There is a writers’ wing in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The enshrinees have their names on a plaque at the Hall. It features some of the most impactful scribes ever to write about the sport, including Dave Anderson of the New York Times, Will McDonough of the Boston Globe, Bob Oates of the Los Angeles Times and Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated.

There’s another sports writer who should be in Canton – but he deserves a bust, not just his name on a plaque. Bill Nunn had an impact on the game beyond the printed word.

Nunn was the long-time sports editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most influential black publications in America with a circulation in excess of 400,000 and bureaus in Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles and New York. Nunn would cover the top football game each weekend involving black colleges and, at the end of the season, pick an All-America team of players from the Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).

In 1952, Nunn’s All-America team put the New York Giants on the trail of offensive tackle Roosevelt Brown of Morgan State. The Giants took him in the 27th round, and he went on to become just the second offensive lineman ever inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975. In 1961, Nunn touted David “Deacon” Jones of Mississippi Vocational College to the Los Angeles Rams. They selected him in the 14th round, and he also became a Hall of Famer, inventing the term “sack” along the way.

With such a quality resource living in their own town, the Steelers hired Nunn as a part-time scout in 1967, then made him full-time in 1969. His job? Continue to find the gems in the HBCU and get them on Pittsburgh’s drafting radar.

How well did he do that job?

“You cannot write the history of the Pittsburgh Steelers without Bill Nunn,” Hall-of-Fame cornerback Mel Blount said. “When you look at the Steelers in the 1970s, none of that would have happened without Bill Nunn.”

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