OFF-FIELD FUTURE: : First of Super Steelers to Retire, Mullins Has Adjusted Well to Life After Football

Gerry Mullins admits he wasn’t really prepared for life after football. During his nine-year playing career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, his professional experience consisted mostly of throwing blocks and collecting Super Bowl rings. There was plenty to fill a scrapbook, but not much to put on a resume.

“It was like starting over,” Mullins recalled by phone recently. “I had no experience. When I was a ballplayer, that’s all I was. I didn’t have an off-season job.”

Now, five years after an ankle injury forced him into early retirement, Mullins has adjusted to living in a material world. He’s settled into the position of vice president of sales for Industrial Metals, a company based in suburban Pittsburgh. The transformation from offensive lineman to business executive was abrupt. It began the day Mullins decided his playing career was over.

“It happened by chance, really,” Mullins said. “I was cut by Pittsburgh, and I was the first of the players from the four Super Bowls to be released. It turned into a big media event in Pittsburgh.

“Bob Kearney, who’s now my boss, saw me on TV that day. He was a big Steeler fan. He was impressed by what he saw in the TV interviews. He was a neighbor of (late Pittsburgh Pirate broadcaster Bob Prince). He talked to Prince about me, and they arranged a meeting. Things just worked out for me.”

A new career was launched, and the former Anaheim High School and USC standout was spared the confusion many professional athletes face when its time to leave football. For Mullins, that time came sooner than he might have expected.

In the off-season that followed the Steelers’ 31-19 victory over the Rams in Super Bowl XIV, Mullins had surgery to repair a nagging ankle injury. The ankle didn’t respond the way Mullins or his doctors had hoped. Movements that once came naturally were suddenly laborious. Mullins just wasn’t the same player.

He reported to training camp in the summer of 1980, anyway, but could not convince Coach Chuck Noll and his staff that he would be able to make a complete comeback. When he was cut by the Steelers, he decided to retire rather than try to hobble his way onto another club. Nine years after reporting to his first professional training camp as the Steelers fourth-round draft choice, Mullins’ career was over.

“It’s not that tough of a decision when you can’t really play up to your ability,” Mullins said. “I think I had had enough. There weren’t really a whole lot of goals left to be reached. The only negative was (the loss of) income, but you can’t play the game forever.”

Wherever Mullins played the game, success seemed to follow. He was part of the Clare VanHoorebeke legend at Anaheim High, playing for a team that reached the Southern Section championship game in 1966. He played for John McKay at USC in 1969, the year the Trojans beat Michigan, 10-3, in the Rose Bowl to finish the season at 10-0-1. From there, it was on to Pittsburgh, where Noll was in the process of building a dynasty.

Joe Greene was the Steelers’ first-round draft choice in 1969, Terry Bradshaw the year after. In 1971, the club drafted--in order--Frank Lewis, Jack Ham, Steve Davis, Mullins and Dwight White. Franco Harris was the first-round pick in 1972, and the foundation was laid for the domination of the mid-seventies.

Mullins remembers the day when he awaited word of where he would begin his pro career, and remembers he wasn’t exactly overjoyed when word arrived. Noll called him to inform him that:

--He was going to be converted from tight end to guard, a position he had never played.

--He was going to Pittsburgh.

Mullins couldn’t have predicted how things would turn out--how, in his fourth professional season, he would be playing in the Super Bowl. The Steelers beat Minnesota that year, 16-6, to win Super Bowl IX.

Six years and two Super Bowl rings later, Mullins was playing in what would be his last game, Super Bowl XIV at the Rose Bowl. His finale was something of a return to his Southern California roots, but it would not be permanent. He returned for a visit to Southern California last March, when he was inducted into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame. But Mullins had established new roots in Pittsburgh, and when the job offer came, it was clear that he had found a home.

“It’s a big-city atmosphere with a small community way of life,” Mullins said.