NC State's First NFL Quarterback

Sitting to the right of Little Artie Rooney on the second row is Coleman R. "Coley" McDonough (identified in this Agromeck photo as "McDenna"), NC State's first NFL quarterback.

© Tim Peeler, 2018

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About this time last year, as four former NC State quarterbacks were ready to take on starting roles for four different NFL teams, the Wolfpack rightfully adopted the hashtag #QBU.

Not only were Philip Rivers, Russell Wilson, Mike Glennon and Jacoby Brissett ready to roll, they were part of a successful club of Wolfpack professional quarterbacks that also included Roman Gabriel and Erik Kramer, both of whom spent double-figure seasons as starters under center in the NFL.

So imagine my surprise in the off-season when I learned that Gabriel, the two-time All-American and two-time ACC Player of the Year who was the No. 2 selection in the 1962 NFL draft, was not the first NC State alum to become a successful starting quarterback at the game’s highest level.

That distinction belongs to Coleman “Coley” McDonough of North Braddock, Pennsylvania, a name that has faded to practically all Wolfpack fans and is barely a memory to a handful of his dwindling family in suburban Pittsburgh.

His story, however, is compelling, from its auspicious beginning to its tragic end, in the circuitous route he took from Pittsburgh to Raleigh to Dayton to the Battle of the Bulge back to the shadow of his hometown, where he found his greatest glory and his heroic demise.

It’s a story I knew nothing about until just a few weeks ago, when his name showed up on a little-used list of NFL players with ties to NC State. It’s there plain as day, listing McDonough as a halfback/quarterback during the NFL's difficult World War II era, but it rang no bells in my cranial database of former Wolfpack players capable of playing in nearly two dozen games over the course of four NFL seasons.

Preliminary searches didn’t reveal that name on the school’s letterman list or in the school yearbook. Buried, however, deep in the school newspaper archives were details of the 1935 freshman team, one of the best in school history, thanks to a handful of players who went on to have NFL success.

The most recognizable name on freshman coach Bob Warren’s team was Little Artie Rooney, the first cousin of NFL pioneer Big Art Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates/Steelers. In fact, Rooney and McDonough both made the journey from the Quaker State to Raleigh to play for the Pack, along with another future NFL champion Mac Cara.

McDonough was the Wolflets' starting quarterback throughout the season, though Rooney and Kenneth Sands did most of the play-making in the T-formation offense. Freshman coach Bob Warren’s team was practically unstoppable, posting a 4-1 record and outscoring its opponents 146-21.

McDonough scored 18 of those points, making a perfect 12 of 12 PATs and scoring the lone touchdown of his freshman season in a 65-0 rout of Davidson. He also recorded a 75-yard punt.

With older players like Eddie Berlinski and Everett "Cowboy" Robinson returning, varsity head coach Heartley “Hunk” Anderson looked like he might be on the verge of building a Southern Conference power.

It wasn’t to be, however. Following the 1935 football season, NC State, North Carolina and several other Southern schools adopted UNC System President Frank Porter Graham’s short-lived plan to severely diminish competitive football on college campuses, eliminating scholarships, discontinuing off-campus recruiting and strictly forbidding postseason bowl games, among other measures. Because of alumni and sportswriter outrage, the experiment lasted less than one academic year.

Not surprisingly, however, McDonough and several other promising players left the Wolfpack program. McDonough transferred to Dayton, where he played another freshman season in 1936, scoring all 13 of his team’s points in the end-of-season "Red and White" game.

As one of two star halfbacks, McDonough helped the Flyers' varsity post back-to-back 7-2 marks in 1937 and ’38 in the Buckeye Athletics Association, but he was dismissed from the team in 1939 for breaking the iron-clad team rule of getting married--to the sister of his fellow halfback.

The beefy 6-foot-2, 210-pound signal caller instead played for two NFL teams in 1939, the Chicago Cardinals and Big Art Rooney’s Pittsburgh Pirates. McDonough played 10 games over the next two seasons for Rooney’s team, renamed the Steelers, but did not play in either 1942 or ’43 after being drafted into military service.

He returned to the NFL in 1944 as a member of one of the most unusual blended teams in NFL history. The year before, because of war-time talent depletion, the Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles merged to form the “Steagles,” a partnership that lasted less than a year.

The next season, for the same reason, the Chicago Cardinals and Steelers merged into a team called Card-Pitt, splitting their home games between Wrigley Field and Forbes Field. Six days before the second game of the season, McDonough was recalled into the Army and shipped overseas just in time to prepare for the Battle of the Bulge, which he survived as a tank destroyer commander for the 740th tank battalion.

Without McDonough, Card-Pitt completed just 31 percent of its passes, threw 41 interceptions and only eight touchdowns. Winless and hapless in 10 games, even Rooney called his squad “the worst team in football history.”

McDonough’s football days were over by the time he returned from Europe, a victorious but jobless GI looking for something to do in the booming post-war economy. His NFL career wasn’t particularly memorable. None of the teams he played on ever won more than two games in a season. In his career, he completed just 38 percent of his passes, throwing five touchdowns and 22 interceptions.

After he left the Army, he worked for the Pennsylvania bridges department, then joined the Pittsburgh Police Department in 1950.

On the night of July 5, 1965, Patrolman McDonough and his partner answered a routine domestic disturbance call in the rundown Pittsburgh neighborhood of Hazelwood. As he entered the home, McDonough discovered the dead body of the homeowner, whose underage daughter had been arguing with her boyfriend, 25-year-old Leroy Scott.

Scott shot McDonough six times with a .22 caliber repeating rifle, while two other officers were injured by gunfire. McDonough, 52, died at the scene.

The girl’s boyfriend fled into a wooded area adjacent to the Monongahela River, where he kept 200 policemen at bay overnight. After a five-hour standoff, two officers found Scott in a tree; they shot him as he raised his rifle in their direction. He died en route to the hospital.

McDonough’s son, Coleman McDonough Jr., also became a law enforcement officer in his home state, serving 24 years as a Pennsylvania state trooper and retiring as deputy commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. He served seven years as the chief of police in the town of Mount Lebanon and, in 2016, was named the superintendent of police in Alleghany County, the same district where his father was killed in the line of duty.

“My father was a hero to me my whole life,” Supt. McDonough says. “He died when I was young, only 10, but I do have many memories of the time we spent together, playing baseball and doing other things. He often served as the clubhouse security guard at Forbes Field for Pittsburgh Pirates games. He got to know the clubhouse attendant really well, and he used to bring me a signed baseball home just about every week.

“He got me several Roberto Clemente autographed balls, but to me they were just something to play with in the street. We wore those names off pretty quickly. Probably the greatest day of his life was being there when Bill Mazeroski hit 'The Shot Heard 'Round the World” in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series."

McDonough has a few pictures of his father as an athlete, a collection that has had a 1935 mugshot and an NC State freshman team picture added to it in the last week or so.

“We had a large family, but most of them are gone now,” McDonough says. “We have some memories of those teams he played with, but few other people do. I’m a big football fan, so I remember Gabriel when he was with the Philadelphia Eagles and Kramer when he was with Chicago. I know all about Philip Rivers and Russell Wilson and the other quarterbacks from NC State in the NFL.

“It’s an honor to have my dad remembered as part of that group.”

I feel pretty sure those guys would say the same about NC State’s first NFL quarterback, who was more than just a passer and punter.

He was a Pennsylvania hero.