Suddenly, I’m rooting for new Steelers coach Mike McCarthy, and I mean really rooting for him.
I would have rooted for him anyway as a Steelers fan old enough to rattle off names like Terry Hanratty and Frenchy Fuqua. But I’m really rooting for him now because I want to see a lot of people proven wrong.
Those would be people who lambasted the choice because of McCarthy’s age.
As every Steelers fan surely knows by now, the newly hired Steelers coach is 62. This despite the fact that Chuck Noll was hired at 37, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin both at 34.
Jeez — 62! What in the name of Three Rivers are we doing?!
Full disclosure: I’m 59, now working in my third career, one that I began just last year. So yes, that’s a big reason why the focus on McCarthy’s age has bothered me since he was unexpectedly hired on Saturday.
But another big reason is the reaction to the hire has exposed an uncomfortable truth, not just in Steelerdom, but in all of sports and the world around us. That is, a lot of people still think age matters, and they’ll say it or post it openly.
I saw posts calling McCarthy a “dinosaur,” calling the Steelers “geriatric central” and “one cheeseburger away from needing another replacement.”
Sigh.
So there’s a larger issue at play here, one that we’re still struggling with as American sports fans and most likely Americans in general: discrimination based on someone’s age. Clearly, it’s real.
And it’s real even though it’s wrong, but that’s always been the case with discrimination, whether based on someone’s race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or yes — age.
All of which, by the way, are illegal in the workforce. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, on its webpage, highlights the Age Discrimination in Employment Act which “involves treating an applicant or employee less favorably because of his or her age.”
That’s why, if the Steelers had chosen to hire a younger coach over McCarthy, we would not have heard team president Art Rooney II or general manager Omar Khan take to the podium and say McCarthy was “too old.” They know better.
Of course, it’s fair to criticize the McCarthy hire. Fair to call it bland or uninspired. Fair to call him a retread with a track record as a head coach somewhere in the middling range.
For me, in fact, McCarthy was not a top choice. I was also intrigued by bright, up-and-coming coaches such as Rams assistants Chris Shula and Nate Scheelhaase and fully aware that they would have fit the same mold as the last three Steelers coaching hires.
But I never thought 62 was “too old.”
I think it’s also wrong to assume someone can’t think innovatively or progressively because of their age, which has been one of the allegations levelled by irate Steelers fans since Saturday. In McCarthy’s case, he’s been away from the game for a year and surely has had time to observe and reflect, which can inspire innovation.
Secondly, there really is value in experience and wisdom — and what does that come with? Age.
There does come a time when each of us should leave the workforce, but that time varies based on our individual health. For most of us, it’s not 62.
Another reason this matters beyond football — and yes, even as a western Pennsylvania native, I have to admit that some things are more important than football — is our economy is changing. The job landscape is changing because of factors such as the growth of AI, and at a time when Social Security and health care costs aren’t keeping pace with the cost of living. Older people are staying in the workforce longer and even changing jobs later in life.
I’m one of them. In certain ways, McCarthy’s situation is different from mine — different fields, different levels of public exposure. But we were both born in the years before the first Super Bowl, and that alone doesn’t mean he can’t lead the Steelers to one more.
We might be dinosaurs, but as a friend told me recently, “Dinosaurs could still kill.”
Richard Fellinger is an Altoona-based author.