PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh Steelers have had their share of injuries this season, but few have created more concern among the team's Western Pennsylvania fan base than the health of the 75-year-old broadcaster who is in his third decade as the irascible and raspy radio voice of the franchise.
Myron Cope was back in the Steelers' radio booth Sunday in Cincinnati after missing the previous week's game in Cleveland recovering from a nasty fall that apparently knocked him so silly, he didn't even know he'd been hurt. It happened while Cope was working out the night before the Steelers ended the New England Patriots' NFL-record winning streak at 21 games.
COPE Attempted to live up to on-air vow that he'd swim the Monongahela River
(Gabor Degre, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - AP)
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"After stretching, I got up and I must have toppled over backward and hit the back of my head on the corner of a table," said Cope, who also missed three preseason games recovering from surgery to remove cancerous growths from his throat. "I guess I was KO'd. But I got up, went to bed, and the next morning I got up at 9:15. I never sleep that late; hell, I'm usually at the stadium at 9:30."
Cope got to Heinz Field for the kickoff, though he was unusually subdued in the early stages of the broadcast. "I was trying to think of something to say and I couldn't," he said. "That's definitely a first for me."
Later in the first half, one of his broadcasting partners, former Steelers lineman Tunch Ilkin, noticed a deep gash and a large bump on the back of Cope's head and suggested that perhaps that had something to do with his unusual silence. An ambulance was summoned, and Cope spent the next several days in the hospital recovering from a concussion.
News of his hospitalization was a big story in Pittsburgh, even on the night when the Steelers upset the Patriots, and he was flooded with calls and letters from fans.
"Myron Cope is the Pittsburgh Steelers," said team owner Dan Rooney.
Cope became synonymous with the team when Rooney's father, Art, convinced by Ed Kiely, a longtime team executive, to give Cope a shot when the Steelers switched stations in the early 1970s.
He was hired in spite of a thick Pittsburgh accent (it's "Stillers," not Steelers) and a voice that makes sandpaper seem like Charmin.The "Stillers" gave him a shot, and Cope has rarely been silent ever since.
"I told 'em at the time I didn't know how to be a color analyst," said Cope, who started his career as a newspaperman and became a nationally known author and frequent contributor to publications like Sports Illustrated and the Saturday Evening Post, among many others. "But they said, 'You know the team, you hang around all the time.' I said I would try it. I told them if they're playing well, I'll be thrilled on the air. But if they're stinking it up, I'm gonna say they're stinking it up. Not once have they ever said one word about anything I've ever said on the air."
And the things he's said on the air . . .
Late in the 1976 season, the Oakland Raiders beat the Cincinnati Bengals and the Steelers were able to sneak into the playoffs. Cope had vowed on the air that he would swim the Monongahela River if that happened, and made good -- sort of. He put on a wetsuit and dived in, but soon had to be pulled from the polluted water. He vomited for two hours when he got home.
"Even in a river," he said at the time, "I could not keep my mouth shut."
All those yellow cloths that will be waving from the stands at Heinz Field on Sunday were also Cope's creation. The "terrible towel" was launched toward the end of the 1975 season when a radio station executive thought it would get the fans more involved when the team started the playoffs.
