Some fans will always pine to see an angry Bill Cowher’s protruding lower jaw back on the Steelers sideline when a player makes a bone-headed mistake or a ref makes a bad call. Even as Mike Tomlin has proven a worthy, Super Bowl-winning successor to the former Steelers head coach, Cowher has remained popular for the hard edge persona he brought to the organization during his 15 seasons leading it.
It does not seem, however, like the Crafton native has any plans to put roots back down here. In an interview with Newsday published Tuesday, Cowher gushed about his adopted hometown of New York.
“I’m a full-fledged New Yorker,” he said. “It’s hard for me to say that. That’s something I never thought I would say. People ask me where I’m from and I go, ‘New York City.’ [They say], ‘Are you?’ ‘Yup, I am.’”
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“I think Central Park is one of the great wonders of the world,” he said, sitting outside the boathouse. “You think about the people, the foresight they had, to leave this undeveloped in the middle of one of the most developed cities in the world. It’s so unique, so special.”
Yeah. Uh. Sounds like he likes it there.
Cowher has been an analyst with CBS since shortly after leaving the Steelers at the end of the 2006 season, but he didn’t relocate to New York until after his first wife, Kaye, died of cancer in 2010. He’s since bought an apartment in the city and remarried.
The coach who guided the Steelers to victory in Super Bowl XL now enjoys relative anonymity in a city that teems with big names. He told Newsday he’ll meet an occasional Steelers fan, but is generally able to stay off the grid far more easily than when he was in Pittsburgh.
“For me, now, the being recognized part of it, it’s for what you’ve done. It’s for the past. It’s not now,” Cowher said. “So that in itself is very flattering, and it’s great. It’s a positive thing.”
Adam Bittner: abittner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @fugimaster24.
First Published: November 8, 2017, 2:51 p.m.
