Jack 'Cy' McClairen, Former Steeler and BCU Legend, Dies at 89

Former Pittsburgh Steelers receiver and Bethune-Cookman University icon Jack "Cy" McClairen died Monday at the age of 89, the school announced.

McClairen's NFL career spanned six seasons and included a Pro Bowl nod in 1957. He retired from the league in 1960 because of knee injuries and returned to Bethune-Cookman, where he had been a three-sport star in football, basketball and track and field. 

Beginning in 1961, McClairen coached the men's basketball and football teams and went on to serve as the athletic director and associate athletic director before retiring in 2017. 

He led the men's basketball team to a conference championship in 1952, the same year he was the hero in the football program's first win over Florida A&M, when he grabbed a 38-yard touchdown pass to win the game 8-7. 

His victorious efforts continued when he was a coach at his alma mater. Under McClairen, the men's basketball team won three conference championships and appeared in the NCAA Division II tournament as many times. He amassed a 396-436 record in his three-decade tenure with the basketball program, partly reflecting the team's move to Division I. 

In two outings as the football coach, from 1961-72 and again from 1994-96, he compiled a 71-60-3 record. Among the players he coached were Hall of Famer Larry Little and Charles "Boobie" Clark, who was named the AFC Rookie of the Year in 1973.

"Everybody loved Coach Cy. He was the perfect ambassador to Bethune-Cookman University and college sports," Lynn Thompson, the school's vice president for intercollegiate athletics, told Ken Willis of the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

An inaugural member of the school's athletic Hall of Fame, McClairen is also a member of the Florida Sports Hall of Fame and the Halls of Fame in the Mideast Athletic and Southern Intercollegiate conferences. 

The school is in the process of arranging a celebration of life.