BC And The Acceptable Outcome For My Steelers

Bill Cowher, 15 years the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, has passed up the final year of his contract and announced his resignation from the team he coached to the win in Super Bowl XL just 11 months ago. It's Sunday, two days after the news of his "retirement", for now, maybe.

Now I have a confession to make to my friends in my home town of Cleveland...I have been a fan of the Steelers since the 1980s and over the years I have grown to be an increasingly hardcore fan of the Black and Gold. The Pittsburgh Steelers, on Sundays in the fall and early winter, are my team.

I look at Friday's developments with the Steelers as the passing of a era. I developed a much greater affinity for the team under Cowher's leadership. I grew to admire his tenacious coaching style and the way he dealt with his players. He was very much a player's coach. He was a coach that, to a man, the players loved. He enjoyed a mythical, god-like status in Pittsburgh and among the Steeler Nation.

The Proof Is In The Outcome

The thing that created the human Bill Cowher was his lack of success in the truly big games (AFC Championships and Super Bowls). He was 3-5 in those games. He split a pair of SBs and was 2-4 in AFCCs, 1-4 on home field in those games. It seemed like he could never get over the hump in those games. It created a legion of naysayers in Steeler Nation and sullied what would have otherwise been an excellent reputation.

My view, until the 2005 season was this guy had a very real "proof problem". Cowher's problem was that he really needed what I would term as "the acceptible outcome" to a season, any season, to be considered among the upper echelon of all-time NFL head coaches. He needed to prove that he was worthy of the legend of the truly great coaches.

My mantra for the 2005 season was simple..."there is no acceptable outcome to this season short of a Super Bowl championship". The Steelers, without a Super Bowl win in the 2005 season, would be a suspect team with an increasingly suspect coach.

As the Steelers 2005 season became 12 games old, the 7-5 record they had to that point suggested an impending failure of "no acceptable outcome". The unacceptable was about to become a very real probability, particularly in the light of the almost freakish AFC playoff race.

That was when the Steelers threw the proverbial switch on their season. Four consecutive wins to finish the season only guaranteed them the final playoff spot in the AFC. The 2005 Steelers, in order to reach "the acceptable outcome" would need to become "the road warriors".

They would face Cincinnati in the first game. The good news was that this was a road game. The Steelers had beaten the Bengals on their home field four consecutive times. A slow start worked its way to a robust finish and a decisive Steelers win. One down, three to go, next stop...Indianapolis.

The Colts drove the Steelers into the ground like a rental car in the regular season Monday night meeting. For the Steelers, the fact still remained that there would be "no acceptable outcome...". For the Steelers, this would be a required road win at the scene of an unspeakable mugging only two months earlier.

The Steelers played that game from the opening kickoff like someone set their rear ends on fire. How come they couldn't have played like this in the regular season game? Despite efforts to give away the game with time expiring, the Steelers would get revenge for the obscene display of the November matchup with the Colts. The Steelers were now halfway to the goal line of "the acceptable outcome".

The road warriors would write chapter three in the Rocky Mountains. To Denver they would go.

Would this game be like almost all the other AFC Championship games? They were favorites every time if for no better reason that they were the home team. This time, the comforts of home would elude them. They must have one final road win to get the matchup they needed. No team had ever won three straight on the road to reach the Super Bowl.

For the Steelers and Bill Cowher, there would be "no acceptable outcome".

They would play one of their more convincing 60 minute stretches of football of the 2005 season. They would go into the no-man's-land of Denver and , to paraphrase the legendary Pittsburgh Penguins announcer Mike Lange, they "beat the Broncos like a rented mule".

The "acceptable outcome" was one win away.

For the first time, a NFL team had won three road games to reach the Super Bowl. It was only for one reason this happened...there would be no acceptable outcome for the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers and for the career of Bill Cowher.

They would play the Seattle Seahawks, a team making its first ever appearance in the NFLs showcase game. They would be playing the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, making their sixth Super Bowl appearance six hours from home in the Motor City. Detroit, Michigan. For two weeks, Detroit would become the nerve center for Steeler Nation.

The Steelers had sixty minutes of football left. For the team and their coach to fight off their backs and to get this far would mean a far more unacceptable outcome if they would come this far and lose.

From the gritty play of Ben Roethlisberger to the flair of MVP Hines Ward and sensational running of Willie Parker...an undrafted free agent, this combination would add up to the end of the futility of Bill Cowher's quest for football's ultimate prize.

As the final seconds ticked away, I would be heard to say "I accept this outcome!"

The Legacy of Bill Cowher

The Steelers would add a fifth Vince Lombardi Trophy to the case at team headquarters...and William Laird Cowher pulled a huge monkey off his back.

Eleven months later, the coach has decided to put impending legend on ice after the struggle of a .500 season, hardly the way a winner should top off an accomplished career.

For me, I will always want Bill Cowher to be the coach of the Steelers and only the Steelers. Unless the Steelers fire his successor to bring him back to the fold once he is ready to come back it is unlikely he will ever coach his hometown team again.

Will Bill Cowher coach again? Odds are good that he will. He is 49 years old. He has proclaimed himself to not be "burned out". He wants to enjoy the comforts of his new home in Raleigh, NC where he attended college at North Carolina State. He would like to watch his daughters play hoops.

Many speculate that he will be on the sidelines for only a short time. That he will have a new job come 2008. In my opinion, I wouldn't be so sure that will happen. He may decide that he actually likes retirement. It happened to John Madden. It nearly happened to Joe Gibbs. Both are Hall of Fame coaches.

Will Cowher follow those two to Canton? Perhaps. Although it is my feeling that Cowher still needs another Super Bowl win, or about five more years of successful head coaching to stamp his ticket. If he were to stand on his accumulated record to this point, I get the impression that it might be enough, but he certainly wouldn't be considered on many first ballots outside of Western Pennsylvania. I feel he needs another trip to the Super Bowl to be a sure first ballot inductee.

The legacy of Bill Cowher in Pittsburgh has been one of success. The only coach in Steelers history who doesn't have to look up to the standard he set was a guy named Chuck Noll. His teams won four Super Bowls. Needless to say, he is enshrined in Canton. Cowher may one day join him. Between these two men is 37 years of mostly unfettered excellence. Between these two men, they have carried the fortunes of half of the Steelers history to the one of the most sustained legends of any team in the National Football League.

Whoever's Next...I Wish Him Luck

The next coach has a nearly impossible standard to keep up with. There are many candidates for this job, now an elite situation for any aspiring NFL coach. One of the few things more rare than a coaching search in Pittsburgh is an NFL Championship search for the Cardinals (one championship in 85 years in existence).

Whoever it is, they will be inheriting a team that is one season removed from the NFL title. Many of the components of that team will still be present in 2007. Whoever the Steelers select will be well-fortified for success from his first day on the job. The rest of what he inherits will be up to him. No pressure at all. He'll only be succeeding two head coaches who are already in the Hall of Fame or an excellent candidate to be in one day.

Whatever happens next and whoever guides the Steeler Nation there I know only one thing...that I will be along for the ride to the next acceptable outcome.