while, Mitchell has long since known where his profession was headed: "It's a 365-day deal, around the clock."
So it must be something pretty special that's happening in the middle of next month. That's when he'll take a day off to visit the University of Alabama, which is finally getting around to honoring him along with former Crimson Tide teammate Wilbur Jackson for their history-turning contributions to the team, the state, the region, the Southeastern Conference, and the nation. Jackson was the first Black player to be recruited by Alabama, where the legendary coach Bear Bryant had grown envious of opponents with a more enlightened view of integration, particularly when aggravating evidence started turning up on the scoreboard. Mitchell was the first Black man to actually play there after Jackson was redshirted, and now a plaque and some fitting ceremonies are scheduled for Easter Weekend a half century after the fact.
Mitchell, who owes his bedrock coaching principles to Bryant as well as the life-expanding philosophies evolving therefrom, appreciates the heck out of it, but because you can't hang around for half a century without gaining a doctorate in absurdity, there's a significant aspect of it he doesn't like at all.
"When a person of color gets a job, not just a Black person, a person of color, it's the first thing that comes out — they don't talk about the qualifications of that person," he said one morning last week. "When a white person gets a job, they don't ever say that. He got the job. Adding things to it, I don't think it's fair.
"Yeah I was the first African American player to play at Alabama, but I told everybody, 'Hey, I'm a player that played. Why do you have to add that?' There were a lot of players who came out of Alabama high schools who were a lot better than I was. When you say he's the first this or that, are you sayin' that nobody up until his time was worthy or had the ability or the intelligence to do the job? I don't buy that.
"You don't ever read, this is the 125th white guy to have this position."
So it's maybe half with bemusement and half with a pointed sadness that Mitchell, the quiet student of history, wine, African American art, and so many other things, watches the clownish theater around the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to reach such designation.
See?
"They didn't say that when Amy Coney Barrett got the nomination," he said. "Didn't say she was the Xth white woman. It diminishes her credentials."
Thus in some ways 50 years hasn't changed a lot of things. Mitchell feels the passage of time in his bones, no doubt. But in his soul?
He's working for Mike Tomlin, one of two Black coaches in the NFL, two out of 32. He's on a staff that includes erstwhile Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, who is suing the league and three of its teams, the Dolphins, Denver Broncos and New York Giants, citing racial discrimination.
Flores says the Giants granted him a charade of an interview for their head coaching position, primarily to meet the requirements of the Rooney Rule, named for the late Dan Rooney, the fellow North Sider with whom Mitchell shared many a ride to the airport for more than two decades. Rooney pushed that rule because of — what a surprise — racial discrimination.
The NFL says it'll defend itself vigorously and denies all charges.
But the larger question, yes, larger even than the NFL, is what year is this? Where is the post-racial America that was presumably tangible post-Obama?
"You'd never think today we'd still be talking about racial injustice on any area, work, athletics, whatever; you still have those problems — it's hard to change people's hearts; it's hard to change people's ideas," Mitchell said. "Some ideas are never gonna die. Fifty years from now we're gonna be talkin' about some of these same things.
"What bothers me more so than anything is, I don't think people want to teach what has gone on in this country in the past, and if you don't recognize the past you're gonna make the same mistakes in the future. There was slavery, there was injustice, not just for Black people, for Brown people, for Italians, for Jews. I mean America is a great place but it's got a few stains.
"If people don't realize that and try to help move on from that, it's gonna be the same problem 50 years from today."
Fortunately, in that same distant future, there will be helpers. "Look for the helpers," said the one and only Fred Rogers, and even if the helpers of 2072 won't know it, they'll be carrying out the legacy of John Mitchell. A long-time teacher friend of his mentioned once that she feared some of her students were facing a grim holiday season due to financial hardship. Mitchell put turkeys on their Thanksgiving tables, then Christmas hams. For decades he was on the board of Every Child, the Pittsburgh foster care service to which he still contributes. The morning I talked to him, he was arranging to call Father Jason Charron and arrange to drop off a donation from him and his wife at the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Carnegie.
"I was tellin' my wife, suppose where we live, we had to leave and the only thing we could take was the clothes on our back and a suitcase," he said. "You had to leave your home, where you worked hard, where you had friends, for nothin' that you've done. Those people in Ukraine, they're good people; they're hard-workin' people, and they've gotta leave because someone wants to invade your country. To see those kids who had nothin' to do with the situation, gotta go, babies being born that might not live because they're worried about the building might get destroyed. It brings tears to my eyes. Just think of Pittsburgh, if the people of Pittsburgh had to leave. Some of those people are elderly people and they've lived in their neighborhood and now they've gotta get out. You can't start over at 75 or 80. You would never think, in 2022, that would happen. It breaks my heart."
That's probably a better way to think of John Mitchell than as the first Black captain at Alabama, the first Black All-American, the first Black coach, even as all those things are certainly plaque worthy. Four years ago, the Steelers moved Mitchell away from his defensive line duties into more of a personnel position, a career development gig assisting coaches and players, former and current, plus as an assistant to Tomlin in community affairs. Mitchell would never tell you that in the four years prior to that, when he coached the defensive line, the Steelers thrice finished in the NFL's top 10 against the run, or that in the four years since he hasn't, they've been out of the top 10 three times and finished dead last in 2021.
But I would, if only because like a lot of people in a lot of ways, I'm no John Mitchell.
