January 2026
Mike Tomlin, coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers for the last nineteen NFL seasons, called it quits a few days ago.
All good things must come to an end, it is said. Mike Tomlin was a good thing, and not too much of one either. Year after year, Tomlin notched winning seasons and playoff appearances. That is, until perhaps it wasn’t good enough.
The Pittsburgh Steelers organization should be lauded for the nineteen years it employed Tomlin, and likewise. Tomlin delivered with one Super Bowl championship: one of a total six Lombardi trophies for the Steelers and an achievement not to be taken lightly
What is interesting is that Tomlin is only the third man to coach the team since 1969. That’s around fifty-six years, count ’em, that founder Art Rooney and his family have hired and worked with only three head football coaches.
Before you dismiss this fact as luck, ignorance, turning a blind eye, stubborness, the greediness of winning, or otherwise on the part of the Steeler’s organization, consider your own favorite NFL team (or another) and its succession of head coaches over the last half-century. Chances are that said team has been fortunate to keep a head coach (or three of them) for five to ten years, tops, much less fifty-six.
Yours truly is an old Steelers fan from the early 1970s and a self-proclaimed “bandwagon jumper.” It is true that from Franco Harris’s Immaculate Reception in Three Rivers Stadium until the late 1970s and four Super Bowl victories later, following a team like the Steelers was not exactly a hardship. Talk about greediness of winning and the “thrill of victory.” The Steelers won, won big, and won all the time. I even won small-time wagers betting on the Steelers with my friends in junior high school. It was easy!
Chuck Noll was hired by Art Rooney, Sr. in 1969 to coach the relatively unknown and rarely successful Pittsburgh Steelers. A few years later, Harris caught his famous, miraculous “scoop” reception against the Oakland Raiders in the playoffs, ran into the endzone, and into the hearts of Steelers fans everywhere on that gray December Sunday afternoon. Just a few years later, the Rooneys and Noll had amassed arguably perhaps the most successful, blue-chip roster of football players ever. Of course, this was before the days of free agency when players stuck around and in many cases played on the same team for their whole career. The team in those days had so many notably really good players on offense and defense that it was and still is mind-boggling. By the time Noll retired in 1991, he and the Steelers had won four Super Bowls.
Then along came Bill Cowher, that square-jawed, no-nonsense former NFL linebacker, in 1992. Cowher continued the legacy of Noll. He and the Steelers made six AFC Championship appearances and won one Super Bowl. Most NFL head coaches would give up an arm and a leg for those achievements. By the time Cowher left the Steelers in 2006, he had come out of the shadow of Noll’s success and was basking in a glory all his own.
Now, that’s thirty-seven years that the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise went through with only two coaches.
Again, you will be hard-pressed to find a professional sports organization coming anywhere near that length of tenure for its coaches in any sport.
So by the time Tomlin finally “hung up the cleats” at the end of this past regular season, he had completed what was only the third head coaching tenure for the Steelers since 1969. Pretty impressive.
To what do the Pittsburgh Steelers organization and their “Terrible Towel”-waving fans owe this impressive distinction of having this wildly successful realm of coaching continuity? Well, there are a number of interesting conjectures.
First, the Steelers were smart, savvy, and it could be said even lucky to have chosen and have had the success with these three coaches that they had. Not only that, but once they hired them, they stuck with them through thick and thin.
Secondly, the players that the Steelers organization drafted were well-chosen and very valuable picks. They were not only skilled at their positions but were also very likely extremely coachable. When those ingredients for that recipe come of fruition, great things are likely to happen. And they did.
Third, the Steelers fan base is perhaps unparalleled in its idolatrous following of their beloved team. Coaching and playing for that ravenous, rowdy, team-gear wearing, blue-collar crowd of football fans has got to bring out the best of a coach and his players in many cases.
Finally, there is the organization’s ownership. The Rooney family clearly knows how to run an NFL franchise and has proven it for decades. Perhaps what many consider to be one of the greatest contributions the Rooney family has made to the NFL is the mandatory “Rooney Rule,” in which every NFL team, when hiring for head coaches, general managers, and other leadership roles, must interview women and/or minority candidates.
The Pittsburgh Steelers “talk the talk” and “walk the walk” when it comes to the Rooney Rule. Mike Tomlin is not only one of the most successful NFL coaches in its storied history, but he is also arguably the most successful African-American head coach in the NFL or any other professional sport.
And so fifty-six years later, Tomlin walks off into the sunset having served as only the third Steelers head coach during that time.
In this case, it can certainly be said that stability and continuity breeds winning.
And how!