SAM CLANCY: Pitt retires number of basketball legend, former NFL player Sam Clancy

PITTSBURGH — Sam Clancy helped integrate a local high school, was an All-American basketball player at Pitt and then had a long career in the NFL but is not done yet.

He just had his jersey retired at the Petersen Events Center.

Clancy told Channel 11′s Jenna Harner that he credits his family and his hometown for all of his success.

When he saw his number 15 jersey hanging in the rafters at the venue for the first time, tears started to flow.

“To be up there with those guys, you know, who are immortalized for the rest of their [lives], yeah, you know, it is tremendously humbling,” Clancy said.

Before his historic days with the Panthers, before playing 10 seasons in the NFL, before a street sign in the neighborhood where he grew up in was named in his honor, you have to go back to his roots. He was a Pittsburgh kid who loved sports and whose family meant everything to him.

“I just try to be the best person that I can be. To honor my parents,” Clancy said.

He grew up in the Hill District and helped lead the then Fifth Avenue High School to a state title in 1979. The following year, Brashear High School opened and Clancy was tasked by the principal with keeping the please as students were integrated for the first time.

Basketball carried Clancy to his hometown program. To this day he is the only Pitt Panther to have more than 1,000 career points and rebounds.

He was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in 1981 but was released and sent to the Continental Basketball Association. One year later, even though he had never played a down of collegiate football, he was drafted by the Seahawks. He credits all he learned on the court.

“The hands, the drop, your shoulder, dip...So all my basketball skills helped me make that team as a defensive lineman,” Clancy said.

Clancy eventually returned home to Pittsburgh, completed his degree and is now the director of the university’s varsity letter club.

“When you got a whole city to come back and say, ‘Thank you for what you do for the University of Pittsburgh, what you do for our student-athletes and what you have done for the Pitt Program,’ it, to me, can’t get no better than that,” Clancy said.

As the banner donning his number rose into the rafters this past January, gratitude and tears poured out as he reflected on the incredible legacy that he has left and the honor it brought to his family name.

“I was already in tears, in the tunnel because of the video and then I think I went into tears, where they talk about my parents, you know, who is the reason why I’m here, why I did what I did,” Clancy said.

Clancy continues to help thousands of student-athletes every day.

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