Jim Tomsula loves the drive through the Fort Pitt Tunnel to Downtown, especially the way the city opens its arms on the other side. “The only city in the world with an entrance,” Tomsula says with more than a sprinkle of hometown pride.
And he especially enjoys going home to West Homestead, to his parents’ home on Dogwood Drive, to sit in the backyard, drinking a beer and eating pizza, probably from Pizza King in Munhall.
“My mother and father are the world to me,” Tomsula said. “My father worked three jobs my whole life. My mother took care of the family. Our mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was very young. Five times later, she is still with us. Talk about tough and fighting.
“Those things stick with you. Don’t let your pride get in the way of a day’s work. Work your tail off. Take care of your family. That’s my family. That’s what they do. They all just go to work. They have a responsibility, like everybody in that area. That’s why we are so proud to be from Pittsburgh.”
Coming back to his hometown is nothing rare for Tomsula, a Mon Valley kid through and through. He does it for a couple of weeks every summer with his wife and three kids, embracing the steps he took as a youth that ultimately led him to where he is today as the rookie head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.
Tomsula, 46, went to St. Therese Grade School in Munhall, spent two years at Central Catholic High School because Father Joseph Nee said he needed a little discipline, then transferred to Steel Valley, where he played football for George Novak and learned a lot of what he knows about coaching.
Today, though, when he is on the sideline at Heinz Field, approximately seven miles from where he grew up, none of that will matter to Tomsula, the grandson of a Hungarian immigrant.
“This isn’t a family trip,” Tomsula said. “We got a game to play.”
Tomsula might seem out of the place in San Francisco, which is as much like Homestead as the Golden Gate bridge is to Hi-Level Bridge. His Pittsburgh accent, unmistakable to this day, draws quizzical looks in the Bay Area. But, so far, he is undefeated as head coach of the 49ers, bearing a 2-0 record that includes his one-game stint as an interim coach in 2010 when Mike Singletary was fired.
And he is focused on facing the team he worshipped when he was a kid in the Mon Valley.
“Yeah, I am from there, I love it there, but I am not making that kind of connection on this,” Tomsula said. “This is a football game. We have to go. I am going to try to make sure I don’t let myself go there. I am not there now. There’s no social activities scheduled.”
Tomsula is not the first head coach to experience such a return to Western Pennsylvania.
Join the club
Tomsula is the latest Western Pennsylvania native to become a head coach in the NFL, joining a list as long as it is impressive.
He joins two other current coaches who are from the area — Mike McCarthy of the Green Bay Packers, who grew up in Greenfield, not far from Tomsula, and went to Bishop Boyle High School; and Marvin Lewis of the Cincinnati Bengals, who grew up in McDonald and went to Fort Cherry High School.
Tomsula’s brother-in-law went to high school with McCarthy, who is in his 10th season with the Packers. Lewis, the second-longest tenured coach in the NFL, and McCarthy worked on the same Pitt staff under Paul Hackett.
“There are two two types of people — people who are from Western Pennsylvania and people who wish they were from Western Pennsylvania,” McCarthy said.
They are just the latest wave. Before them, the list includes Bill Cowher (Crafton), Mike Ditka (Aliquippa), Marty Schottenheimer (McDonald), Jim Haslett (Ben Avon), Dave Wannstedt (Baldwin) and Todd Haley (Upper St. Clair). They were all NFL head coaches in the 1990s and 2000s.
At one point, Western Pennsylvania products made up nearly 16 percent of the head coaches in the NFL. In 2006, five from that list — Cowher, McCarthy, Schottenheimer, Lewis and Haslett — were running NFL teams.
In 2003, Lewis and Schottenheimer had a rare meeting when the Bengals played the San Diego Chargers — two head coaches from the same high school. It is believed to be the first time in NFL history that has happened. Lewis and Schottenheimer went to Fort Cherry. When Schottenheimer was young, his babysitter was Lewis’ aunt.
But that’s not all. Go back further and the list grows some more: Joe Walton (Beaver Falls), Joe Bugel (Munhall), Chuck Knox (Sewickley) and Ted Marchibroda (Franklin) were NFL head coaches. So was Mike Nixon (Masontown), who coached the Steelers and Washington Redskins in the 1960s.
It used to be that Western Pennsylvania was known as the cradle of quarterbacks. Now the area has become a cradle of coaches.
“They were talking about all the quarterbacks from Western Pennsylvania one time and they asked Joe Montana what’s with all the great quarterbacks,” Wannstedt said. “Joe said, ‘I don’t think it’s the water, it’s the Iron City beer.’ So that’s my statement and I’m standing by it.”
Wannstedt coached two NFL teams — he compiled an 82-86 regular-season record with the Chicago Bears and Miami Dolphins — before becoming the head coach at Pitt, his alma mater. Like so many of the other coaches, he came from a working-class family — his dad was employed at J&L Steel — and learned the importance of work ethic and commitment.
“We all kind of came up with the mentality that nothing was for nothing,” said Wannstedt, who graduated from Baldwin High School ijn 1970 and was the head coach at Pitt from 2005-2010. “You had to earn everything. If it was tough times, you had to work your way for it.
“My dad worked in the J&L steel mill. My way out of the steel mills was going to be in athletics. If I was going to college, it was going to be through football.”
Cowher, McCarthy and Ditka are the only coaches from Western Pennsylvania to win a Super Bowl. Tomsula’s 49ers have won five of them — one fewer than the Steelers — but they were all before he first joined the franchise as a defensive line coach in 2007.
“When someone grew up here, you just kind of know the environment they grew up with,” said Cowher, who won his only Super Bowl in 15 years with the Steelers in 2005. “We all had the same environment, the same work ethic, the same values, and they’re very strong values. They kind of permeated in us and led us on our paths. It all started back here and how you were brought up.”
They all came from working class families. Tomsula’s dad taught at Boyle High School among his several jobs. McCarthy’s dad, Joe, owned a bar in Greenfield. Cowher’s dad was an insurance auditor.
“We all know there’s a little bit of a pulse here in Western Pennsylvania,” said Cowher, who went to Carlynton High School. “Football is very important, it’s important to the communities. You see football around the country, but in western Pennsylvania it kind of represents your area.
“Those suburban cities are identified through its football teams. You’re kind of brought up that way. You represent more than your team, you represent your community. It’s bred in you early.”
Big break
That’s what happened with Tomsula.
Too small to play offensive line at a Division I-A college after high school, he accepted a scholarship to Middle Tennessee State and later transferred to Division II Catawba College in North Carolina.
He began his coaching career as a high-school assistant under Novak at Woodland Hills, then coached in volunteer positions at Catawba and Charleston Southern, all the while working odd jobs at night to make extra money to support his family.
Tomsula finally got a break when Lionel Taylor, a former NFL player who worked as an assistant coach with the Steelers in the 1970s, hired him to coach in NFL Europe. He spent nine years coaching in Europe, eventually rising to defensive coordinator and finally head coach of the Rhein Fire in 2006.
One year later, he was in the NFL as a defensive line coach with the 49ers. Eight years later, he is returning home to the city he loves, where his mom and dad and sister Jill still live, as their head coach.
“It’s good people, tough-nosed people,” Tomsula said of Western Pennsylvania. “If they have a problem with you, they are going to let you know. Other than that, they are going to be good people and help you out. They aren’t going to play around with a lot of B.S. You do things because they are the right thing to do. That’s what I get from my family. My family is straight Pittsburgh.”
So is Tomsula.
Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com.
First Published: September 20, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
