Class of 2025

Mickey Pruitt,

Chicago

Contributor

 

Mickey Pruitt is definitely a Chicago southside success story. A top football player at Robeson High School, he got the opportunity to continue his career at the University of Colorado where he had a hall of fame career. Then he made it to the National Football League and played for the Chicago Bears and the Dallas Cowboys, where he was on a team that won the Super Bowl before also being an assistant coach in college football.

With such an impressive resume, it’s understandable why there was a strong interest in getting Mickey involved with helping to administer sports at high schools and grammar schools in Chicago and that’s what he’s done 27 years as the Senior Director of Sports Administration for the Chicago Public Schools. He’s retiring from CPS at the end of the school year and is also handling duties as the acting Executive Director of CPS since September.

His experiences of being an athlete in CPS has driven him to assure that more resources would be provided, more opportunities would be available, and coaches and school administrations would continue to improve and that’s what has happened in his tenure as sports administrator.

One of Mickey’s biggest influences has been his high school coach at Robeson, Roy Curry, who won 240 games between 1969-2000 and was inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame while he was still coaching in 1992.

Mickey and his teammates made history in 1982 when Robeson advanced to the IHSA Class 5A title game and was leading Rockford Guilford, but a late turnover resulted in a 16-12 defeat. It’s the only time that a CPS team has been able to accomplish that feat and Mickey played throughout the entire game as a running back and defensive back.

Another inspirational and hall of fame coach that Mickey got to play for was Bill McCartney, who turned around the fortunes at Colorado and led it to a share of the national title in 1990.

Mickey was a fou-year letter winner as a strong safety for the Buffaloes from 1984-87 and one of seven players in the program’s history to be a three-time first-team all-conference selection and was a second-team All-American in his senior season.

He was selected as a member of Colorado’s All-Century Team and the Big Eight All-Decade Team for the 1980s. In 2021, Mickey was inducted into University of Colorado Athletic Hall of Fame.He played 62 games in the NFL and was with the Bears from 1988-90 and the Dallas Cowboys from 1991-92. He won the Brian Piccolo Award as a rookie for the Bears and received a Super Bowl ring when the Cowboys beat Buffalo 52-17 in Super Bowl XXVII.

Mickey was a graduate assistant at Colorado in 1995 and 1996 and then became an assistant coach at the University of Hawai’i. He also worked in player personnel for the Bears before being hired by CPS in 1998.