When Bill Cowher stepped down as the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach in 2007, he left behind two cans of IC Light in fridge for his successor, Mike Tomlin, who then held the position for 19 seasons.
Tomlin had previously said that he planned on passing them down as a tradition, which Pat McAfee asked newly-hired Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy about on his namesake show on Friday.
"Bill and Mike have been awesome through this experience, but I think Mike must've drank them," McCarthy said , laughing. "I'm sure Mike and I will catch up down the road here and have a couple ourselves."
Tomlin got to know Pittsburgh pretty well during his tenure, tying Steelers coaching legend Chuck Noll for the franchise's career lead in regular-season wins.
"What a gesture," Tomlin said of Cowher's gifts during an appearance on McAfee's show in September 2021. "Some of my best friends in college were Pittsburgh boys. Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair-type guys. And so I know what IC Light is and what that means. And so even not being from here, I really appreciated that. … I decided that I would never drink it and I would leave it for the next man.
"Now, at the time, I didn't realize, I didn't envision that those cans would be 15 years old and still sitting there. And so it's kind of a ceremonial thing now, but those are my intentions."
McAfee joked about the beers, which were obviously past their expiration by then.
"Those beers are gonna be terrible," McAfee said. "I'm just assuming that whoever you hand those to, if they're a booze hound, they might drink those and puke on their first day on the job."
Just one question remains. Where'd those beers go?
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now : Steelers HC Mike McCarthy Reveals Fate of Bill Cowher's Legendary Beers
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