Sounds Like a Pretty Sweet Party, Pittsburgh

Pyrotechnics? Super Bowl banner? Chuck Noll? Black Eyed Peas?! Yes, yes, yes and -- sigh -- yes.

There’s much celebrating planned in the Iron City this evening, starting with a party in the park at 4:

Back at Point State Park, an NFL-themed party has raged all week. The league’s Kickoff Festival will culminate with a free concert featuring Tim McGraw and The Black Eyed Peas. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league expects as many as 50,000 people to attend the concert.The park will open for admission at 4 p.m., when the NFL will show “America’s Game: 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers,” an NFL Network production chronicling the team’s Super Bowl season. McGraw will perform for an hour at about 5:30 p.m., followed by 60 minutes with The Black Eyed Peas at 6:40. The two acts will perform again at 8 as part of a live show produced by NBC and the NFL Network.

After the inevitable McGraw-BEPs “I Like it, I Love it/Boom Boom Pow” collaborative remix, fans will be treated to this:

As fireworks blast from a barge on the Allegheny River, from PPG Tower and other Downtown sites, the scoreboard will show footage of key plays from last year’s Super Bowl victory over the Arizona Cardinals. Ex-Steelers including Lynn Swann, Rocky Bleier and Franco Harris will be shown sporting their championship rings, and a montage will appear of the franchise’s three title-winning coaches -- Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin.“The show will end up with a major pyro display in the stadium and the unveiling of the championship banner,” Gaudelli said, “and it will culminate with the team running onto the field.”

Presumably, they’ll actually play a football game sometime shortly thereafter.