The Pittsburgh Steelers are fortunate to have an abundance of examples of greatness, from players like Joe Greene to executives like Kevin Colbert. At times those sectors converge, and Colbert benefited from that during his years in the front office.
He brought it up recently on the Forever True to Thee podcast, discussing greatness in Pittsburgh sports. The conversation centered on the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby, and Colbert’s thoughts drifted to another. The topic: what is greatness?
“Joe Greene taught me that. Joe Greene was on our scouting staff after he retired and coaching. He said, ‘You want to be great, do it again’”, he said. In other words, greatness isn’t a moment or a flash in the pan. Greatness is reliable, sustained success.
Greene personified that as a player. Everybody cites him as the player who changed the Steelers’ culture as their first-round pick in 1969. They won four Super Bowls with him, and he remains their only player to win Defensive Player of the Year twice. Granted, T.J. Watt should have two or three of them, but I digress.
After a 13-year playing career, Greene joined the Steelers’ coaching staff in 1987. He continued to coach, including for other organizations, until 2003 before returning to the organization. As a member of the front office, he added two more Super Bowl rings to his resume in 2005 and 2008.
Though he’s now retired, he remains a presence within the Steelers organization. He personally called Cameron Heyward recently when the latter received the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award. Greene won the award himself, the first with the Steelers, and his example influenced Heyward and others.
Every player who comes into that building and actually cares about history holds himself up to the Joe Greene standard. So do the coaches. So do the scouts, and the front office. Greatness is doing something spectacular that you can repeat. It’s not a fluke.
The Steelers of the 1970s were anything but a fluke. They dominated the middle and latter parts of the decade, the first true dynasty of the Super Bowl era. And all of that started with Greene, who sparked a shift in the team’s culture. He helped convey new head coach Chuck Noll’s philosophy and attitude, which largely he shared.
There’s a reason that Colbert said in that same interview he only exited two of his 22 seasons in Pittsburgh satisfied. Those are the two seasons in which they won the Super Bowl. The other 20 years, regardless of expectations, are disappointments.
All of this ties into the concept of “The Standard”. The standard is repeated, sustained success. It’s an impossible aspiration, but it sets the level of expectation. If you set a goal to reach the playoffs and you exit in the first round, you can grow satisfied. If your goal is consistently the Super Bowl and you lose in the conference finals, you’re hungry.
