Remembering Bruce Arians’ proudest coaching moment ahead of his Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Super Bowl

Bruce Arians’ proudest coaching moment was the opening act to a Beach Boys concert.

The Tampa Bay head coach has won two Lombardi trophies — both as a Pittsburgh Steelers assistant — and is hoping to add one more as his Buccaneers prepare for Super Bowl LV on Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs. But neither of those titles usurped a Temple win against Pitt in 1984 with him as the Owls’ coach.

Temple celebrated its first win against Pitt in more than four decades in front of a Veterans Stadium crowd filled with unsuspecting Beach Boys fans waiting for the game to end so the concert could start. It was Sept. 22, 1984.

“At least half the fans that were there were absolutely there to see the Beach Boys,” said running back Paul Palmer, the 1986 Heisman Trophy runner-up. “Like, ‘I went to a Beach Boys concert and, oh my God, a football game broke out.’ ”

Arians, a 68-year-old Paterson, N.J., native, got his first shot as a head coach with Temple in 1983 when he was 31. He went 27-39 during his six years and was eventually fired, but the impact that time had on him is a lasting one.

“The Temple days are still my fondest memories,” Arians said. “Beating Pitt is the No. 1 win in my career. When we beat Pitt for the first time in 45 years, it ranks above the Super Bowl trophies I have in my house. The players that helped do that, they’re lifetime friends. I wasn’t much older than them at the time, so it’s hard to see them now being 55, 60 years old.”

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Arians, who spent part of his childhood in York, Pa., ushered in an era when Temple finally bested one of its biggest cross-state rivals with some regularity.

The team’s first win against the Panthers came in 1984, a 13-12 game won on a field goal byJim Cooper. Cooper, one of the last kickers in the NCAA to use the straight-on style, also hit a 51-yarder that afternoon using a heavily taped foot and a squared-off shoe.

“Next to being there watching my children be born or getting married, that’s probably the best day of my life,” Cooper said. “To experience something like that, I think that’s the first time I ever cried with happiness. The overwhelming emotion, I don’t think there was a dry eye in our entire locker room.”

Palmer was inducted into the Temple Hall of Fame in 2000 after rushing for 4,895 yards and 39 touchdowns from 1983-86, and into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2018. He said beating Pitt was a point of emphasis from the start with Arians.

“When Coach first came here, it was a big deal for him to beat Pitt,” he said. “Him being a Pennsylvania guy and kind of being in between Pittsburgh and Philly, it was a pretty big deal to take his team and to have his team at Vet Stadium. … With his little ragtag Temple squad, to go out there and beat them. I’ve heard that myself, that it was his biggest joy, beating Pitt.”

Temple’s only win against a ranked opponent during Arians’ tenure also came against the Panthers, in 1987. The Owls were 20-point underdogs on the road but beat No. 16 Pitt, 24-21, in a comeback effort.

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Considering the game happened more than two decades ago, it should come as no surprise that the memories can be a little fuzzy. But for defensive back Joe Greenwood, the weather that day still resonates, as well as Arians’ halftime speech when the Owls finished the second quarter trailing 14-3.

“We were down, it was torrential downpours, I remember. It was a monsoon,” Greenwood said. “Pitt was running the ball pretty good on us and he just said, ‘This is our kind of game. We’re Temple tough. We need to come out in the second half and take it to their [butts].”

The Panthers were led by 5-foot-11, 260-pound running back Craig “Ironhead” Heyward that season. Heyward, the father of Steelers All-Pro defensive tackle Cameron Heyward, was an eventual first-round pick who went on to have a decade-long NFL career.

Rich Drayton, a freshman receiver that season, remembers one of his teammates, Gary Mobley, wrestling the elder Heyward to the ground even though the running back had about 100 pounds on the skinny defensive back.

“I remember it was a very physical game,” Drayton said. “You know how it is when one team thinks they’re gonna beat the other team, but then they get punched in the mouth and it’s like ‘Oh, my God, these dudes came to play?’ That’s the feeling that I got.”

After his run with the Owls, it took 25 seasons for Arians to get another opportunity at a head-coaching role. Arians took over as the Indianapolis Colts’ interim head coach in 2012 when head coach Chuck Pagano had to take leave while he battled leukemia. The following offseason, he was hired as the Arizona Cardinals’ head coach.

He got the Bucs’ job in 2019, and the influence his Temple days had on him is apparent in the makeup of his staff. Tampa Bay has seven assistant coaches with a connection to Arians’ time at Temple, with four former players (Todd Bowles, Keith Armstrong, Todd McNair, and Kevin Ross), two former coaches (Nick Rapone and Clyde Christensen), and a former student in Lori Locust.

McNair, a running back for the Owls from 1985-88 and now the Bucs’ running backs coach, said Arians has fostered a family aspect among the Temple alumni in the Tampa Bay organization.

“He’s a true father figure for a lot of the core of us that played for him,” McNair said. “He’s the epitome of tough love and the most loyal guy you’ll ever meet. The most loyal person I’ve ever met in my life.”

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Drayton, who is Central High’s football coach, said it’s no coincidence so many coaches have come out of Arians’ time

“It’s Temple South down there,” Drayton said. “It’s a testament to Coach being loyal and a testament to the people from Temple. Everybody he touched, they want to do everything they can to help Coach be successful on the field, and any charity that he does, everyone wants him to be successful because he was so good to us. It’s just mutual admiration.”

For Sunday’s game, Palmer said he will be watching with bated breath, pulling for his former coaches and teammates.

“If we win — if the Temple Bucs win, I’m sure there’s going to be some tears shed, man,” Palmer said. “It’s been a long ride. BA has a lot of the guys that have been with me. … We’re really proud, man. It’s such a prideful thing. I know sometimes pride isn’t a good thing, but in this case, it’s a very good thing, to tell people that you shared the locker room with these people.”