It’s an 8-year-old snapshot of Bill Cowher that endures: the Pittsburgh coach brandishing a fist at Jacksonville’s Chris Hudson as he races past the Steelers bench en route to a game-clinching touchdown.

“Intense” is the word it conjures – a word most often used to describe Cowher. It might have been more: as he clenched that fist, Cowher looked like he might jump on the field and tackle Hudson.

It’s easy to depict Seattle coach Mike Holmgren as just the opposite: a laid-back Californian who has been fashioning precision offenses for more than two decades.

Not really. Holmgren just shows his intensity a little farther from the cameras.

“He says to me, ‘I don’t want you to turn over the ball,'” Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said. “Then I’ll throw an interception – it happens, doesn’t it? – and come off the field and he’ll say, ‘I don’t want you to turn over the ball.'”

Going into Sunday’s Super Bowl, Cowher and Holmgren share a lot beyond their all-female households: Cowher has three daughters, and Holmgren has four, plus four granddaughters (“that’s what we talk about, our girls,” Cowher said).

Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher, above, and Seattle coach Mike Holmgren both bring an intense leadership style to Super Bowl XL. The coaches will lead their squads in the championship game Sunday in Detroit.

They are the longest-tenured coaches in the NFL – 14th seasons without a break. The 48-year-old Cowher was hired by the Steelers in 1992, the same year Holmgren signed on in Green Bay.

After winning a Super Bowl with the Packers after the 1996 season and losing one the next year, Holmgren moved on to Seattle as coach and general manager.

Both are considered among the NFL’s best coaches, perhaps a bit below the superstar/ celebrity level that includes Bill Belichick, Bill Parcells and Joe Gibbs. Some of it is personality – neither craves the spotlight – and some of it is they’ve experienced failure.

Until this year, for example, Cowher had lost the only Super Bowl he’d been in (to Dallas after the 1995 season) and also was 1-4 in AFC title games, all at home.

The 57-year-old Holmgren was asked to step down as Seattle’s GM after the 2002 season after the team went 9-7, 6-10, 9-7 and 7-9 in his first four seasons – not what was expected from someone who arrived as the savior of a franchise that had been consistently mediocre.

But their styles and systems are markedly different.

Holmgren is a former third-string quarterback at USC who aspired to coach and teach in high school, and played in a rock-and-roll band. His success as a high-school coach in the Bay Area led to a job at San Francisco State and then as quarterbacks coach at Brigham Young in 1982, where one of his pupils was a young QB named Steve Young.

Holmgren

Holmgren did enough there that he was hired by Bill Walsh to coach the 49ers quarterbacks, moved up to offensive coordinator, then moved on to Green Bay as head coach.

“His success is right out of the Bill Walsh tool kit,”‘ Young said. “It’s everything. How you practice. How you diagram plays. How you travel. It’s right down there A-to-Z. Mike got it, passed it on to Steve Mariucci, Andy Reid, Jon Gruden, all the way down the line.”

While Holmgren was in Green Bay, he turned Brett Favre into a star. During that time, the Packers also drafted QBs who were traded elsewhere and became starters: Mark Brunell, Aaron Brooks and Hasselbeck. And a free agent named Kurt Warner passed through their training camp and became a two-time league MVP with the Rams.

Cowher comes from another tradition – passing is second to running. That’s one reason Ben Roethlisberger has been able to flourish at quarterback in his first two seasons – he doesn’t have to carry the offense.

As Holmgren is a direct disciple of Walsh, Cowher’s mentor is Marty Schottenheimer.

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” Cowher said. “He saw something in me I’m not sure I saw in myself.”

What Schottenheimer saw was intensity.

Raised in the Pittsburgh area, Cowher played at North Carolina State, then made the Cleveland Browns in 1980 when Schottenheimer was an assistant there. He was used mostly on special teams and played briefly for Philadelphia.

In 1985, at 28, he was hired as Cleveland’s special-teams coach by Schottenheimer, who had become the Browns’ head coach.

He followed Schottenheimer to Kansas City, becoming defensive coordinator on a staff that also included Tony Dungy. His attention to detail was clear and even when he was barely over 30, he was introduced to people as a potential head coach.

He got the job soon enough – back in his hometown.

“I could see in him a guy who would have success over the long haul,” Steelers owner Dan Rooney said Tuesday. “And that’s what he’s been. His roots have helped him. He’s not one of those people who come to Pittsburgh and look around and think he’s in some provincial town. He knows Pittsburgh, he understands the people, and he thinks of it as home. It’s great to have him.”