After taking a long winter’s nap from eating your bodyweight in cookies, there are few things better than a Christmas Day football game.
But while we watch with excitement, the players are forced to be away from their families during one of the family-centered holidays.
Bill Cowher, the former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, was on CBS Mornings and talked with Nate Burleson and Gayle King about how the team handled Christmas Day games when he was in charge.
“We’re in Appleton, Wisconsin, getting ready to play the Green Bay Packers and we were the only ones in the hotel,” Cowher told Burleson and King. “So Dick LeBeau would come up and recite Clement Clark Moore’s ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
LeBeau’s reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas has become that of legend within Steelers lore over the years. What few people know is that the former defensive coordinator didn’t just read it to the players, he performed it.
“He sets the scene with a whole page that he memorized and wrote to set the scene for the poem,” former Steelers defensive end Aaron Smith recalled to Steelers Depot’s Scott Brown. “It’s crazy, you’ve got the alphas of the alphas and you’re in a meeting with a bunch of alpha males that play professional football, which is a violent game, and this is the night before a game.
“That mindset is there and you get this guy who stands up there and starts this poem the night before a game but he’s so animated and so into it. He’s in full-on character. If you look around the room, you’ve got nothing but alpha males and they’re like little kids, the look in their eyes. You feel like you’re a kid in kindergarten watching some guy perform a scene in front of you and you’re just captivated by it.”
For the 13 years LeBeau was in Pittsburgh, he continued the tradition started within his own family, and while it may seem that act may grow old over time, former Steelers assistant head coach John Mitchell assured Brown it did not.
“You would think guys who had been here six, seven years would get tired of it,” said former Steelers assistant head coach John Mitchell. “But when December came, every day they would come in and tease Dick, ‘Hey, get your act together. We’re looking forward to The Night Before Christmas.”
Cowher explained that it was the team’s way of separating the game from life and focusing on what was important to them: family and each other.
For those keeping score at home, Cowher did mention that the Steelers won that game, gifting the city of Pittsburgh one last present.
