When Billy Cowher's Pre-Game Speech Brought Down Pittsburgh

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© Tim Peeler, 2017

Former NC State linebacker and ex-Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher.

Bill Cowher is a Pittsburgh hero, a hometown boy who wandered away for college and then returned to lead the local team to a Super Bowl championship.

It’s inconceivable that Cowher would ever say something negative about the town where he grew up or any of its institutions.

Except…

On Dec. 23, 1978, just before Cowher played in the final game of his NC State football career, he stood up in the locker room of Orlando Stadium to let the 16th-ranked Pittsburgh Panthers absolutely have it in a profanity-laced pregame speech before the 33rd Tangerine Bowl that obviously had an impact on the unranked Wolfpack.

Maybe the senior linebacker was remembering how his hometown school never offered him a scholarship.

Maybe he believed the newspaper report from earlier in the week that said Pittsburgh’s players forced the patients at an Orlando-area children’s hospital to trade their Wolfpack souvenirs for Panthers memorabilia during a bowl-week visit. Pitt spent much of the week before the game playing in Orlando, going to Disney World, Sea World and competing in a tug-of-war contest with an elephant at Ringling’s Circus World facility.

Maybe he just didn’t like any of coach Jackie Sherrill’s players, which included defensive tackle Hugh Green, quarterback Rick Trocano and running back Freddy Jacobs, who were either members of or were recruited immediately following the Panthers’ national championship of 1976 with Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Tony Dorsett.

Or maybe he was just taking advantage of the dissension on the Pitt coaching staff. Linebackers coach Jimmy Johnson had been hired as the head coach of Oklahoma State after the regular season but had been allowed to stay for the bowl game, along with some other coaches he was taking with him. (Future Pitt head coaches Dave Wannstedt and Foge Fazio were also part of the Pitt staff.)

Whatever his motivation, Cowher and his teammates were certainly fired up, or in the words of the Orlando Sentinel the next day “aroused.”

“I'd be happy to repeat [the speech],'' Cowher said in a telephone interview in 2001, when he was still the head coach of the Steelers and I was still reporting for the Greensboro News & Record, “but I don’t think you could print any of it. It was one of those things that came from emotion. It was my last game as a senior and we were playing Pittsburgh, which is where I am from.

“It got pretty emotional.”

Cowher grew up in the Pittsburgh-adjacent borough of Crafton, only a few miles west of downtown. He had hoped he would be recruited to play for the Panthers, but never received a scholarship offer from Hall of Fame coach Johnny Majors or any member of his staff.

Instead, Cowher came south as part of Lou Holtz’s final recruiting class, which also included another linebacker, Kyle Wescoe of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a quarterback, Kevin Scanlon, who had broken all of Joe Namath’s passing records at Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, High School.

(Scanlon played in only one game in two seasons with the Wolfpack, as the backup to Johnny Evans, and was later re-recruited by Holtz to play at Arkansas, where he was the 1979 Southwest Conference Player of the Year after leading the league in total offense and passing accuracy and taking the Razorbacks to the 1980 Sugar Bowl.)

There were also three running backs from North Carolina in that class, a tailback from Greensboro’s Ragsdale High School who was considered the top recruit in the state, Rickey Adams; Nebo-native Scott Wade; and an undersized scatback from High Point’s Andrews High School, Ted Brown.

Cowher and Wescoe played side-by-side their entire careers, and were known as the emotional leaders on defenses that included stars like Woodrow Wilson, Donnie LeGrande, Simon Gupton and Bubba Green. That group was led by another Pennsylvania native, linebackers coach Chuck Amato, who never let Cowher and Wescoe forget the snub of their hometown team, especially when the Wolfpack was invited to face the No. 16 Panthers that December afternoon in Orlando.

As good as his performance was on the field that afternoon—unranked State upset Pitt 30-17 in a totally dominant performance—his pregame speech is the memory that has lasted a lifetime for his teammates.

“It was completely X-rated,” Amato said. “But it was awfully good.”

Said former senior associate athletics director David Horning, who was a sophomore defensive end on that team: "His speech brought out the best in us all that day."

Cowher didn’t let the hyper-extended elbow he suffered in the first quarter of the game dampen his emotions. Mainly because he was not about to lose to another team from his home state in his final season. The Wolfpack had lost to Penn State, 19-10, in early November.

“No way he was coming out,” Amato said.

Neither was Brown, who was knocked out of the game twice, once after he ran into a truck on the sidelines that held a television camera platform and hurt his wrist. That didn’t keep the All-American running back, who had finished fifth in Heisman voting that season, from rushing for 120 yards on 28 carries, postseason stats that are not included in his 4,602 career rushing yards. (None of his bowl stats are.)

To this day, Cowher blames his minor knee injury on Pittsburgh tackle Russ Grimm, who was later a member of his Steelers’ coaching staff.

“He always said that he wasn’t playing offense at the time,” Cowher said, “but I still think it was him.”

The Wolfpack jumped out to a 17-0 lead before halftime, forcing Pitt quarterbacks Trocano and Jeff Delaney to throw 48 times in the game. State’s swarming defense intercepted four of those, including one by Mike Nall that he returned 66 yards for a touchdown.

Tiny State placekicker Nathan Ritter, who had led all NCAA kickers in field goal accuracy that season, booted three more in the game, including a Tangerine-record 51-yarder.

Things were so bad for the Panthers, according to stories that were circulated years after the game, Sherrill fired Johnson and the members considering going with him to Stillwater during halftime.

“Our defense played an emotional football game,” said Wolfpack head coach Bo Rein said after the game. “They were quicker and stronger, and gave us big plays when we needed them. Never underestimate emotions in a football game.

“Without that ingredient, these were two evenly matched teams.”

Fueled by Cowher’s emotions, the upset victory propelled the Wolfpack to a No. 18 finish in the final Associated Press poll of the season, a satisfying accomplishment for the third-year head coach and his staff who led the Wolfpack to the 1979 ACC title.

“Pitt was very good that year,'' Amato said. ""We weren't supposed to have a chance.''

The game featured not only Brown, but also two future Outland Trophy winners in Pitt's Mark May and N.C. State's Jim Ritcher and legendary Pitt defensive end Green, who finished second in the Heisman voting of 1980, his senior year.

“What I remember most about that game is that we won and I always thought it was fitting that I was able to play my last college football game against Pitt,” said Cowher, whose 195 tackles that season still stands as a single-season school record. “That was a special win.”