Leave it to the Pittsburgh Steelers to be trailblazers.

When the Rooney family hired Mike Tomlin, a virtual unknown at the time, to take over for the departing BillCowher, little did they know they would be starting a league-wide trend.

Younger is better.

Two years after the Rooneys tapped Tomlin as their third coach since we landed on the moon, Tomlin is poised to become the youngest coach to win a Super Bowl.

The NFLis an imitation league. It has been for years.

Bill Walsh came up with the west coast offense in the 1980s. Some 30 years later, a good chunk of the league throws 5-yard slants as the basis of their offensive attack.

Monte Kiffin's Tampa 2 has been copied more than Albert Einstein's physics homework.

Even touchdown dances are copied. Rumor has it Deion Sanders gets a royalty check every time someone high-steps into the end zone with his hand tucked behind his helmet.

It's no wonder the league is copying the Steelers.

It's hard not to like Tomlin. He commands attention. He looks like someone you could hang out with in your basement, playing pool or foosball or darts with.

Even in that Michelin Man coat, Tomlin looks like one cool dude.

The rest of the league wants cool, young hipsters now.

The Denver Broncos hired JoshMcDaniels, who is 32. The Detroit Lions hired Jim Schwartz to clean up that mess.

And Tampa Bay jettisoned Jon Gruden, who's scowl was growing as old as his quarterbacks, for 32-year-old Raheem Morris.

The Bucs' new coach looks like he just graduated from high school and won a Who Wants to be an NFL Head Coach contest.

If he walked into a bar, he'd get carded.

Morris is trying to be like Tomlin. He's trying to talk like him and act like him, but it ain't working.

Instead, he sounds like the George W. Bush of NFL coaches.

Here's some example:

"We're going to score touchdowns. That's what we are going to do."

Yup. I think that is on Page 1 of the coaching handbook.

"Our philosophy is our core beliefs; it's our fundamentals and styles of attack. That's who we are."

What?

What Tampa Bay wanted is what every team in the league seems to want now.

Youth.

Heck, even the players are trying to slip back in time.

Maybe I'm reading my wife's InTouch magazine a little too much, but doesn't it look like Kurt Warner got a facelift?

He looks 10 years younger. Perhaps he is just using that skin cream that Tom Cruise is using to give his face that youthful glow again.

Who knows where this trend will go?

Perhaps if Tim Tebow can't make it as a quarterbackin the league when he graduates next spring, he'll be the next coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.