Jules' Inklings

A space for the unique assortment of topics that I find interesting, relevant or funny. But rarely all three at once.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Steeler Nation

Scott Paulsen, a Pittsburgh radio show host wrote this column on the building of the Steeler Nation. To all displaced Pittsburghers and Steeler fans, I double-dog dare you not to cry when you read this.

Nation Building
January 18, 2006
Scott Paulsen

Think about this the next time someone argues that a professional sports franchise is not important to a city’s identity:
In the 1980’s, as the steel mills and their supporting factories shut down from Homestead to Midland, Pittsburghers, faced for the first time in their lives with the specter of unemployment, were forced to pick up their families, leave their home towns and move to more profitable parts of the country. The steel workers were not ready for this. They had planned to stay in the ‘burgh their entire lives. It was home.

Everyone I know can tell the same story about how Dad, Uncle Bob or their brother-in-law packed a U-Haul and headed down to Tampa to build houses or up to Boston for an office job or out to California to star in pornographic videos.

All right. Maybe that last one just happened in my family.

At this same time, during the early to mid-eighties, the Pittsburgh Steelers were at the peak of their popularity. Following the Super Bowl dynasty years, the power of the Steelers was strong. Every man, woman, boy and girl from parts of four states were Pittsburgh faithful, living and breathing day to day on the news of their favorite team. Then, as now, it seemed to be all anyone talked about.

Who do you think the Steelers will take in the draft this year?
Is Bradshaw done?
Can you believe they won’t give Franco the money – what’s he doing going to Seattle?

The last memories most unemployed steel workers had of their towns had a black and gold tinge. The good times remembered all seemed to revolve, somehow, around a football game. Sneaking away from your sister’s wedding reception to go downstairs to the bar and watch the game against Earl Campbell and the Oilers - going to midnight mass, still half in the bag after Pittsburgh beat Oakland - you and your grandfather, both crying at the sight of The Chief, finally holding his Vince Lombardi Trophy.

And then, the mills closed. Damn the mills.

One of the unseen benefits of the collapse of the value systems our families believed in – that the mill would look after you through thick and thin – was that now, decades later, there is not a town in America where a Pittsburgher cannot feel at home. Nearly every city in the United States has a designated “Black and Gold” establishment. From Bangor, Maine to Honolulu, Hawaii, and every town in between can be found an oasis of Iron City, chipped ham and yinzers. It’s great to know that no matter what happened in the lives of our Steel City refugees, they never forgot the things that held us together as a city - families, food, and Steelers football.

It’s what we call the Steeler Nation.

You see it every football season. And when the Steelers have a great year, as they have had this season, the power of the Steeler Nation rises to show itself stronger than ever. This week, as the Pittsburgh team of Roethlisberger, Polamalu, Bettis and Porter head to Denver, the fans of Greenwood, Lambert, Bleier and Blount, the generation who followed Lloyd, Thigpen, Woodson and Kirkland will be watching from Dallas to Chicago, from an Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, to a tent stuck in the sand near Fallujah, Iraq.

I have received more email from displaced Pittsburgh Steelers fans this week than Christmas cards this holiday season.
They’re everywhere.
We’re everywhere.
We are the Steeler Nation.

And now, it’s passing from one generation to the next. The children of displaced Pittsburghers, who have never lived in the Steel City, are growing up Steelers fans. When they come back to their parents’ hometowns to visit the grandparents, they hope, above all, to be blessed enough to get to see the Steelers in person. Heinz Field is their football Mecca. And if a ticket isn’t available, that’s okay, too. There’s nothing better than sitting in Grandpa’s living room, just like Dad did, eating Grandma’s cooking and watching the Pittsburgh Steelers. Just like Dad did.

So, to you, Steeler Nation, I send best wishes and a fond wave of the Terrible Towel. To Tom, who emailed from Massachusetts to say how great it was to watch the Patriots lose and the Steelers win in one glorious weekend. To Michelle, from Milwaukee, who wrote to let me know it was she who hexed Mike Vanderjagt last Sunday by chanting “boogity, boogity, boogity” and giving him the “maloik”. To Jack, who will somehow pull himself away from the beach bar he tends in Hilo, Hawaii, to once again root for the black and gold in the middle of the night (his time), I say, thanks for giving power to the great Steeler Nation.

All around the NFL, the word is out that the Pittsburgh Steeler fans “travel well”, meaning they will fly or drive from Pittsburgh to anywhere the Steelers play, just to see their team. The one aspect about that situation the rest of the NFL fails to grasp is that, sometimes, the Steeler Nation does not have to travel. Sometimes, we’re already there.

Yes, the short sighted steel mills screwed our families over. But they did, in a completely unintended way, create something new and perhaps more powerful than an industry. They helped created a nation.

A Steeler Nation.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

...PITTSBURGH'S GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!

Friday, January 20, 2006

Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Denver Right Over!

Interesting little piece written by a Denver columnist sent to the Burgh to cover, well, I guess the fans in the week leading up to the AFC showdown. Apparently the first article he wrote after arriving was less than complimentary, and felt the need to restate his position on the Steel City. I like this one much better.

Yinz might like Steeler Nation, after all

Monday, January 16, 2006

I’ve Got A Feeling….


The Bus Celebrates a TD

When the whole country wanted the Red Sox, not the Cardinals, to win the World Series in 2004, I couldn’t help but think about the still rabid St. Louis fans – come on now, you get it… don’t you? During a time of year when serious and casual baseball fans alike usually divvy up pretty evenly, unless you were a card-carrying St. Louis fan, people were overwhelmingly pulling for the Sox. I thought about the Cards fans, “Surely they have some human conviction deep down that would like to see the Sox win. Surely.”

Before yesterday, everyone (particularly the NFL, some might say) wanted Tony Dungy, Peyton Manning and the Colts to win the Super Bowl. Football fans whose teams have long been out of it had staked their claim on Indy as the team to root for. And even an idiot (including me) could understand why. A 13-0 start, a Christmas tragedy, a golden boy QB… all factors which will garner fandom like none other. (By the way, I’m not dogging golden boy quarterbacks. While not quite as loved as the eldest Manning son, Ben’s pretty darn close to being a golden boy himself.)

All of that said, with baseball a distant memory and wading deep in the NFL playoffs, I admit that yeah, ok, I get it. I know why the world wanted Indy to win. But absolutely nothing (NO amount of heart-tugging for the Colts) could rain on my exuberant parade Sunday afternoon when I first watched Big Ben march his offense deftly down the field to defiantly announce to the deafening crowd that they came to play. And play they did. There were so many moments that even now put a smile on my face. Beautifully accurate passes and a big handful of sacks. However, only one memory induces in my spirit the kind of relief that continues to come in waves, long after the moment has passed. To Ben Roethlisberger (who surely reads my blog): Thank you, thank you, thank you for tackling Nick Harper near mid-field and thus saving our season. You played an amazing game, but I will always remember the sight of you grabbing Harper’s calf and denying him a free pass straight into the end zone. It was like the knife had started to sink into my heart, but you apprehended my attacker. Damage had been done, for sure, but hope remained that my life (er, I mean, the Steelers’ season) was not over just yet. And really, whether this team went on or not this year, it means the world to me that Jerome Bettis did not have to end his career on such a terrible and freak play.


Ben Saves the Day

A few excruciating plays and endless minutes later (at which point I said dramatically, but with all seriousness, “Have commercials ever seemed so insignificant?”), I yelled out “WIDE RIGHT! WIDE RIGHT!” and I became acutely aware that there was a Buffalo Bills fan sitting in my living room who might not like hear those words. I resorted to just screaming and running around my living room like a maniac. The most accurate kicker in NFL history, Mike Vanderjagt, had just missed a 46-yard, would be game-tying field goal. As an aside, my roommate really enjoys these entertaining little outbursts of mine, although I’m not so sure about my neighbor.

As far as I was concerned, the Steelers just won the Super Bowl. Yes, THAT’S what that game meant to their fans. The first No. 6 seed, ever, to beat a No. 1 and go on to a conference championship game. To finally respond to the team that dropped an 80-yard bomb on us in the first moments of that Monday Night game (and caused me to strain a muscle in my shoulder). The favored attention-garnering team from last year that couldn’t step up against the Patriots, and now the underdogs this year stepping it up like champs. I know I’ll be changing my tune come next week, and whatever should come after that, when I want the Steelers to win more – and more. But for today, I couldn’t be happier or more content.

For those of you non-Pittsburghers who don’t understand what the title of this entry means, you’ll have to wait and hope to find out next week. As superstitious as I’ve become, I refuse to finish it until our fate next Sunday is decided. However, I can’t stop any of you from finishing it yourselves in the comments. ☺ And for those of you who want me stop blogging on the Steelers already, well, I wouldn’t hold your breath.