Best coach to never win a championship

This past week I finally got the dreaded "monkey off my back" and joined the names of Lombardi, Shula, and Noll.....after 11 long years, I finally won my first championship -- fantasy football league championship that is....

After winning the title, I came to ponder who is currently the best head coach in sports to not win a championship.....I flipped through the college ranks, baseball, and basketball and did not come up with a top name.....(Texas’ Mack Brown shed that horrible monkey last night)....

However, the NFL had three coaches who have yet to "win it all".....they are Marty Schottenheimer, Tony Dungy, and Bill Cowher.....but which of these three truly deserves to finally win a Super Bowl....let’s take a deeper look....

Poor Tony Dungy got robbed when he was the head man at Tampa Bay.....after bringing this once putrid franchise to respectability and then to the brink of a championship, owner Malcolm Glazer fired Dungy.....as Dungy headed off to Indianapolis, ole’ smiley face Jon Gruden swooped into Tampa and won the Super Bowl in his first year.....Dungy has some impressive numbers during his 10 years as a head coach....he is 102-58 but a sub-par 5-7 mark in the playoffs including an 0-2 record in League Championship games.....despite getting jobbed in Tampa, Dungy misses the mark as "the best coach to never win a title"...

Browns fans love to take cheap shots at Marty Schottenheimer because he could never get them to the Super Bowl in the 1980s.....but Marty has been the best coach the Browns have ever had whose last name is not Brown.....after leaving Cleveland, Marty made stops in Kansas City, Washington, and now San Diego.....he has the most wins of any current head coaches with a 186-124-1 record.....but much like Dungy, Marty is only 5-12 in the playoffs including an 0-3 mark in League Championship games....Marty truly deserves a title, but somehow it will not happen for him -- partly because of his conservative playcalling late in big games.... but one day, when he finally dies, hopefully Marty gets to coach in a "big game" up there, but hopefully he remembers not to play the prevent defense with less than 3 minutes left in the game....

That brings up "The Jaw".....Bill Cowher is truly an incredible coach and not fully appreciated by the football world.....since becoming the Steelers head coach in 1992, Cowher’s teams have posted a 141-82-1 mark which is the best in the NFL over that timespan.....as much as Browns fans hate him, each and every Browns fan wishes Cowher was the head coach of the brown and orange....unlike Dungy and Marty, Cowher has an 8-9 playoff record including one Super Bowl appearance.....at least he has felt what it is like to coach in a Super Bowl.....but there should have been more than just one appearance.....five times the Steelers hosted the AFC title game, only to have their heart stomped on four out of those five times.....

Like I said earlier, all three of these coaches deserve to win a Super Bowl.....but I believe Bill Cowher deserves it a tad more because of one simple stat that I was unaware of until just a few weeks ago....since taking over in Pittsburgh, Cowher has a record of 100-1-1 whenever his team gets at least at 10 point lead during the course of a game.....

Think about it, once the Steelers get a 10 point or more lead at any time during the game, they have 100 of those 102 games.....that is truly astonishing and just shows Cowher’s greatness.....also, unlike Dungy and Marty, Cowher has been with the Steelers his entire career.....he is the face (and jaw) of the Pittsburgh Steelers.....

So in the end, I believe that Bill Cowher is the best head coach in sports to not win a championship.....sorry Browns fans, but even you have to take off those dawg masks and acknowledge Cowher.....