State College News: From Penn State To The Steelers, Jim Bradley Is Just What The Doctor Ordered


Mar 05, 2015

By Mike Poorman

True, his brother Tom may now be in Los Angeles as UCLA’s new defensive coordinator.

But Dr. Jim Bradley – a Penn State football co-captain in 1974 – made the decision long ago to stay in Western Pennsylvania.

Not that the elder Bradley, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ head team orthopedic surgeon for the past quarter-century, wasn’t ever tempted to live and work in L.A.

He was – in fact, decades before his younger brother made the jump from Morgantown to Tinseltown a few weeks ago.

Jim was a stalwart defensive back at Penn State from 1971-74, earning the 1975 Dapper Dan College Football award. After graduating with a degree in biochemistry, he gave the NFL a quick try, then went to Georgetown University School of Medicine, followed by a residency at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Next, Jim headed west. His trip predated Tom’s sojourn by over three decades. Upon completing his residency, Jim had a sports medicine fellowship at the renowned Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Los Angeles.

“I went out to Los Angeles to learn how to take care of athletes,” Jim said earlier this week. “They offered me a job to stay there. It would have been great for my career – L.A., big market, big-time sports orthopedics. I came home to tell my parents I was going to take this job. I flew into Pittsburgh and saw all the rolling hills, without any of the big skyscrapers or the photochemical haze over everything.

“I drove back to Johnstown and I was at home for four days. But I couldn’t tell them I was going to take the job. I realized I shouldn’t take it because I don’t belong there. There was a (medical) group in western Pennsylvania and I took that, because that’s where I knew I belonged.”

Dr. Jim Bradley never looked back.

OVER 450 STEELERS GAMES

It’s a decision that has paid dividends in every way possible. Dr. Bradley has been the orthopedic surgeon for the Steelers for 25 years, through four Super Bowls and over 450 pre-, regular and post-season games. One of the most respected orthopedic surgeons in the NFL, he won the league’s Jerry Hawk Rhea Award in 2014. He is currently chairman of the NFL’s medical research peer review committee and also serves on the league’s injury and safety panel committee.

His work in Pittsburgh has drawn rave reviews. He was named “top sports medicine specialist in the Pittsburgh region” and won a national “Most Compassionate Doctor” award. Most recently, he was named one of Becker Spine Review’s Top 59 surgeons in the country. “Orthopedics This Week” has named him one of its Top 19 U.S. sports medicine specialists in the United States.

Bradley is a clinical professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and is a partner in a Pittsburgh-based sports medicine and orthopedic surgery practice that caters to patients from 6-year-old soccer players to 75-year-old grandmas.

Bradley says he has had the best of both worlds without ever straying far from his hometown of Johnstown. Eighty-six miles to the east is Penn State, where he, Tom and their late younger brother, Matt, played football for Joe Paterno. And 67 miles to the west is Pittsburgh, where Jim has worked for just one man — Dan Rooney, owner of the Steelers.

In their playing time at Penn State, the Bradley brothers helped guide the Nittany Lions to a 109-23 record. Tom, of course, stayed for over three decades and coached everything from special teams to serving as interim head coach in 2011. As an all-state high school football player on offense and defense as a senior, Jim had 88 scholarship offers and took visits to 10 campuses. But his parents accompanied him on only one college trip. Guess which one.

Penn State wasn’t that hard of a sale, Jim says, even though his dad Sam, an internist in Johnstown, played basketball at Pitt. “Joe and Sue took them into their house and dropped me off with the players,” Bradley said. “They sold the program, so it was pretty easy. My mom and dad liked the emphasis on academics – we couldn’t slack off.”

Paterno made good on his promise.

“I needed an organic chemistry course my senior year to graduate and do what I wanted to do,” Bradley recalled. “I went to Joe and he said it wasn’t a problem, take the course, just come to the rest of practice. He was so into education. It was a special place, it really was.”

Later, when Bradley applied to medical school, Paterno wrote a letter of recommendation. Five pages. Hand-written. When the future doctor went to say thank you to his past coach for what was a magnificent reference, Paterno waved it off.

“Ahh,” Bradley said, doing a bit of a Paterno imitation, “I had to think of something to say.”

THE INTERVIEW

Years later, when Bradley met Rooney, he said he felt the same respect that he had for Paterno. Bradley had an interview to become the Steelers’ orthopedic surgeon and was just one of nearly 10 candidates. Bradley figured he didn’t have a shot.

“It was a first-time interview with Mr. Rooney,” he recalled. “We talked for 55 minutes. Fifty were on life, family, the press, current events – everything but football. We talked the last five minutes on football. Then he stood up.”

Rooney turned to Bradley and said, “Do you want to take care of my football team?”

Bradley said he was flabbergasted. “Do I have to sign anything?”

“No,” said Rooney, “just shake my hand.”

Bradley picks up the story from here:

“So I shake his hand and I walk out of the room in total confusion. There was this (trainer) named Ralph Berlin, who had been there forever. He goes to me, Are you our new orthopedic surgeon? And I said, I don’t know, Ralph, but I did shake his hand. And Ralph goes, Don’t worry about it – I shook his hand 27 years ago and I’m still here.”

Bradley is two years shy of being in Berlin’s shoes. To this day, he remembers Rooney’s parting words that afternoon. “This is a direct quote of what Mr. Rooney told me that day: ‘If anybody interferes with you taking care of my football players, I want to know about it.’ I knew then and there he was going to trust what I had to say as a doctor.”

Bradley is quick to downplay any accolades that have come his way. He talks at length about the Steelers’ team internist, Tony Yates, and trainer, Jon Norwig, a Penn Stater. The three have been with the Steelers for a combined 85 seasons.

“C’mon, it’s the best organization in the NFL,” he says. “You can’t do this stuff without a great team that has the same vision.”

A MODEST PROPOSAL

That genuine self-effacing manner is a Bradley family trait, deeply ingrained into Tom as well. And, for that reason as much as any other, Jim thinks his former Penn State football teammate and younger sibling will be a success out in L.A. It may be just what the doctor ordered.

“Tom’s really a people person,” said Jim. “When we were kids, I had about six friends I liked to hang around with. He had about 40. It’s all about relationships. Tom forms very good relationships. People inherently trust him because he’s not trying to do something he shouldn’t do. He’s not an ‘I’ guy. Once he gets his defense around him, he will protect them like a rabid dog.

“Tom’s a coach. That’s what he does. I think he’s going to do great because he’s extremely talented. And it helps getting to work with a head coach who was an NFL guy. He’s going to do fine.”

And then Jim laughed.

“There’s a direct flight from L.A. to Pittsburgh.”

Source: http://www.statecollege.com/news/columns/from-penn-state-to-the-steelers-jim-bradley-is-just-what-the-doctor-ordered,1463088/