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Cowher: "You Have To Come Back For All The Right Reasons"

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – After winning Super Bowl XL in 2006, former Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Bill Cowher said it was time to retire from coaching football.

But, is he now ready to leave the broadcast booth behind and return to the sidelines? There have been a lot of media reports that he is.

Cowher told Newsday Tuesday that he would likely return to coaching in the future, prompting many question as to when he might leave broadcast and return to the field.

In an exclusive interview, KDKA's Bob Pompeani spoke with Cowher and asked him about whether he'll return to coaching.

Pompeani: "When you first got into this, did you think it was just a stop gap until you got another head coaching job?"

Cowher: "No, I really didn't. I mean, I didn't get out of it to get back into it. When I left, I gave it a lot of thought. I was with the best organization in football; I had the best job in football, and it was a young team and I knew that. It wasn't like I left blindly. So, when I left it wasn't for me to look to get anything else. I left because it was just time. I was 49-years-old, I wanted to spend some special time with my kids, and I was able to do that. There was no preconceived plan going in. And even to this day, I sit there and say that… I don't sit there and say that I'll never go back. I try to take it year to year and be true to myself. And if the itch comes back and you sit back and you start looking around and you get bored, not bored – probably not the right word – you miss that, and you have to really miss that to jump into it, and you have to come back for all the right reasons. And that still hasn't been there yet."

Pompeani: "So, you're not totally ruling it out? If an offer came up that you really wanted, you would take it?"

Cowher: "I think 'offers' the wrong word. I think that I'll know. It's not going to be any amount of money. It's not gonna be… that's not the reason to go back into it, that's not why you coach. It's just gonna be the right time, and I think you'll know. I really do believe that. I knew it was time to leave, and I'm really at peace with that. If I ever did decide to come back, I know it will be time that I put great thought into that because I don't do anything spontaneously."

Cowher was the Steelers' head coach from 1992 to 2006, afterwards becoming a CBS Sports analyst.

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