Brian Baschnagel was in his office at North American Corp. in Glenview, Ill., earlier this month when he picked up the phone. He was asked when it would be convenient for him to do an interview with the Post-Gazette as part of a “Where are they now?” series.
The former Wexford resident was glad to accommodate.
“Right now is perfect,” said Baschnagel, a vice president of marketing who has been with North American Corp. since retiring from the NFL in 1986. “Not many people ask about my playing days anymore. And I love Pittsburgh. Next to Chicago, I consider it my home.”
This onetime North Allegheny, Ohio State and Chicago Bears offensive specialist spends his free time these days doting over his two young grandchildren, visiting with kids Mallory, 31, Allie, 30, and Luke 28, and enjoying quality time with his wife, Mindy.
His fall weekends are spent serving as the NFL’s uniform inspector for Bears games at Soldier Field. He has done it for 20 seasons.
“Socks,” Baschnagel said, laughing. “I see the most violations for the way players wear their socks. There’s always a half-dozen guys on both teams that, for some reason, don’t wear their socks according to code.”
A Glenview resident, Baschnagel, 62, also likes to fly-fish, bike ride and attend the occasional golf outing. But as he likes to say, “I do a lot of things a little bit.”
The knees aren’t as nimble after 10 NFL seasons — he had surgery on both in 2010 — yet the recollections of his football journey are crisp, lively and loaded with details.
Take, for instance, a magical outing in late September 1971.
Baschnagel became the first back in WPIAL history to run for 400 yards in a game, sprinting to 409 in an 18-0 victory at Sto-Rox. It was a benchmark event for a senior tailback who had lived in 16 cities in 15 years before his family settled in Wexford a year earlier.
Baschnagel reeled off runs of 96, 86 and 86 yards against the Vikings, something he quickly — and humbly — points out when reflecting on his record-setting performance.
“In many ways, it was a fluke,” he said. “It was three plays, basically, where I ran for all of those yards. If you take away the three runs, I would have rushed for maybe 100 or 150 yards on 30-some carries.”
Still, 407 yards covers a lot of real estate, regardless of how it was accumulated. And more importantly, no one had done it before.
“To tell you the truth, I remember being exhausted after that game,” said Baschnagel, inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. “On the bus ride back to school, I was laying in the aisle. The field we played on wasn’t in great shape, and I had bursitis in both elbows. The bursa sacs had burst. They were swollen. I was just so uncomfortable that I couldn’t celebrate.”
The 400-yard performance enhanced Baschnagel’s standing as an elite player in the area. He would go on to become a Parade All-American and Big 33 selection the next season, drawing attention from colleges around the country.
A three-year starter under coach Frank Walton — the brother of former New York Jets and Robert Morris University coach Joe Walton — Baschnagel offered a theory as to why he became a coveted football prospect.
“Moving around as much as I did forced me to want to excel in athletics, particularly in team sports,” said Baschnagel, whose family jumped from city to city due to his father’s job as a trouble-shooter with the F.W. Woolworth Co. “I wanted to be accepted. I was kind of shy, probably because I moved around quite a bit and didn’t want to impose on anyone. I wanted to be the best team player I could possibly be.”
Narrowing his college choices to Penn State, Ohio State and Notre Dame, the Irish appeared to be the front-runners. That’s because Art Baschnagel was a staunch Catholic who spent fall Sunday mornings watching Notre Dame replays with his oldest son after mass.
But in somewhat of a surprise decision, Brian Baschnagel chose the Buckeyes.
“I saved Notre Dame for my last visit because I thought that was where I was going to go,” Baschnagel said. “But because of [coach] Woody Hayes I decided to go to Ohio State. It was a really hard decision for me. Notre Dame didn’t do a bad job recruiting me, but Woody just did a better job.”
His football odyssey was nothing short of scintillating from there. As a slotback at Ohio State from 1972-75, Baschnagel combined for 1,446 yards from scrimmage with 10 touchdowns. He played in four Rose Bowls, was a two-time Academic All-American, a team captain and a recipient of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame scholarship award as a senior.
He also played four years alongside one of the great college running backs in history in two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin. And as Baschnagel tells it, he was not a fan of Griffin’s at the outset.
As freshmen, the two were vying for playing time at tailback when Hayes bypassed Baschnagel and inserted Griffin into the lineup against North Carolina. Griffin responded by setting a school single-game rushing record with 239 yards in just his second career game.
The following Monday, Griffin sat out of practice to mend. This did not sit well with Baschnagel, who was considering a transfer.
“I thought he was milking it for everything, now that he was an overnight hero,” Baschnagel said.
But immediately after that practice, Griffin approached Baschnagel and had a heart-to-heart discussion with him.
“Archie said, ‘Brian, I’d been meaning to talk to you since Saturday,’” Baschnagel said. “Archie then said, ‘I’m from Columbus, Ohio, and you’re from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And had it been the other way around, if you were from Columbus, you would have been asked to go into that game. And you would have done what I did.’
“It was such a classy thing to do by Archie. Well, four years go by and, as a slot back, I’m on teams that win the Big Ten championship four years in a row, go to four Rose Bowls and I go on to get drafted by the Bears.”
Taken in the third-round by Chicago in 1976, Baschnagel played with the likes of Walter Payton, Jim McMahon and Mike Singletary. He finished with 134 receptions, 2,024 yards (15.1 per catch), 9 touchdowns and a powerful memory of Payton.
The latter came in the aftermath of a 1979 playoff loss to the Eagles. Baschnagel was called for an illegal block that nullified an 80-yard run by Payton. The Bears would go on to lose, 27-17, and Baschnagel felt he was partially to blame.
That is, until Payton approached.
“He put his arm around me and said, ‘If everybody on this team played the game like you, we’d be in the Super Bowl every year,’” Baschnagel said. “That kind of made me feel a little better.”
Payton and the ‘85 Bears would go on to win a Super Bowl, though Baschnagel was forced to miss the season with a knee injury. He did, however, work with the scout team and serve as a de facto assistant coach. He retired the next year.
“Football was great, life has been great,” said Baschnagel, who was awarded a Super Bowl ring. “I have a lot of incredible memories, going back to my days in Pittsburgh and all the way through. What a great ride it’s been.”
First Published: October 28, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
