No Axes to Grind? Don't Believe It

TAMPA, Fla. -- Ever see so many robots, automatons and, OK, fibbers? This is the first Broken Family Super Bowl, featuring the criss-crossing career dramas of Ken Whisenhunt, Mike Tomlin, Ben Roethlisberger, Russ Grimm and the front offices of the Arizona Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers. Yet with painstaking adamance, all are claiming -- to a man, to an exclamation point, to a stretch of every muscle in the body -- not to harbor even slight personal motives in settling professional scores Sunday.

Would it be mean to say I don't believe them?

No, Whisenhunt insists, it doesn't bother him that he wasn't the in-house favorite to replace Bill Cowher in Pittsburgh two years ago, prompting him to flee the Steelers for the head-coaching position in Arizona. "Why would I have hard feelings?" he says. "I don't have any sting of disappointment with that. Everything said about the heir apparent to Coach Cowher was not anything that involved me. That was other people speculating. I was very honored to have coached for that organization and to have interviewed for the head coaching job there.''

Is it me, or is Coach Whis crossing his fingers behind his back while stomping a Terrible Towel?

And no, Tomlin argues, he isn't fazed by the seeming pressure to beat the coach whom his Steelers bosses rejected in the process of hiring him. "It really is irrelevant,'' says Tomlin, whose exemplary work so far justifies the Rooney family's decision to bypass Whisenhunt and Grimm, another rejected Steelers assistant/candidate who joined Whisenhunt -- are you following me here? -- in Arizona. "If it's relevant for anyone, it's probably relevant for them. Me, I'm just glad that I have this opportunity. All of these things are nice to talk about, but none of those things, in my opinion, will determine the outcome of the football game. The play of the men on the field will do that.''

Oh, and Tomlin hasn't thought about the reception in Pittsburgh if he lets Whisenhunt and Grimm, part of the backbone behind a Super Bowl title in 2006, outcoach him and beat him?

And no, Roethlisberger maintains, he didn't really mean it when he ripped Whisenhunt after his departure as offensive coordinator, when he said the offense was too predictable in their final season together and that Whisenhunt made unfair comments about the quarterback after his motorcycle accident. "We are better than straight,'' Roethlisberger was saying Monday. "People think we haven't talked and that we have this huge rift between us, but unless they've checked our phone records, people don't know how much we've talked. We text message after games: 'Good job.' I look forward to hopefully seeing him this week and getting to talk to him. But people make way too big of a deal. They'll probably continue to do it, but it's really true that there is nothing (bad) between us.''

The gentlemen doth protest too much, don't you think?

I've yet to run across any rejected party in any business who isn't jacked to prove a rejector wrong. Whisenhunt and Grimm surely are no different. They might not be losing sleep, but the chance to one-up their old employers on the grandest stage is a compelling storyline. While it's true Whisenhunt actually accepted the Arizona position before Tomlin was named in Pittsburgh, it was clear during the interview process that the ruling Rooneys, Dan and Art II, were enamored of Tomlin. In retrospect, it was a stroke of brilliance. Tomlin has been a remarkably cohesive fit, with his swagger and disciplinary hold on his players at a tender 36 proving that Dan Rooney -- who also hired Cowher and Chuck Noll -- has the best eye for coaching talent in pro sports. That said, you might contend Whisenhunt has done an even better job, overhauling the gloomy, defeatist culture of the sad-sack Cardinals and pointing them to the NFL title game for the first time in 61 years. For that matter, he wasn't even the first in-house choice of the Rooneys, who preferred Grimm until they were wowed by Tomlin in his formal interview.

I find it hard to believe, for instance, that there isn't some level of tension between Whisenhunt and Roethlisberger, despite their text messaging. It was Ben who fanned the flames last season when he avoided Whisenhunt before and after the Cardinals beat the Steelers. He was bruised by Whisenhunt's assessment of the QB after accepting the Arizona job, when he said, "I just saw physically in the pocket there were some things you could sense where he wasn't as confident as the year before. A lot of that, I think, was because of recovering from the injuries.''

Roethlisberger fired back at the time. "I don't agree with Whis. There were a lot of things I didn't agree with Whis about, and that's another one,'' he told the Pittsburgh media. "Coach Cowher always came to me and asked me how I felt, and I was always 100 percent honest with him. I was always honest with the doctors, I don't think anything was rushed. I think I just didn't play well. I had a bad year. I'm sure Whis had a bad year once in his career." Later, in a national publication, Ben blamed Whisenhunt for not letting him pass enough and being overly conservative. Did they not win a Super Bowl together only months before? Before the game in Arizona, Tomlin summoned Roethlisberger and asked him to stop the sniping, and the QB's text-messaged apology to Whisenhunt soon followed. It can be assumed this week that Tomlin's rules are in place, 100 fold, while the global media search for truth and justice.

"I think Ben had a couple of perfect passer ratings, and I think he won a Super Bowl. So if that's a product of it, then that's not bad,'' Whisenhunt says now. "I certainly respect the player that he's grown into. I hope that our time together contributed a little bit to that. He was always very good with me and worked very hard. I was very lucky to have him as a quarterback, especially my first year as a coordinator and what we were able to do."

Guess who quickly returned the kisses? "Coach Whisenhunt was awesome for me,'' Roethlisberger said at the team hotel. "Whether it was on the golf course, the football field or the meeting rooms, he was a very good mentor for me. He really helped me become the player I am today, and I'm really proud and happy that he is here and that I get to play against him.

"I just hope I can beat him.''

Precisely.

In the middle of it all is Tomlin, the renaissance man who quoted Robert Frost after the AFC title game and was named pro football's sexiest coach by GQ magazine. You're tempted to say Tomlin has been so good, the Steelers don't miss Whisenhunt or Grimm in any form -- unless, of course, the Cardinals finish off one of sport's all-time shockers and leave Tomlin as the loser in an improbable drama. Tomlin is a prime example of why the Rooney Rule, based on Dan Rooney's mandate that minority candidates be given a fair opportunity in the NFL coaching game, is a historic mechanism in racial equality. Rather than dwell on the relative irrelevance of the Whisenhunt drama, Tomlin spoke of the Rooney Rule and the fact he was hired by, well, the Rooneys.

"Sure, it's one of the reasons,'' Tomlin said. "Anything that brings light to the circumstances and situations in terms of opportunity, it's a factor. It was a factor in me getting an opportunity. I came into the league as a minority intern with the Cleveland Browns when I coached college football. That was a great avenue to expose the NFL to me. Prior to that, I had no intentions of coaching in the NFL. I left that internship committed to coaching in the NFL because it was such a positive experience.''

Tomlin also refuses to speculate on what advantages the Cardinals might have via Whisenhunt's inside knowledge. But as seen last season in Arizona's 21-14 win, which included two interceptions and four sacks of Roethlisberger, any wisdom about strengths and weaknesses matters. "I hope it can't hurt us that we know a little bit about them," Whisenhunt said. "I think knowing the personnel for the most part is a little easier because you don't have to spend as much time doing that. We have two weeks to prepare.''

As for Roethlisberger, who played poorly in the Super Bowl victory and already is hearing questions about it, he says it's up to him and the Steelers to beat the Whis and his spywork. "That's the million dollar question everyone has been asking,'' he said. "When push comes to shove, the guys are playing football on the field. You can only coach so much.''

In this swirling, cross-pollinating drama, I beg to differ.

Jay Mariotti is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse.com. He is a daily panelist on ESPN's sports-debate show, "Around The Horn," seen Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. ET. Mariotti spent 17 years as a lead sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and has covered every major sporting event -- national and worldwide -- on multiple occasions.