Doyle was therefore not a star recruit and was actually out of school for a year before he enrolled at the University of Nebraska in 1934.[3]
College career
Doyle played college football for the Cornhuskers varsity team from 1935 until 1937 for head coach Dana X. Bible, winning Big Six Conference championships during this interval.[4]
Doyle was a late bloomer, putting on mass during his college years. By his senior year he weighed in at 215 pounds — among the largest linemen on the Nebraska squad.[3] His forte seems to have been on the defensive side of the ball, with one contemporary news account calling him "seldom flashy" but "dependable and tough to gain ground through."[3]
Professional career
He was selected by the New York Giants in the 8th round of the 1938 NFL draft, with the Giants making Doyle the 68th pick overall of the lottery. He wound up on the roster of the fledgling Pittsburgh Pirates franchise owned by Art Rooney, however. Doyle would play in the NFL without interruption from 1938 through 1946, always taking the field for the various iterations of Rooney's franchise, which became the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1940, a joint operation with the Philadelphia Eagles, nicknamed the "Steagles" in 1943, and a new combination with the Chicago Cardinals, remembered to football historians as Card-Pitt, in 1944.
This continuity was not the norm in this era. When America entered World War II at the end of the 1941 NFL season, hundreds of players entered the military, either as volunteers or through the draft.[5] In 1943, Doyle was exempt from conscription based on his 3-A draft status for being a father.[6] He was able to continue playing pro football throughout the war as he was engaged stateside in military-related work for the Westinghouse Electric Company. It was later revealed that he had played a small part in the Manhattan Project, America's effort to build the atomic bomb.[7]
Decades later Doyle referred to his stint with Card-Pitt as "a strange time," splitting his days between Westinghouse and football. He stated that playing for Card-Pitt was not a lot of fun and said sometimes that only a couple hundred people would show up for a game. According to Doyle, many players kept hoping that the war would finally end because once it did, all player contracts would become void.[8]
After the war ended in the summer of 1945, Doyle played one final season for the Steelers, retiring from the game at the age of 31.[9] Interestingly, the 1945 Steelers season would be the only one in which he started every game, locking down the role of regular right tackle for the team.[9]
Life after football
After his time in the NFL was over, Doyle became an assistant football coach at Fairbury Junior College in Nebraska.[4]
He was appointed president of the Nebraska Community College Trustees Association in 1981.[4]
Death and legacy
He was inducted into Nebraska's football hall of fame in 1990.[10]
Doyle died in October 2006 of heart disease. He was 92 years old at the time of his death.
^The list of currently active players, coaches, and team executives who joined the colors during the Second World War runs 6-1/2 pages of small type laid out in double-columns in the 1945 NFL official manual, with perhaps 140 additional names of former players appended. See: George Strickler (ed.), The National Football League Record and Rules Manual, 1945. Chicago: National Football League, 1945; pp. 2–11.
^Matthew Algeo, Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles — "The Steagles" — Saved Pro Football During World War II. Cambridge, MA: DaCapo Press, 2006; p. vii.
^Barnhart, Tony (1987). "The '40s: NFL Goes To War"(PDF). Coffin Corner. Vol. 8, no. 9. Professional Football Researchers Association. p. 2. Archived from the original(PDF) on November 27, 2010.
