Cowher Reunites With Carlynton HS Teammates, Inspires Current Cougars
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Bill Cowher has walked a lot of football fields, but the grass the Carlynton Cougars play on is special.
"We played for each other, we played with each other, we were friends, we really liked each other, and it was important to us," said Cowher, the former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach and now CBS football analyst.
They were the boys of fall for the Carlynton High School Cougars 40 years ago, and for some very special moments this summer they were back together.
"We come back today and we can joke and kid, and I haven't seen these guys in 20 years," said Cowher.
"When you come back to the city, it's like you never left."
With a half dozen of his high school teammates they walked the field, and the locker room remembering.
Cowher was thrilled when CBS asked him as part of their ramp up to Super Bowl 50. They asked him to return to Carlynton High School, where his number is retired, to talk to the present-day Cougars and present them with a Golden Football.
The presence and bond of Cowher and his teammates is an example to the current Cougars.
"It's great to have him here," said Scott Yoder, Carlynton High School's football coach. "This is what family is about, that's what we preach to our team."
"We all get knocked down in life," Cowher told the current Cougars, "but your ability to get up, to persevere, to have belief in yourself, let that be what defines you."
"That's what we're building here, and it's not just football, it's everything we're doing," said Michael Loughren, the principal of Carlynton High School. "It's the way we are and it means everything."
Cowher says he finds that feeling of family in many places in Pittsburgh.
"I'm a blessed man to have grown up here and to understand what it's like to be a Pittsburgher," Cowher said.
At Carlynton, he's a teammate, but in Pittsburgh, he's also the coach of gritty Super Bowl Steelers.
"There is something about the uniqueness that this organization has, it typifies the city," Cowher said.
A place where the Super Bowl winning coach can always be just Bill.
"The memories I have here are ones you will never lose," he said.
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