At the start of only the third Steelers coaching search in more than 38 years, Art Rooney Jr. rewound his memory all the way back to a meeting with his brother Dan that included a little interview of one Charles Henry Noll.

"For a guy who was looking for a job, he was very stout about it," AJR Jr. said of the candidate, an assistant with the vanquished Baltimore Colts of Super Bowl III. "He stood up for what he believed in. He said he never had problems with players. That race meant nothing to him, was never a factor. He said he wanted athletes who were coachable, meaning they had some intelligence. He said he'd been watching some movies on the Steelers and that the team's athleticism had to improve tremendously.

"Of course, I don't think 'athleticism' was the word in football at the time."

On the day Bill Cowher walked away from a 15-year reign has head coach, the one that followed the 23-year reign of the Emperor Noll himself, a look at this storied franchise's coaching timeline was all but unavoidable. As you're considering what the Rooneys are looking for in the next football potentate, be reminded that a certain evident self-assuredness has now proven pivotal twice in a row. If Noll was "stout," Cowher yesterday remembered himself as perhaps even stouter.

"I thought I was a little arrogant in that first press conference," Cowher said in the middle of his last one. "It was like, 'Who does this guy think he is?' "

Before Dan Rooney's 2 for 2 in hiring great coaches, the screening process was a little less sophisticated in Pittsburgh. The Chief, Dan's father and the organization's founder, hired coaches based in no small part on how much they liked to "loaf" with him. When Dan took over in the late '60s therefore, the change was pretty dramatic.

"I sat down with Dan at his home, which was then in Mt. Lebanon," then and still Penn State coach Joe Paterno said on the telephone yesterday. "I wasn't really ready for a change, but he talked to me and showed me how he'd reorganized the entire Steelers organization. He outlined a whole new business plan. I was really impressed. But I came back up here and talked with [wife] Sue, and we decided the time wasn't right. I can't remember that he'd actually made me an offer, but it's in my mind that he did."

What Paterno got from Rooney toward the end of 1968 was an understanding that if he wanted the job, it was his. The money was more than Paterno had imagined making, and that threw him. He wasn't sure he could function in such an atmosphere, on top of which, he didn't feel he'd accomplished what he wanted to at Penn State.

"I've teased Dan," Paterno said. "I'd say, 'You know, I've done a lot of people a lot of favors, but that was a pretty big one.' So, he hired Chuck Noll, and four Super Bowls later, well, that choice was looking pretty good. What Dan has is a great feel for people, a great knowledge of people. The Rooneys don't get carried away with a lot of talk. I didn't know Bill [Cowher] real well, but, when he'd come up here to look at players, he was always very genuine, very straight-forward. You hate to see a guy like that get out of it, but the Rooneys will come up with a big-leaguer; I'm not worried about that."

The search now underway will undoubtedly proceed with methodical precision, much like the one that finally begat Noll instead of Chuck Knox and Nick Skorich in 1969, and William Laird Cowher in the first weeks of 1992. Dave Wannstedt, Joe Greene, Kevin Gilbride, John Fox, Mike Reilly, Dennis Green, Mike Holmgren, Woody Widenhofer and up to five others went in and out of the more recent process with a minimum of commotion.

This time a couple of things are different. One is that Art Rooney II, elevated to the team president by his father three years ago, will be very involved, and secondly, the competitive backdrop has changed severely in that Noll and Cowher took over teams in some disarray.

"Art has the experience now; he certainly will and should be involved," said his uncle. "Dan's out of practice. It's been 15 years. With coaching changes, if you make a mistake, it can cost you three years before you get it right. Here you have a top quarterback and a lot of great players, you don't want to waste them."

An hour after Bill and Kaye Cowher walked out the front door at 3400 South Water Street, Art II was at the same podium, calmly and smartly framing the principles of the rare Steelers coach hunt. It was clear he won't be rushed.

"We're going to go through the process," he said. "If we get into a position where we just can't move fast enough on someone, we'll just have to live with it."

It was most of a month between Noll's retirement and Cowher's hiring, so don't be surprised if the interim is similar this time.

"Someone who can deal with players, who can get the players' attention, that's clearly an important personality trait," he said. "The same qualities that we were looking for when we hired Chuck and Bill, we'll be looking for again. When [retiring running backs coach] Dick Hoak was asked to compare Chuck and Bill this week, he mentioned some differences that he saw, and there are different ways to get it done in football, different ways to motivate people.

"I think the No. 1 thing we're looking for is a genuine person. That will be important."

Art II said he would seek Cowher's counsel on a successor, something Cowher said wasn't necessary.

"I've never been one that lacked an opinion," Cowher said. "But these guys, they know what they're doing."