BY SONJA CARBERRY
FOR INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Would wide receiver Lynn Swann be healthy enough to play?

That was a big question for the Pittsburgh Steelers leading up to their January 1976 Super Bowl against the Dallas Cowboys.

Swann was coming off a concussion suffered against Oakland in the conference title game.

Now as the National Football League final loomed, Cowboys safety Cliff Harris told reporters that Swann might skip the big game for fear of another injury.

Cue Swann: "He needn't worry. He doesn't know Lynn Swann. He can't scare me or the team."

Swann ended up scaring Dallas.

Four receptions — two of them positively acrobatic, the fourth scoring the touchdown that sealed the Steelers' 21–17 victory — set a Super Bowl record of 161 yards and made Swann the first wide receiver named the game's Most Valuable Player.

It was a career high point, one that helped Swann leap into the Pro-Football Hall of Fame in 2001.

Nowadays he acknowledges how crucial that performance was. Asked for another, Swann selects another quartet of receptions, this time as a senior at the University of Southern California in 1973.

The Trojans were visiting Stanford near Swann's hometown of San Mateo, California. With friends and family in the stands, he wanted to shine.

He did. "Those four catches were difficult," Swann told IBD, "and they either scored or set up touchdowns that helped set us up to win the game."

USC clinched it on Limshelu's 34-yard field goal with three seconds left — and they celebrated the 27–26 triumph by carrying the kicker off the field. It was a lesson, Swann says, on the limelight.

"It's a very small place, that platform. You have to take great satisfaction in the fact that you helped create that platform," he told IBD. "Occasionally, you get the opportunity to be on it."

Swann's game plan? "Be a team player and take advantage of individual opportunities," he said.

He especially took advantage of gazelle-like speed and jaw-dropping agility, for which he was dubbed the "Baryshnikov of football" by sportscaster Curt Gowdy and "maybe the most perfect wide receiver of his time" by "Monday Night Football" legend Howard Cosell.

During Swann's induction into the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, his old Steelers coach, Chuck Noll, praised his talent.

"I'd like to say that we developed Lynn Swann," Noll said. "But the truth is he was perfectly developed as a football player the first time he stepped on our practice field."

Swann took his step toward this enthusiastic approval as soon as his parents, Mildred and Willie Swann, put him in dance lessons at age 8. They wanted to do something with their energetic son.

Why dance and not sports?

"They didn't think I was going to be particularly athletic, so they were looking for something else for me," Swann said.

Lessons in tap, ballet and modern dance instilled in him body control, balance, timing and rhythm.

Those refined skills would become Swann's secret weapon as he talked his way into older brother Calvin's football and basketball games.

Always the smallest player in the crowd, Swann learned to play smarter — and take the licks.

The limberness he developed in dance helped Swann absorb the shock of hard knocks on and off the field.

"You try leaving football practice with a pair of tights — and the name Lynn — at an all-boys Catholic school. You'll find yourself learning a few moves," Swann joked during his Hall of Fame induction speech.

Swann was born the youngest of three boys in 1952 in Alcos, Tennessee. His family moved to Northern California when he was 2. There, his dad maintained aircraft and his mom worked as a dental hygienist.

"I was a very active child. I found it hard to focus on one thing," Swann said. "Today I might be on medication."

Swann reached 5 feet 10 inches in high school and already could dunk basketballs. That leaping skill helped him win the state long-jump title and national football honors.

On a scholarship at USC, Swann soared as a wide receiver. He helped the Trojans win two Rose Bowls and the national championship in 1972. His performance yielded All-American honors and election to the College Football Hall of Fame.