His team immediately reflected his own thundering, swaggering personality. The Steelers took chances and played with a renewed vigor that caught the NFL by surprise. Cowher's first team gave Pittsburgh its first AFC Central championship in eight years and he was named NFL coach of the year for 1992. The 11-5 record that season was the Steelers' best since their last trip to the Super Bowl in January 1980.
And the winning didn't stop there. Cowher took the Steelers to pro football's pinnacle - Super Bowl XXX - in the 1995 season, this despite stumbling to a 3-4 start and losing defensive star Rod Woodson for the season to a torn knee ligament in the opening game. At 38, Cowher became the youngest coach to lead his team to a Super Bowl and, despite a less-than-satisfying outcome against Dallas in the Super Bowl, he had firmly established himself as one of the league's premier coaches.
Ten years into his reign, Cowher remains at the top of the game. After a three-year absence from the playoffs, the Steelers returned to prominence in 2001 and came within one win of playing again in the Super Bowl. And Cowher reminded Steelers fans not to count him out - or count story-of-the-year ballots - before his team has its final say.
