DETROIT — Bill Cowher's jutting jaw is one of the NFL's most recognizable sights. So is his sneer, his flying spittle and that nasty scowl that can send the biggest and toughest player scrambling to the end of the bench to avoid him.

Something else became familiar about the NFL's longest-tenured coach: the inability to win big games.

Maybe that's why the man known as the Jaw underwent a personality change to help the Pittsburgh Steelers win one for the thumb, a 21-10 win over Seattle on Sunday that gave the franchise the fifth Super Bowl title it has sought for more than a quarter-century.

"This may not hit me for a couple of days," said Cowher, who broke into tears in the closing seconds of the Steelers' first Super Bowl victory since January 1980.

Maybe it's because he's spent 14 years chasing it.

To win this title, Cowher no longer was conservative ol' Bill in the big games — the coach who, down two touchdowns to the Patriots in the fourth quarter of the AFC championship last season, went for a field goal.

Replacing him was a coach who twice went for it on fourth-and-short situations in the playoffs, who told his offensive coordinator to regularly reach into his gadget bag — such as receiver Antwaan Randle El's Super Bowl-clinching TD pass to Hines Ward.

Out went the coach whose modus operandi for years was to run, run, run the ball and never turn it over to his quarterback. Replacing him was the coach who handed the ball to 23-year-old Ben Roethlisberger before the playoffs and said, "We'll go as far as he takes us."

And that was to a Super Bowl championship — is that good enough?

For all his changes, though, Cowher is being credited for keeping his team together by staying the same even when the Steelers were 7-5 in December and one more loss away from missing the playoffs, much less sweeping them.

"We are a tough-minded, physical, hard-nosed team, and I think we reflect our coach's character," Jerome Bettis said. "That's why we're consistent year in and year out."

Wearing their lucky white road uniforms Sunday night even though they were designated as the home team, the Steelers finished off their unprecedented sweep of the top three seeded teams in the AFC — on the road, no less — and the top-seeded team in the NFC.

And the coach who got so much grief for being outcoached twice in AFC title games by the Patriots' Bill Belichick, for not having his teams prepared or inspired for title games clearly did the best coaching job of his career under the toughest circumstances.

And Cowher did so by invoking such diverse figures as Christopher Columbus and Bettis.

When the Steelers were 7-5, Cowher stood up at a team meeting and told his players that the journey looked hard and tough but could be done.

He cited Columbus' unknown journey to a new world in 1492, and how his players could chart a path never accomplished by an NFL team — a unique pep-talk blend of American history and NFL history. No team had won three road playoff games and the Super Bowl, much less the four games before them just to reach the playoffs.

"Guys kind of liked that," Cowher said. "There's a lot of people telling you that you can't do it, but that doesn't mean you don't go try. I told our guys that history is not going to determine our fate, but we could determine history."

Last month, Cowher's players began talking openly of winning a championship not just for The Bus, but for a coach who is No. 14 in NFL career victories but had been 1-5 in championship games before this season.

"This one will always be remembered," linebacker Joey Porter said. "It's never been done before what we did. We kept being told we couldn't do this, and that's what we needed."

By letting Big Ben take him to a Super Bowl, Cowher no longer faces unenviable comparisons to Chuck Noll, his predecessor who won those four Super Bowls — the first one in the 1974 season by putting the ball in the hands of a young quarterback named Bradshaw.

Just as Cowher told his players to learn from history, apparently he did, too.

"We wiped the slate clean. Each week was a unique set of circumstances," Cowher said. "We gained some confidence and we started to have a pretty good team."

Now, the Steelers have their fifth title, but their first under Cowher. That's one reason why owner Dan Rooney plans to display this Lombardi Trophy apart from the other four.

"It is going to be by itself," he said.

But even after winning the title that has long eluded him, Cowher isn't done yet with games. On Monday night, he plans to be in North Allegheny High School's gym to watch daughters Lauren and Lindsay play basketball for Fox Chapel.

Both got big hugs Sunday night, as did wife Kaye and daughter Meagan, a sophomore star at Princeton.

"I can't wait," Cowher said of watching his daughters' game.

Especially since he's waited so long for this.