I am not a football fan. The violent culture and portentous ruin awaiting the bodies and brains of sports stars marred the game’s beauty. Dementia and depression crippled center Mike Webster soon after retirement. While no evidence exists, one cannot but wonder if it’s the result of a Hall of Fame career’s worth of blows to the head. At all levels, football is plagued by concussions and a deafening machismo that drowns out any calls for player safety. Glorified violence remains the crux of football, inseparable from the game’s passion and beauty.
Regardless of my overall reservations about the sport, I love the Steelers. Towns across Texas, the Southeast and Midwest rally around the notion of “football is life.” I won’t argue with them. But in Pittsburgh, the Steelers are not a sports team. They’re a way of life — an incarnation of the city’s character — to which the populace dogmatically prescribes. Had my parents applied for season tickets around the time of my birth, they would still be on the waiting list. Even away games typically feature as many Terrible Towels as fans of the home team.
ESPN talking heads refer to this phenomenon as fans who “travel” — for an example, attend any Northwestern-Ohio State sporting event. But despite my friends’ and family’s ravenous fandom, I never knew anyone who attended away games. The Cowboys are “America’s Team,” but Steelers fans are everywhere. Hundreds of bars across the country dutifully broadcast every game for the diffuse network of thousands of fanatical — and at times boorish — fans. Unlike the Cowboys’ following of converts, attracted to the team’s sexy image and dozens of cheerleaders, silver uniforms, outlandish ownership, the Steelers’ fan base originated out of economic hardship and nostalgia.
The first twenty-five years after World War II, steel carried Pittsburgh into a period of unprecedented prosperity — the Pittsburgh Renaissance. Yet, as the baby boomers began to reach adulthood in the early 1970s, the city began to rust. Intensifying international competition, depletion of local resources and a sluggish national economy stunted the city’s growth. Hundreds of thousands of jobs and citizens fled the city during the 1970s.
All the while, the Steelers streaked to four Super Bowl titles in six years. The region’s expats colonized new lands while clinging to the team that brought glory to the land of their youth despite the depression. The Steelers’ style — their toughness and steadfast leadership — embodied the city’s culture. Pride in the team’s success transcended athletic victory and instead became a validation of the culture that brought success to the city. Even today, decades removed from residence in the city, fans remained true to the team as a symbol of home.
Nearly 40 years after the steel mills closed, shopping centers and research parks fill their lots. The city has undergone a second renaissance — morphing from a smoky industry to healthcare and technology. Those who left with the closing of the mills would barely recognize the setting of my childhood. In some areas, you can still see the fallout from the region’s economic collapse — most notably the much publicized ruin of the town of Braddock. Despite their namesake’s irrelevance today, the Steelers remain inseparable from the culture of the city. A Steelers victory on Sunday will serve not only as a landmark seventh Super Bowl title, but a celebration of the history of the place I long called home.