Apathetic towards football, but not the Steelers

I'm not sure if you've noticed yet, but the Steelers aren't going to the Super Bowl this year. Already I can envision black and gold fans across the nation doing the Charlie Brown/Arrested Development sad walk on the way to parties, fingering the Terrible Towel they've hidden in their coat pocket, not quite ready to hand off the title of world champion. Which is understandable; it's not an easy title to come by.

I started this blog on the premise that I wouldn't talk about sports or Primanti's because I wanted to explore the lesser-known aspects of the city, but seeing as it's Super Bowl weekend I feel I have to divert from this path to pay a little respect to the first football team I've ever really liked. I wasn't a fan of the sport as a kid (mainly because not knowing the meaning of "down" made games look like a tangled mess of burly men) and probably never watched a Browns game in its entirety (sorry Ohio friends.) I'm primarily a basketball fan, a lover of the fluid movement of the game, and couldn't really get into the stop-and-go nature of football or the plays I didn't understand.

So I found it odd when I came to school here and found myself catching the tail-ends of games and timidly asking about those mysterious downs and fumbles and field goals. I started to actually enjoy watching these men in giant padding slam into each other. Last season I went to a Steeler's home game (vs. Bengals; Steelers won) with a friend and her family and can only describe the experience as exhilarating. Afterwards I wrote a story about it for a class and spent several hours researching the Steelers' past Super Bowl wins. I'm still by no means a gung-ho fan (I don't really follow them throughout the season and I know nothing about any other team) but I can now say I've made plans with friends to watch a football game. The 17-year-old me is appalled and the 21-year-old me is, well, still a little flabbergasted.

But if I look back on the Super Bowl last year, remember the feeling of jumping and screaming with other jumping and screaming friends while Harrison ran those 100 yards, I sort of get it. For me, Steeler love is not really about the sport itself or plays or tactics and all that junk; it's about the community, the fact that fans refer to the team as "we" instead of "they". It's about being in a city as it secures a record sixth ring to its name and living vicariously through that victory and whatever symbolism it holds. And maybe that's why I went nuts during the Super Bowl: not because my team had won, but because by connection my city and everyone in it had won. That's not something you get to feel everyday.