The Pittsburgh Steelers have been a model organization since Art Rooney hired Chuck Noll to rebuild the Steelers franchise in 1969. This week on Colin Cowherd’s radio show The Herd, he decided to award his Top 10 Best Run organizations in Sports in his Declaration of Excellence episode. I went into the segment not expecting much as Cowherd has been consistently anti-Steelers and is one of the few sports personas who exhibits a west coast bias, so I figured he would rank the Steelers in the lower part of his top 10. I was gob smacked, he listed one NHL team, two MLB teams, three NFL teams and four NBA teams and the Steelers were not on the list.
YouTube: The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Cowherd once again demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding on how to consistently judge and rank sports teams. Four teams from the NBA, it is a fundamental fact that they are bleeding fans. The NBA viewership has been declining for several seasons by traditional measurement. The NHL is fun to watch if you are a hockey fan, but I live two hours from Tampa Bay, the local sports radio does not talk about hockey. Major League Baseball? I love baseball, but realistically outside of the postseason, the ratings are dismal. The NFL is the king of sports in the United States of America and to deny that and not even have the majority of the teams on the list represent the league is foolish.
Cowherd’s three NFL teams which occupy the second, fifth and eighth spots on this so-called list are the Los Angeles Rams at two, the Kansas City Chiefs at five and the Buffalo Bills at eight. I agree that these are well run organizations, but they are not even the best in the NFL. I will let New England Patriots writers complain about their organization being omitted, and as much as I dislike them on the field, there is no denying the Baltimore Ravens belong, and of course, the best run team in all of sports, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Since 1969, the Pittsburgh Steelers have had one owner, six general managers and three head coaches. They are the gold standard for stability in not only sports, but corporate America. The Rooney family is famous for how they support and treat management, coaches, and players in their organization. You can count on one hand and have fingers left over the number of former Steelers who have had bad things to say about the organization over the last 56 seasons of the Super Bowl era.
Cowherd used these criteria for the first NBA team on his list the historic franchise, the Boston Celtics:
“Listen, we got to give the Boston Celtics credit, they were a winning team during a rebuild and when you can rebuild Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens and you're competitive and you're viable usually you got to bottom out get some draft picks the Celtics win (whether) or not. They just hired another great coach, just hiring back-to-back good coaches is really hard in pro sports.”
The Steelers have hired two consecutive Hall of Fame coaches in Noll and Bill Cowher, and I would be shocked if Mike Tomlin does not make it three. The Celtics won an NBA championship in 2008. They returned to the NBA Finals in 2010 and lost to the Los Angeles Lakers, and then 12 seasons later, they returned to the NBA Finals again. Just three seasons later, they won 25 games and were a doormat. Mike Tomlin has never had a losing season in the NFL and the Steelers during the 56-year Super Bowl era have been under .500 nine times and only one time in the 21st century.
I can forgive the Chiefs and Rams statement by Cowherd to recent bias as they have won two of the last three Super Bowls and Andy Reid has been very good for a long time in the NFL. The statement that the Bills are a better run organization than the Steelers is laughable, however. The Bills have had two periods of relevancy in the Super Bowl era, and they are synonymous with losing. The Jim Kelly Bills were a great story and I wanted them to win every one of those Super Bowls, but they didn’t. The Bills disappeared from the playoffs for 17 seasons from 2000 to 2016. Sean McDermott got them back to the playoffs in 2017 where they promptly lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars. They did draft Josh Allen, which has made them relevant for almost half a decade now.
Honestly, a guy like Clownherd should not get to me as a long time Steelers fan because I know, he just will not give the Steelers a fair shake in an evaluation. The Steelers are the models for consistency and winning. They have the second most wins in NFL playoff history, they are tied for the most championships, they lead the way in promoting diversity and opportunity in the NFL and they do it all with class. I guess that doesn’t count for some people.
New Steelers GM Omar Khan celebrates the Super Bowl XLIII victory with Mike Tomlin, Kevin Colbert, and Dan Rooney (photo via diez.hn)
What do you think, Steeler Nation? Are you hopping mad, or did one of the celebratory fireworks go horribly wrong? Hoping you had a safe holiday. Please comment below or on my Twitter @thebubbasq.
