The man responsible for shaping the future of the Carolina Panthers and the region that houses them did not grow up with power or influence.
David Tepper was raised by a schoolteacher and her accountant husband in a small, well-loved brick house, built in 1950 in the working-class neighborhood of Stanton Heights, Pittsburgh.
He carried his books in a brown paper bag as he walked downhill to school every day. The steep, 2-mile slope was fun to coast down on a bike, or sled on when it got slick in the Pittsburgh winter, but it was a grueling walk back so he often hitchhiked to get home.