Former Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Bill Cowher had one goal for himself when he got the job in 1992. It was not to get fired in the first three years because then he could go to his 20th high school reunion as the head coach of his hometown team. Little did he know that it wouldn't be the idyllic event he imagined, as almost everyone was angry with him by the end of the night.
Cowher recently joined NPR's comedy podcast Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, and shared his recollections of how a night he had been highly anticipating turned into a disaster. The event happened on a Gateway Clipper Cruise, and his wife, who already didn't want to go, had a miserable time.
"She [Cowher's wife] goes, 'We're not going back there because you're going to sit there and just be with all your buddies,'" he said. "And then I go, 'No, no, no, we'll just stop in, we'll say hi.' So, we got on the boat and we started talking, then the boat took off."
Cowher explained that the night kept unraveling from there. He and the Steelers had just lost the 1994 AFC Championship game to the then-San Diego Chargers, so all his high school classmates were ribbing him about everything he did wrong in the game. Then everyone started getting on Cowher about getting tickets to games.
"So, I got off the boat. My wife wasn't talking to me and made half the people there mad. It kind of put the tipping on that year because we lost the championship game to a team we should've beat."
So, a night that Cowher hoped he'd never forget for positive reasons, turned into a disaster where he managed to make almost everyone, particularly his wife, mad at him. He joked it was kind of like how his coaching career ended up.
As the head coach of an NFL team, a he must handle different relationships effectively. These relationships include the one between a coach and a general manager, the relationship between the head coach and other members of the staff, the coach's relationship with the players, and finally, the relationship with the fans.
Cowher got into coaching when he was 28 and joined the Cleveland Browns as a special teams coach. He said he learned early on that some players need to be yelled at, and others need to be encouraged. As a Pittsburgher, he said he's driven by tough love because that's what he learned growing up.
Steelers' Cowher Had Unique Understanding Of Pittsburgh Fan Base
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Cowher got a unique understanding of the team and its relationship with the fans. He understood the standard of greatness set by his predecessor Chuck Noll. It took him 14 years, but Cowher managed to guide the team to the Promised Land as Noll did.
Cowher was asked on the podcast about how he went from a hard-nosed football player, to being pushed around by a bunch of Steelers fans on a boat. Cowher said he managed it because he knew exactly where they were coming from.
"Yeah, I was one of them at one point," he said about Steelers fans. "I know what they're about."
The number one thing Pittsburgh fans are known for is demanding championship wins. Cowher may have come up short for the first 13 years of his career, but in the 14th, he delivered a fifth Super Bowl trophy to Pittsburgh. That will always be the legacy he leaves.
His dream of going to his 20th high school reunion as the head coach of the Steelers may have come true in a way that wasn't how he planned, but that shouldn't tarnish his memories of being a head coach. He brought a championship home for his hometown team, and that is special.
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