J.J. Watt won’t be joining his brothers on the Pittsburgh Steelers and will be playing next season for the Arizona Cardinals. But there still is a Pittsburgh connection to the oldest Watt’s move.
Watt tweeted he has gotten permission from Marshall Goldberg’s family to wear #99 for the Cardinals. The Cardinals had retired the former Pitt star’s number years after his playing days.
Goldberg was a West Virginia native who played halfback and fullback for Coach Jock Sutherland on two Pitt national championship teams in 1936 and 1937. His 1936 team won the Rose Bowl. Goldberg finished third in Heisman Trophy voting in 1937 and was the runner-up in 1938.
Goldberg played several years in the NFL for the then Chicago Cardinals. The 1947 team won the NFL Championship and Goldberg was a four-time All-Pro. His NFL career was interrupted twice by tours in World War II. Goldberg joined the U.S. Navy in 1943 and spent two years as a lieutenant in the South Pacific.
Goldberg is enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame. The University of Pittsburgh retired his #42 in 1997. Two years later, at the last game at Pitt Stadium in Oakland, Goldberg was the honoree who symbolically “captured the spirit of Pitt Stadium” in a box during a ceremony at the end of the game. The “spirit” of the 60,000 fans in attendance still sits in the box in Pitt’s Hall of Fame at its practice facility on the South Side.
Goldberg is in the Arizona Cardinal’s Ring of Honor. The team retired his #99 in 2006, the same year he died in Chicago at the age of 88. After his death, his family set up the Marshall Goldberg Traumatic Brain Injury Fund at the University of Illinois in Chicago. They say it’s because Goldberg suffered several concussions during his career and they felt that led to health difficulties later in life.
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