Charlie Batch and Larry Foote won a pair of Super Bowl rings with the Steelers in 2005 and 2008 and were teammates for 10 seasons. Both were similar in many ways, too. Affable, professional, and good locker-room guys.
They were also the Steelers’ version of Felix Unger and Oscar Madison — in a dorm room that barely accommodated two king-size beds.
Players report to Steelers training camp in exactly one month, and if things rarely seem to change at Saint Vincent College, there has been at least one notable one since Batch and Foote wore the Black and Gold. Veteran players, Batch said, now get their own room due to renovations to Rooney Hall.
What he would have given for such a luxury when he played for the Steelers from 2002-12. Or at least a different roommate than Foote. The two are good friends but weren’t compatible as roommates for a simple season.
Batch has sinus issues, and sleeping in a cramped room with the air conditioner on blast left him congested. Foote, meanwhile, liked the room colder than a disapproving mother-in-law.
“I would have to wait for him to go to sleep, and then I would have to turn the [air-conditioning] dial just a little so it could cut off, and then I could go to sleep,” Batch recalled with a laugh. “In the middle of the night, he would wake up sweating and mad. So now we’re fighting for the thermostat as it relates to cool and hot.
“We did that every single night.”
Fortunately for both, if not for fans, the Steelers’ time at Saint Vincent College has an expiration date. And their friendship always left Latrobe intact, even if Batch is still unequivocal in saying that Foote was, well, not an ideal roommate.
“We laugh about it to this day,” Batch said, “but man, that was a frustrating three weeks.”