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WHEELING -- Former Pittsburgh Steelers great Rocky Bleier had a message Wednesday for NFL players who kneel during the national anthem as a form of protest.
Those players were hired to do a job, not take a political stand, said the Hall of Fame running back -- and Vietnam veteran -- who won four Super Bowls with the Steelers during the 1970s.
Bleier made the comments during a question-and-answer session after a speech at West Virginia Northern Community College in Wheeling on Wednesday, where he spoke as part of the college's celebration of National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
"All you have to do is establish that this is a workplace. That's all this is, is a workplace," Bleier said. "Not a platform for any of this stuff. I'm not talking about their (First) Amendment rights. You can protest, you can do whatever, but not in the workplace. … They don't understand what a workplace is. We don't have protests in the workplace.
"If you want to picket outside, whatever that might be, but don't suit up and take the knee."
Bleier criticized the NFL for inaction after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's 2016 protests, which he said allowed the controversy to grow.
"It should never have gotten to this point," Bleier said. "When Kaepernick did it a year ago, the league and owners should have nipped it in the bud at the time, and be proactive, rather than reactive, as they had been. Establish a rule or a protocol … they didn't do that. No one took a stance against the periodic kneeling. … No one had the courage to take a stance, when it would have been so easy."
During his presentation in recognition of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Bleier recounted his struggle to return to the football field after being injured in Vietnam in 1969.
Bleier was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968, not long after his rookie season with the Steelers. He was injured during an ambush, as shrapnel from a grenade lodged in his leg, hampering his football prospects.
However, a positive attitude from a fellow recovering soldier -- who had sustained three amputations while on duty -- helped Bleier return to the field several years later, earning a spot in the Steelers starting lineup in 1974.
"During that period of time, when I was in the field, on a morphine drip, all these questions came rushing through my mind: Why me? Now, what? Where's my future?" Bleier recounted. "Across from me was a young soldier, triple amputee, who lost his left arm and both legs. Every day I was there, the aides would come to take him to therapy. He'd grab onto that trapeze, swing over the bed and into the wheelchair. He made them stop at each and every one of the beds. He stopped at me and asked, 'How you doing today? You look better today than you did yesterday, because yesterday, you looked (terrible).'"
Bleier said after seeing what that soldier was going through, he couldn't feel sorry for himself anymore.
"If anyone could be bitter with their lot in life, it would be that soldier, living with the atrocities that happened there, thousands of miles away, and yet he chose to make a difference, he chose a positive attitude. I thought, if he can have that kind of attitude, what about me? … I finally got the courage to ask a physician what he thought about my injuries, and if I could play. His reaction to that question was something like, 'You can have a normal life, doing the things normal people do, but don't expect to have the strength nor the flexibility to do the things necessary to be a running back in the NFL.'"
After the diagnosis from his doctor, Bleier remembers receiving a simple postcard from then-Steelers owner, the late Art Rooney, imploring him to return. Feeling needed, he said, was a crucial part of finding motivation through adversity.
"What they gave me was two years' opportunity to come back and prove something. I came back a little bigger, a little stronger. … The reason that I was the leading ball carrier during the exhibition season wasn't because I was bigger or faster or better than all the other running backs, just that I played more than anyone else. I carried the ball more."