Wednesday, June 08, 2005
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Terry Long, a short but sturdy Steeler guard whose eight-year NFL career ultimately was beclouded by a positive test for steroids and subsequent suicide attempt in 1991, died yesterday at UPMC Passavant Hospital.
No cause of death was reported last night by the Allegheny County coroner's office, where officials released only the scant details that Mr. Long, 45, of Sewickley, died at Passavant.An autopsy was scheduled for this morning.
"I had just talked to him Thursday ... he was joking, catching up," former line mate Tunch Ilkin said. "I said, 'Let's talk early in the week and get together.' We were going to get together for lunch. Unbelievable. I'm shocked."
"I'm stunned and sick," said former teammate and line mate Craig Wolfley. "Lots of great memories of him. He was just a great guy. A very hard worker.
"He was just a guy ... always had a heart of gold. Could be testy, a little tempestuous, but who wasn't that played that game?"
Mr. Long was a 5-foot-11 hulking specimen when he came to the Steelers in 1984, a fourth-round draft selection and 111th choice overall from East Carolina University, where he grew to fame as a powerlifter who could hoist a North Carolina-best 2,203 pounds in a squat, bench press and deadlift. The college All-America guard, with a listed Steelers weight of 284 pounds, started the team's 1984 season opener at left guard for an injured Wolfley and remained a fixture in the lineup, moving to starting right guard. The Steelers' offense routinely ranked among the NFL's best at preventing sacks in the mid-1980s with Mr. Long on the line.
He was a respected fellow, becoming in 1989 the first East Carolina player to donate a football scholarship -- worth $20,000 -- to his alma mater and one of a dozen Steelers profiled on a youth trading card sponsored in part by local police departments.
"The kind of guy who could talk a lot of trash one minute and be quiet the next," Ilkin said. "We'd be up at the line arguing before the snap about what the [blocking] call should be. He was a lot of fun."
On July 23, 1991, Mr. Long's career -- and, seemingly, his life -- veered after his testosterone levels tested at more than three times the limit to pass the NFL steroids test. He cried and went into shock that day, at the start of a training camp at St. Vincent College, when Coach Chuck Noll informed him of the positive test. The next day, Mr. Long attempted suicide. He grabbed a gun and mulled over shooting himself. He tried to overdose on sleeping pills. Then he swallowed rat poison.
Mr. Long later told Post-Gazette football writer Ed Bouchette that he was talked into going to Allegheny General Hospital, where "they never had to pump my stomach. I think the Lord worked a miracle, that that stuff never really affected me."
In that interview, following his four-week NFL suspension for steroids, Mr. Long spoke about how he took the drugs for the first time in his career the winter before, trying to recover from two knee operations. He added that the positive test came after he started trying legal, over-the-counter substances like Yohimbe bark, ginseng root and various muscle-building proteins. He didn't want anyone to think that he was a chemically enhanced football player.
Mr. Long, nicknamed "T-Bone," returned to the Steelers after a one-week stay in the hospital, where he underwent psychological counseling, in time for the final exhibition game. He started three games at left guard before tearing a triceps muscle in his right arm, then, after losing his appeal to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, was suspended for four games without pay. He wasn't offered a new Steelers contract when Bill Cowher succeeded Noll in early 1992.
Mr. Long, born July 21, 1959, and reared in Columbia, S.C., is the second player from Noll's final teams to die this year. Linebacker David Little, 46, died March 17.
After his playing days, Mr. Long made news in 2003 with a controversial North Side business venture, Value Added Food Groups. His chicken- and vegetable-processing plant met with complaints from neighbors about odors from chicken carcasses. Soon after, USDA inspectors deemed that the plant was in violation of federal regulations, and Allegheny County plumbing inspectors likewise found sewage inadequacies. Two months later, the two-story, 30-employee business was extensively burned in a fire that left an estimated $100,000 in damage.
In a March 29 hearing before a federal magistrate judge, authorities said they determined that the fire was arson, a charge they filed against Mr. Long. He also was charged with defrauding the state of some $1.2 million through business loan schemes. Mr. Long, for whom Kansas City, Mo., authorities also held a warrant on a felony bad check charge, was released on bond.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete last night.
(Chuck Finder can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1724.)
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