Friday, September 19, 2008
Former Steelers coach Bill Cowher relaxes by taking piano lessons.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Pittsburgh Steelers will rumble into Philadelphia this weekend and, if their no-nonsense image is to be believed, they’ll probably run the entire way behind a couple of burly offensive linemen.
Still, the NFL’s blackest-and-bluest franchise doesn’t seem quite so tough without spittle-spewing Bill Cowher on its sideline.
Cowher, who retired as the NFL’s longest-tenured coach in 2007 after 15 mostly successful seasons with the Steelers and is now a studio analyst for CBS’ “The NFL Today,” had a face that made players, officials and opposing coaches, well, cower.
The defiant under-bite, the curled lip, the Rasputin eyes, the jaw thrust toward you like a threat — it was a countenance perfectly shaped for Pittsburgh and the NFL.
Cowher’s perpetual snarl and clipped Western Pennsylvania accent embodied football grit. Dan Rooney, the longtime Steelers owner, said the coach resembled the team’s mascot, “a rough, tough, brawny steelworker walking on an I-beam.”
That’s why it’s a little difficult to envision Cowher sitting behind a piano, practicing chord progressions at the stern urging of his female teacher.
“It’s just something I find I really enjoy,” Cowher said of the lessons he’s been taking for more than a year. “I’m probably biased, but I think I’m pretty good. It really relaxes me.”
Relaxation never was a term associated with the hard-charging coach. That’s why his belated affection for the piano has to qualify as one of the most incongruous shifts in interests since Herschel Walker turned up in a bobsled.
When the 2-0 Steelers meet the 1-1 Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday, Cowher will be sitting behind a CBS studio desk on West 57th Street in Manhattan, watching and analyzing the day’s games with James Brown, Boomer Esiason, Shannon Sharpe and Dan Marino.
But as soon as the long day ends, the 51-year-old will head home to North Carolina, where his life as a premature retiree is, surprisingly, more lace curtain than Steel Curtain.
It’s as if Cowher has been living a Walter Mitty fantasy these last 20 months, acting out some of the daydreams that over the years occasionally intermingled with the Xs and Os.
He moved back to Raleigh, where he and his wife, Kaye, were star athletes at North Carolina State. His three daughters — Meagan, a Princeton graduate; Lauren, a Princeton junior; and Lindsay, a high school senior — are outstanding basketball players, and he has attended many of their high school, college and AAU games.
He dines out often with his wife. He putters around the $2.5 million home he bought just before quitting. He’s got a new yellow Lab named Huey that he’s busy training. He’s reading all those books he never had time for as a coach, which include practically every one ever written.
And he’s taking piano lessons with teacher Kim Russ, hoping, in his words, “to get good enough where I can put out a tip jar.”
Cowher grew up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Crafton, where there wasn’t much money for pianos or time for lessons. His latest passion wasn’t born until he began to travel in the NFL.
“I had no musical skills,” he said. “None. Never played anything. But when I was coaching, I’d walk into a hotel lobby with my family and hear someone playing the piano. One of my daughters played the piano, and sometimes she’d sit down and play along with him. And I’d be thinking, ’How neat. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do something like that?’ ”
Cowher sought out Russ soon after he stunned the football world by walking away from the Steelers on Jan. 5, 2007, less than a year after he’d led them to victory in Super Bowl LX.
“She’s tough,” Cowher said. “I’ve got to make sure I practice three or four times every week or she’ll get on me. I had a bad pinkie once and when I told her about it, she said she didn’t want to hear any lame excuses.”