Cowhering in Fear

"A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning."

Vince Lombardi? George Halas? Brett Favre?

Billie Jean King, actually. Amazing that a tennis pro knows more about the value of victory than the majority of football pundits.

We hear it all the time when the discussion turns to sports history — when debate is focused on a certain player or coach and his place within the context of that history. We hear how winning — despite being the undeniable objective of every team that wasn't the 1983-84 Pittsburgh Penguins — shouldn't be the determining factor when it comes to immortality. Ignore that Ernie Banks never earned a ring. Forget that Charles Barkley couldn't outshine his peers for a championship. Place Dan Marino on the same altar as John Elway and Joe Montana, even if he blew his only shot at the Lombardi Trophy.

Notice how they don't call it the Bud Grant Trophy or the Marv Levy Trophy? Both of those guys frequented the Super Bowl more often than Vinny did — it's just that Lombardi actually won the thing. Twice.

As we approach Super Bowl XL, we focus our attention on a pair of very different coaches. Seattle's Mike Holmgren won Super Bowl XXXI and looks like one of your dad's drinking buddies. Pittsburgh's Bill Cowher lost Super Bowl XXX and looks like the physical education teacher who made you cry in the ninth-grade locker room.

Should Holmgren win this championship game, his place in NFL history is cemented: he will become the first coach to win the Super Bowl with two different franchises. That's something even Bill Parcells hasn't been able to do, despite hopping from team to team more than Kent Graham in the last 10 seasons. If Holmgren wins, the Pro Football Hall of Fame should be chiseling his bust moments after Matt Hasselbeck tells us which Disney park he'll be attending.

Some believe Cowher has already qualified for the Hall of Fame based on his 14 years as Steelers coach. And by "some," I mean the two random knuckleheads I heard on ESPN Radio last weekend who treated the notion that Cowher was a Hall of Famer with the same blasé attitude one might have upon hearing Britney Spears was barefoot while pregnant. (I'm fairly certain one of the aforementioned knuckleheads was Sean Salisbury, whose NFL job stability made Kent Graham's look like Troy Aikman's.)

Did I miss the memo where Cowher's election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame was switched from "possible" to "impending?" Doesn't he have to — and please stop me if is this outrageous notion offends your rational sensibilities as a God-fearing citizen — actually accomplish something, anything, worthy of enshrinement?

Through the 2005 season, Cowher is 141-82-1 in the regular season, 10-9 in the postseason with a loss in the Super Bowl thanks to Neil O'Donnell. He has a .603 winning percentage, which is better than Chuck Noll's (.564) over 23 seasons with Pittsburgh.

Of course, Noll was 16-8 in the postseason and won four Super Bowls. Which means Cowher shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence. As Noll.

Cowher has to win this game against Seattle, or another Bowl down the line, to merit a spot in the Hall of Fame. There are currently 20 coaches in Canton, with John Madden (a two-time Bowl winner) among the finalists for 2006. The majority of the coaches that were on the sidelines during the Super Bowl era have rings. Those who do not are, by and large, special cases:

George Allen never had a losing season, has the second-best winning percentage among coaches in NFL history, and was a defensive innovator.

Sid Gillman was ... Sid Gillman. Unless I missed that time when Cowher invented throwing the deep ball, I'm pretty sure there's no comparison here.

Hank Stram never won the Super Bowl, but won three AFL titles. He also innovated the "moving pocket," the two-tight end set and many of the defense sets the current Steelers have perfected.

The two Super Bowl era coaches in the Hall of Fame without a Bowl victory are both complete anomalies. Bud Grant won 10 of 11 division titles from 1968-1978 and made four Super Bowls. Marv Levy also made four Bowls — in a row — with the Buffalo Bills, who were first in the AFC in winning percentage for nearly a decade.

That Levy is in Canton leaves the door open for Cowher more than any other coach's enshrinement, especially if the Steelers make another Bowl following this one (should they lose). Since Cowher took over in Pittsburgh, the Steelers have been in six conference championship games, winning twice. They've made the postseason in 10 of his 14 seasons. There's no denying that Cowher will leave, when he leaves, as one of professional football's most successful coaches for wins and losses.

But is that enough?

Admittedly, I'm as much the Canton Nazi as I am the Cooperstown Nazi (as you'll see in my new book, "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History," which in a shameful plug I will remind you is available on Amazon.com as we speak). The Cooperstown Nazi is, like Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, a cantankerous curmudgeon who does not put up with substandard behavior or failure to meet certain protocols. If you can't be named amongst the truly immortal names in your chosen profession without straining credibility or common sense ... then NO PLAQUE FOR YOU!

Same goes for football. If Cowher ends up losing this game against Seattle and then fails to win a Super Bowl before handing over the Steelers to whomever coaches them for the following two decades, is he elite? Is he immortal? Can you put him next to Noll, Lombardi, Landry, and Gibbs without wondering if the ringless belongs next to the Lords of the Rings?

Face it: until he wins the Super Bowl, the only reason Bill Cowher should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame is so we can find out what the official sculptor does with that chin.


SportsFan MagazineGreg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" will be published in spring 2006. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].

Comments and Conversation

January 29, 2006

Dave Martin:

I like it. I am an occasionally rabid Steelers fan who also heard some chuckleheads on ESPN Radio (or was it local sports radio, I forget) suggesting that Cowher’s trip to Canton was spoke by oracles.
And I wondered, on what would they base such irresponsible analysis? Failing to prepare a team for lesser talented teams such San Diego (94), Indianapolis (95), Patriots (01)? Sticking by Kordell about three seasons longer (despite one of those seasons being truly good, almost very good) than any rational coach would?

Should the ‘05 Steelers go out one week from today and lose the Super Bowl to the Seahawks (whose mantra “lack of respect” may be deserved, but I think that lack of respect should be proven by facts next Sunday), I will, as I did in ‘01, ‘02, ‘03 ‘04 and once or twice in ‘05, start calling for Cowher’s head again.

January 30, 2006

Greg Wyshynski:

Thanks for the kind words. I do want to point out a correction, thanks to dozens of e-mails sitting in my inbox on Monday morning. Hank Stram did indeed win the Super Bowl, and it was an oversight on my part during some hasty research. Apologies.

January 30, 2006

Mark Barnes:

Greg, Cowher’s regular season winning percentage is actually better than 630, which is remarkable in 14 seasons in the NFL, which does everything possible to encourage parity. That ownership has believed in him for 14 years coupled with this percentage is worth, I believe, a Hall induction.

I don’t think the argument matters, though, as the Steelers will beat Seattle in the Bowl.

However, I don’t believe coaches should be judged on Super Bowls. There are simply too many good ones who don’t win, because of the many factors involved, such as free agency, small markets, and bad GMs.

By the way, I also think Salisbury is an awesome commentator.

For my shamless self-promotion, my novel, The League, is also available at Amazon.

January 30, 2006

Dave Martin:

Damn. I don’t have a book to hock. I have one mostly written, but it has pretty much nothing to do with football.
Oh well.

January 30, 2006

Greg Wyshynski:

“However, I don’t believe coaches should be judged on Super Bowls. There are simply too many good ones who don’t win, because of the many factors involved, such as free agency, small markets, and bad GMs.”

I think there’s a difference between judging the quality of a coach and ranking him among the elite coaches of his day. By any measure, Andy Reid is one of the most successful coaches in the NFL. But not having won the big game, despite obvious talent on both sides of the football, prevents him from joining the ranks of the Parcells, etc. And yeah, you could point to the fact that the team never got that running back or that second wide out or that game-changing defensive stopper in the middle. But the fact remains that despite all of that success, winning it all is still going to determine the good and the great. Thanks for reading…and, oh, Dave: just because your book has nothing to do with football doesn’t mean you can’t whore it like Mark and I did.

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