‘The game is about the players’
He didn’t give birth to Steelers Nation. The man who fathered Steelers Nation was Chuck Noll, who raised a corpse of a franchise to unmatched success with four Super Bowl championships over a six-season span and, in the process, restored a sense of pride into a populace beaten down by the loss of the steel industry and the accompanying bodyblow to the region’s economy.
What Bill Cowher did was resuscitate Steelers Nation.
Following a legend, and a beloved legend in the case of Chuck Noll, is the most difficult task in the profession Cowher chose as his life’s work, and while no coach can or should be expected to duplicate Chuck Noll’s accomplishments, what can be said about Bill Cowher is that in terms of the love affair between the team and its fan base, he left things in
