As we lead up to Super Bowl XLV, SB Nation asked writers from its Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers blogs to contribute pieces describing what it means to be a fan of their respective teams. This piece was submitted by Tim Gleason, the official historian for Behind The Steel Curtain and the Commissioner of the Ohio Athletic Conference and the author of the recently published book 'From Black To Gold: The Pittsburgh Steelers.'
Super Bowl XLV: There Is ‘Nothing Casual’ About Being A Pittsburgh Steelers Fan
The greatest sports fans in the world are the ones whose passion flows through the bloodstream. One way to acquire that passion is from your parents. It is passed down from generation to generation. It is the truest and deepest form of being a sports fan. I was blessed to have been given a passion for the Pittsburgh Steelers from my father, Bill Gleason Sr. He was born in Pittsburgh, like his father. I was born in Mercy Hospital, the same one that took care of Ben Roethlisberger after his motorcycle crash.
Being a great fan does not exclusively come from heredity. It also comes from geography and personal attachment. I have always believed that there are more fans that are passionate, per capita, from cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Green Bay, than other cities. Admittedly, there is no scientific way to prove or disprove that belief. I have lived in Pittsburgh, Miami, New Orleans, Kansas City and Cleveland, so I have some empirical experience with which to base my opinion.
A great percentage of the people who live in and around Pittsburgh are from Pittsburgh. Mostly, they are not transplants from other cities. Transplants who acquire new teams to root for cannot possibly have the same depth of passion as the natives who received their fan base through the umbilical cord. If you are ever in the Pittsburgh Airport, right smack in the middle of the concourse you will see two lifelike statues. One is George Washington, who fought many battles where Heinz Field now sits, before coaching the Americans to a huge upset victory over England in the Revolutionary War. The other statue is Franco Harris catching the Immaculate Reception.
Steeler Nation took most of its roots in the late 1970s. The Steelers had established, arguably, the greatest dynasty in NFL history, having won an unprecedented four Super Bowl titles in six years. At the same time, the collapse of the steel mills and related industries caused a mass exodus of population leaving Pittsburgh and establishing livelihoods in other geographies. They proudly took with them the badge of honor that came with the Steelers’ recent successes. The result was that Steelers’ fans were being re-rooted in other large cities, able to promote, recruit and procreate new Steelers’ fans around them. Both of those factors, one positive and one negative, blended together to form the perfect storm.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are de facto America's team. The Dallas Cowboys may have been the first to label themselves with that moniker, but take note of the visiting fans in stadiums throughout an NFL season. Dallas may have the self-proclaimed label, but Pittsburgh has the truth. On Division Game Sunday at the end of the 2008 season, the NFC featured the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, the nation's highest-populated city and sixth highest. The AFC featured San Diego, the eighth most populated city and Pittsburgh, in 59th place behind such towns as Bakersfield, California and Aurora, Colorado. The Steelers-Chargers game drew higher television ratings, by far, than the Giants-Eagles game.
I have been to a good many stadiums in the country and I can feel the difference. There is nothing casual about Pittsburgh Steelers’ fans at Heinz Field. They did not just move into town recently from another city. There is nothing corporate about the people sitting in even the best seats in the house. There is a good chance that a heart surgeon is sitting next to a janitor and you would never tell the difference.
Steeler Nation is as deep and strong as anything in sports. If you do not believe that, turn on the television and watch a Steelers’ road game. Invariably at some point, the announcers will talk about how many Steelers’ fans are in the stadium. Cameras will spotlight black and gold in enemy territory. Terrible Towels, many of them, will be waved proudly. Listen to the players themselves around the league. Listen to the media. Steeler Nation is more omnipresent than any other NFL franchise.
Both ESPN and Sports Illustrated, perhaps the two largest and most respected sports media, ranked Steelers' fans the best in the NFL in 2008. These were independent rankings based on a variety of criteria, but all you really need to do is look in the stands at a Steelers' road game. Byron Leftwich, backup quarterback to Ben Roethlisberger during the 2008 season, told the media before the Super Bowl about the time he played for Jacksonville against the Steelers and was amazed that he needed a silent count at a home game, because Steelers' fans were too noisy when Leftwich was calling out signals.
“When you play for Pittsburgh, with the support we get from our fans, it’s priceless,” claimed Leftwich. “You’re in somebody else’s stadium and you have 10,000 or 20,000 of your own fans supporting you. There is something special about that, because that doesn’t happen. I don’t know anywhere else where that happens. Nowhere else. That’s what makes this place so special.”
The Steelers played the Detroit Lions in the middle of the 2009 season. After Pittsburgh scored its first touchdown, television announcer Dick Enberg talked about the fans' celebration. The game was in Detroit. Near the end of the game, the Lions were driving for the game-tying touchdown. With Terrible Towels waving, the fans were chanting "Dee-fense!" Detroit's offensive linemen could not hear the snap count above the noise. Changing to a silent count, the Lions lost the offensive advantage of hearing the snap count before the defense. Pittsburgh sacked quarterback Daunte Culpepper three times in succession and the game was over.
After the game, Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger proclaimed Steelers’ fans “the best in the world.” Of course, many athletes say that about their own fans, but what other franchise can cite example after example of living proof?
“I loved playing in Pittsburgh, because of the fans,” said Roy Jefferson, All Pro wide receiver in the late 1960s. “They were crazy. They loved us when we weren’t very good, which meant a lot to me.”
Pittsburgh and surrounding market is a geography where football is woven into its cultural fabric. To one extent or another, every city embraces football and every city has its percentage of rabid fans. However, if there were a scientific way to measure the connection between a football team and its community, my money would be on Pittsburgh.
It is fitting that professional football was born near downtown Pittsburgh. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Nov. 12, 1892 was the birthday of pro football. The Allegheny Athletic Association played the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Allegheny openly paid a player named Pudge Heffelfinger $500 to play in the game, an astronomical payday in the 19th century. Allegheny won the game when Heffelfinger, earning his pay, scored the only points when he forced a fumble on defense and then picked it up and ran for a touchdown.
During Sundays in the fall, there are two religions in Pittsburgh, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. While there are pockets of great high school football players everywhere, especially in states like Ohio, Texas, Florida and California, the Pittsburgh/Western Pennsylvania area has produced quarterbacks George Blanda, Marc Bulger, Jeff Hostetler, Jim Kelly, Johnny Lujack, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas. Whoever is in second place is so far behind there should not even be a second place.
I have a hard time relating to fans that leach themselves onto successful teams having nothing to do with heredity, geography or personal attachment. Growing up in the ‘60s, it was ridiculous to me that so many kids in Youngstown, Ohio just happened to call themselves fans of the New York Yankees, Boston Celtics, UCLA Basketball Bruins, Muhammad Ali or Green Bay Packers. Gee, how convenient.
Being a frontrunner is shallow indeed. As soon as those teams start losing, those fans could not care less. They were never real fans in the first place. I always prided myself in being the opposite. Even when no city close to Youngstown had an NBA franchise (the Cleveland Cavaliers were born in 1970), I decided to root for the Atlanta Hawks out of the clear blue. There was no way I was going to root for the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Lakers simply because they were on television and were kings of the hill. I rooted for those teams to lose. I was the anti-frontrunner.
My father taught me those "sports values." He instilled in me the importance of rooting for a team for all the right reasons and sticking with them through thick and thin. If you grew up in the 1960s rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers, you learned the hard way. There was never any history that I could fall back on and kindle some degree of past pride. At least young Cleveland Browns' fans today can point to the history books. As a young Steelers' fan, I had no success to hang my hat on, and a pathetic history to boot.
All of which brings me to where I am today, a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers’ fan. When my daughter, Mary Rose, was born in November of 1995, I began dressing her in every infant outfit that came with a Steelers’ logo on it. Heredity was working into another generation. I never pushed or pressured her one iota. Eventually she joined me in watching the games instead of playing with dolls. She was opposite from me in that the Steelers were great when she was 10-years old. They were pathetic when I was that age. Still, I saw myself 40 years earlier. From a corn comes a corn.
Mary Rose and I have season tickets now. When her enthusiasm blossomed, I sold much of my sports memorabilia collection to buy Personal Seat Licenses. In this crazy world we live in, those seat licenses cost more than the house I grew up in, but with the Steelers leased into Heinz Field for at least another 22 years, it is a solid investment. It still blows my mind to think that the seat licenses plus the first year’s tickets cost 10 times what Art Rooney paid for the franchise in 1933.
Our happiness is not based upon the Steelers winning the Super Bowl. I would hope that no football fan bases his or her joy upon the insistence of winning a championship. We live in a bottom-line society, but it saddens me when people think either you win it all or you have done nothing. I feel sorry for those people. They just do not get it. They end up being miserable much more so than happy, maybe exclusively so. They would be better off not being fans at all.
Stop and think about how hard it is mathematically to win a Super Bowl. Take 32 ping pong balls and mark your name on one of them. Put all the balls into a brown paper bag. Once a year on your birthday, just once, reach into the bag and pull out one ball. See how long it takes to pull out the ball with your name on it. That is how hard it is to win a Super Bowl.
The NFL is not college football, where the rich stay rich, or Major League Baseball, where deep pockets buy their way into the playoffs. The NFL is systematically designed as a level playing field. Being the last man standing among 32, once per year, is incredibly hard. In fact, 15 of those 32 have never won a Super Bowl and six more have won just one Super Bowl. That means 21 teams have won a total of six.
The essence of being a fan is to enjoy the ride. I love the NFL Draft, the opening of training camp and preseason games. I love the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Tribune-Review, the Herald-Standard and Steelers Digest. I love Behind the Steel Curtain, my favorite fan site on the internet, and Stan Savran’s Sportsbeat (until it was abruptly cancelled in 2009). I love opening day and all the banter about who is going to win the Super Bowl. I love going to home games and tailgating with Mary Rose. I love watching the road games on television. Successful destination is the pinnacle, make no mistake, but the fun is in the journey.
Tim Gleason is a member of the community at Behind the Steel Curtain and is the Commissioner of the Ohio Athletic Conference and the author of the recently published book ’From Black To Gold: The Pittsburgh Steelers.’
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