Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach and CBS NFL analyst Bill Cowher (Photo: USA TODAY Sports Images)

In anticipation of National Signing Day 2016, USA TODAY High School Sports connected with current and former NFL players to get their memories of National Signing Day and their collegiate decision. Signing Day Memories are accounts of their choices and high school careers, in their own words. 

Bill Cowher will always be known for the scowl, the franchise’s Super Bowl XL title and the sheer intensity he seemed to embody perfectly on the sideline. Now that he’s moved on to the television studio for CBS Sports, Cowher is paid to reminisce about his halcyon days on the sidelines while reflecting on today’s NFL. Of course, long before any of his well-known glory, Cowher was a three-sport star — football, basketball and track — for Carlynton High in suburban Pittsburgh, where he was recruited by North Carolina State.

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Here are Coach Cowher’s memories of his own recruiting and National Signing Day, or what passed for it in 1975.

“I grew up in a suburban area, and there wasn’t any recruiting. It was about developing. The recruiting you did was recruiting kids to come out and play football instead of wrestling. I actually played tennis my senior year because I got recruited by the tennis coach. You were locked into the school you were going to, and that’s the way it was in college, too.

“I went to North Carolina State when Lou Holtz was the coach. He had kids from Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we had closer to 17 or 19 kids. Lou went to Miami of Ohio so he had some Ohio roots and he could recruit kids from the North and the Midwest like me. It was like a Northern school in the South. I grew up in the public schools and we had a lot of kids who went on to play Division I football.

“I think even in high school, my senior year we finished up the season with 24 kids on the team and we all played both ways. We were very close and some of those bonds were there today. It gave us an identity, a bond and a friendship, and we still go back and talk about certain games 40 years later. In Western Pennsylvania particularly, you kind of represent a community. When you’re playing on Friday night or Saturday afternoon, there’s a pride that comes every time you step on that field.”