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Fil photo of former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher working as an NFL Today Analyst for CBS Sports
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Hall of Fame selection a surprise of a lifetime for Bill Cowher

Mary Kouw/CBS

Hall of Fame selection a surprise of a lifetime for Bill Cowher

Bill Cowher was given the sur­prise of a life­time, right there on na­tional tele­vi­sion, when he learned he was go­ing to be in­ducted in the Pro Foot­ball Hall of Fame. But none of the peo­ple who worked with him, played for him or even hired him was sur­prised.

“I was to­tally blindsided,” Cowher said. “I had come to grips I wasn’t go­ing to get in and I’m OK with that. I never thought I would get in to be­gin with. I had al­ready put clo­sure to it.”

And then Cowher, 62, saw Dave Baker, pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Pro Foot­ball Hall of Fame, sud­denly ap­pear on the set of “The NFL To­day” pre­game show Satur­day night, right when he was talk­ing about Lamar Jack­son and the Bal­ti­more Ravens.

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In a mo­ment that has flooded so­cial me­dia with likes and retweets, Baker told an emo­tional Cowher on na­tional tele­vi­sion of his se­lec­tion as part of the Cen­ten­nial Class of 2020. Wait­ing be­hind stage were Cowher’s wife, Veron­ica, and daugh­ter Mea­gan, who were told of the sur­prise only an hour ear­lier and were rushed to the CBS Stu­dio.

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“They know our fam­ily pretty good,” Cowher said. “We can’t keep se­crets.”

And so be­gan a whirl­wind 24-hour pe­riod in which Cowher re­ceived 254 text mes­sages and 50 emails from for­mer play­ers, coaches and friends, ev­ery­one from mem­bers of his first coach­ing staff and Su­per Bowl team to the Steel­ers hi­er­ar­chy of pres­i­dent Art Roo­ney II, gen­eral man­ager Kevin Col­bert and his suc­ces­sor, coach Mike Tom­lin.

Cowher, a Craf­ton na­tive who went to Car­lyn­ton High School, won one Su­per Bowl, eight di­vi­sion ti­tles and made the play­offs in 10 of his 15 years with the Steel­ers. He also took the 1995 Steel­ers to Su­per Bowl XXX, where they lost to the Dal­las Cow­boys.

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“We won a lot of games, we brought play­off games to the city of Pitts­burgh, we won play­off games,” Cowher said over the phone Sun­day night af­ter work­ing the di­vi­sional play­off game be­tween the Kan­sas City Chiefs and Hous­ton Tex­ans. “I re­mem­ber the joy that brought to a city. For a kid from Craf­ton, for Dan Roo­ney to take a chance on a 34-year old kid, I couldn’t imag­ine work­ing any­where else. That’s why I never thought about com­ing back [to coach]. I stepped down for fam­ily and have had no re­grets do­ing that.”

Then he added, “There’s three peo­ple on this day that I re­ally wish could be here — my mom, my dad and Kaye,” a ref­er­ence to his late wife who died in 2010.

When Cowher re­signed on Jan. 5, 2007 — 11 months af­ter win­ning his first Su­per Bowl — his 149 reg­u­lar-sea­son vic­to­ries ranked 20th all time and sec­ond to Chuck Noll (193) in team his­tory. He be­came only the sec­ond coach to make the post­sea­son in each of his first six years in the league, be­hind leg­end­ary Paul Brown.

Largely un­no­ticed is that eight of his as­sis­tant coaches, in­clud­ing three from his orig­i­nal staff, went on to be­come NFL head coaches for the first time.

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“Bill has no weak­nesses but his great­est strength is how he was in front of the team and how he in­ter­acts with the team,” said for­mer Steel­ers de­fen­sive co­or­di­na­tor Dick LeBeau, who was in­ducted into the Pro Foot­ball Hall of Fame in 2010 as a player and coach. “He had the abil­ity to keep ev­ery­body fo­cused on the next snap, the next quar­ter, the next game. He had a rare vi­sion. I thought he was re­ally tal­ented in those ar­eas.”

Cowher is the sec­ond for­mer Steel­ers coach, along with Noll, and the 24th mem­ber of the or­ga­ni­za­tion to be in­ducted into the Hall of Fame. His se­lec­tion sets up what could be an­other big sum­mer in Can­ton, Ohio, for Steel­ers fans be­cause two for­mer play­ers — safety Troy Pola­malu and guard Alan Faneca — are among the fi­nal 15 mod­ern-era fi­nal­ists for the Class of 2020 in­duc­tion.

Cowher was 34 when he was hired by the Steel­ers on Jan. 22, 1992 — three years younger than Noll when he was hired in Jan­u­ary 1969.

“The first im­pres­sion was that he was young and should we hire a guy this young,” Roo­ney II said, re­call­ing the time Cowher was cho­sen over Bald­win na­tive Dave Wann­st­edt to suc­ceed Noll. “The more we talked to him, the more com­fort­able we got. You al­ways ask your­self is this the kind of guy who can get in front of room and keep their at­ten­tion, and he re­ally was. He has that kind of pres­ence. The fact he was from Pitts­burgh was just a lit­tle bit of ic­ing on the cake be­cause he re­ally brought a Pitts­burgh at­ti­tude to the team.”

With his jut­ting jaw and the oc­ca­sional spit­tle fly­ing dur­ing some of his emo­tional side­line out­bursts, Cowher was un­ques­tion­ably the face of the Steel­ers fran­chise, lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively.

“That chin and that ’stache and that de­meanor will never be for­got­ten,” said for­mer de­fen­sive end Brett Keisel, who rose from sev­enth-round draft choice in 2002 to be­come one of the in­te­gral mem­bers of the Steel­ers’ dom­i­nat­ing de­fenses un­der Cowher and later Tom­lin. “And now he will for­ever be en­shrined in Can­ton. It’s awe­some.”

Col­bert didn’t ar­rive in town un­til 2000 when he re­placed Tom Dona­hoe as di­rec­tor of foot­ball op­er­a­tions. Cowher and Dona­hoe had de­vel­oped a frosty re­la­tion­ship that came to a head af­ter the 1999 non-play­off sea­son when Cowher told owner Dan Roo­ney that ei­ther he goes or Dona­hoe goes. Dona­hoe was fired and Col­bert, a North Side na­tive and North Cath­o­lic High School grad­u­ate, was hired.

Col­bert, though, worked har­mo­ni­ously with Cowher — they even had their weekly rac­quet­ball match nearly ev­ery Fri­day — and the re­sult was a re­turn to the post­sea­son, the draft­ing of Ben Roeth­lis­berger and their Su­per Bowl vic­tory in 2005.

“I didn’t know Bill grow­ing up, he grew up in a dif­fer­ent part of town, but we were the same age and each of his daugh­ters was a year or two younger than my kids,” Col­bert said. “When they brought me in for an in­ter­view that was the first time we ever sat and talked and shared foot­ball ideas. It was good right from the start. We had a lot of com­mon­al­ity grow­ing up in Pitts­burgh and we re­ally grew to­gether from a foot­ball stand­point. He taught me kind of the Steel­ers way that he had learned from the Roo­neys that I went on to learn from the Roo­neys.”

Message of respect

One of Cowher’s great­est strengths was his abil­ity to build a coach­ing staff. When he ar­rived in 1992, he as­sem­bled a staff that would in­clude three fu­ture NFL head coaches — LeBeau (Cin­cin­nati Ben­gals), de­fen­sive co­or­di­na­tor Dom Capers (Car­o­lina Pan­thers, Hous­ton Tex­ans) and line­back­ers coach Marvin Lewis (Cin­cin­nati Ben­gals). Later, he would hire five other as­sis­tants who would be­come head coaches — wide re­ceiv­ers coach Chan Gai­ley in 1994 (Dal­las Cow­boys, Buf­falo Bills), tight ends coach Mike Mu­lar­key in 1996 (Bills, Jack­son­ville Ja­guars, Ten­nes­see Ti­tans), de­fen­sive co­or­di­na­tor Jim Has­lett in 1997 (New Or­le­ans Saints), tight ends coach Ken Whi­sen­hunt in 2001 (Ari­zona Car­di­nals) and wide re­ceiv­ers/​quar­ter­back coach Bruce Ari­ans in 2004 (Ari­zona, Tampa Bay Buc­ca­neers).

“Hav­ing been a for­mer player, the way he han­dled the team, I learned a lot from that — how you set up a sched­ule, how you com­mu­ni­cate,” Whi­sen­hunt said. “The big­gest thing is be­ing hon­est with them. He held you to a high stan­dard and he held you to that stan­dard con­sis­tently. He had a clear con­sis­tency of what he wanted he done and what he ex­pected of them.”

One of Cowher’s long-held be­liefs was he would never hire a friend be­cause he didn’t want to have to pos­si­bly fire one. Lewis, a McDon­ald na­tive who played against Cowher when he was at Fort Cherry High School, might be an ex­cep­tion.

“Bill had been a for­mer player and so what was im­por­tant to him was how a player knows what to do,” said Lewis, who coached with the Steel­ers un­til 1995 when he left to be­come de­fen­sive co­or­di­na­tor with the Bal­ti­more Ravens. “He wanted them to play fast. He didn’t want them to be bogged down men­tally. With Car­nell Lake, Greg Lloyd, Rod Wood­son, Chad Brown, all those guys were the same an­i­mal. You gave them some­thing and they went out and did it hard and fast. You didn’t want to bog them down with so much think­ing.”

Cowher was known as a player’s coach be­cause of his abil­ity to re­late to the play­ers and lis­ten to them. He had an open-door pol­icy with his play­ers, but al­ways told them if they asked a tough ques­tion to ex­pect a tough an­swer.

“That was one of the dif­fer­ences play­ing for him — you have some­one you care about, you go out and play at a dif­fer­ent level,” Keisel said. “We all liked go­ing out there and bleed­ing for B.C. He had ways of bring­ing our team to­gether. No way we could’ve made that run to Detroit like we did with­out him.”

In his first game as head coach, trail­ing 14-0 against the Hous­ton Oil­ers in the Astro­dome, Cowher suc­cess­fully called for a fake punt that led to a touch­down in the first quar­ter. The de­ci­sion lifted the Steel­ers and ral­lied them to a 29-24 vic­tory against the de­fend­ing AFC Cen­tral cham­pion.

“That showed he was not afraid to take a cal­cu­lated risk,” LeBeau said. “He’s got a warm spot in my heart.”

Cowher played six sea­sons in the NFL as a backup line­backer/​spe­cial teams per­former, be­gin­ning and end­ing with the Phil­a­del­phia Eagles with three sea­sons in be­tween with the Cleve­land Browns. When he re­tired as a player af­ter the 1984 sea­son, he was hired by Marty Schot­ten­heimer to be a spe­cial teams coach with the Browns.

At age 28, that’s when Cowher quickly learned he could no lon­ger hang around with the play­ers and in­stead had to be their coach. He car­ried that same men­tal­ity when he be­came head coach, un­der­stand­ing he could no lon­ger pal around with the as­sis­tant coaches be­cause he had to be the man in charge.

“I wanted to be my­self and I wanted the play­ers to take pride in ev­ery­thing they did,” Cowher said. “We rep­resent the Pitts­burgh Steel­ers but we also rep­resent the city of Pitts­burgh. You’re a leader and a role model, whether you want to be or not. I wanted them to play with con­fi­dence and bor­der­line cock­i­ness, but re­spect the game, re­spect the play­ers you’re com­pet­ing against and re­spect your team­mates. That to me was the very bot­tom line. lf you do that, it should all work out.”

And it did, de­spite his sur­prise.

Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac.

First Published: January 13, 2020, 1:53 a.m.

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