Donelli, "Buff" (Aldo T.)
Football, Soccer
b. July 22, 1907, Morgan, PA
d. Aug. 9, 1994
The only person ever to coach college and professional football at the same time, Donelli was a soccer player as a teenager. He scored 5 goals in the championship game when the Heidelberg, Pennsylvania, Soccer Club won the 1929 National Amateur Challenge Cup.
Donelli played center for the Duquesne University football team as a freshman in 1926 and moved to halfback in 1927. He also did the team's place-kicking, but he used the standard straight-on approach, not the soccer-style kick.
He served as an assistant coach at Duquesne from 1931 through 1938, and he also played for the U. S. World Cup soccer team in 1934, when he scored all 4 goals in a preliminary 4-0 victory over Mexico.
In 1939, Donelli became head football coach at Duquesne, compiling a 29-4-2 record in 4 seasons. He was a pioneer of the wing T, a variation of the T formation in which one halfback moves to a wingback position behind and just outside an offensive end.
Owner Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1941 gave Donelli a three-year, $30,000 contract to coach the team beginning in 1942. When Bert Bell resigned as Steeler coach after the second game of the 1941 season, Donelli took over, while continuing to coach Duquesne.
The Steelers lost all 5 games under Donelli while Duquesne won its first 6. Faced with a trip to California with the Duquesne team on a weekend when the Steelers were to play in Philadelphia, Donelli resigned the professional job under pressure from NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden, who had been his coach at Duquesne.
Donelli never did coach the Steelers again but, after Duquesne dropped football in 1944, he coached the NFL's Cleveland Rams to a 4-6-0 record. He serving in the Army in 1945, then coached Boston University to a 46-36-4 record from 1947 through 1956. Donelli ended his career at Columbia University, where he had a 30-67-2 record from 1957 through 1967.