More Than Just A Game

First, let me set the tone early -- GO STEELERS!

I haven't watched a single profile, highlight, or pre-game analysis for the two week's leading up to tomorrow's Super Bowl XL (and, yes, it will be X-tra large). One part of me wants to save up all my anxiety and nervous energy for the big game. But another part of me seems genetically predisposed to ignore the hype, the pomp, the pageantry that passes for football coverage now-a-days. You see, Pittsburgh is part of my very core -- all of my grandparents and parents were natives. One grandfather worked in a steel mill. The other was a shot-and-a-beer joint bartender "dawn-tawn". And I doubt very much that any of them would have spent a whole lot of time listening to the cliche-laden analysis from that passes for sports coverage today. It's enough to make you choke on your "Arn" City Beer.

In today's New York Times, Holly Brubach, a former style editor for the Times' Magazine and a Pittsburgh native captures the spirit of the city and it's unique connection to the team that personifies it in an opinion piece called Gridiron City. It made me think back to when I was in elementary school, living closer to Philly than The 'Burgh, and bearing the brunt of outfitting myself in a Steelers jacket, gloves, and hat every winter. Even though my loyalty was easier to bear since the Steelers were the Team of the '70's ("Oh yeah, how well did the Eagles do this year?"), I would have done it even if winning didn't become a habit. In my family, no matter where you lived, living and dying with the Steelers was just something you did ... proudly.

The day after the AFC Championship Game, one of my friends asked if I was excited that the Steelers were in the Super Bowl and my immediate response was that the city needs it. It needs a championship, a reason to get its chin up, look around with a less jaundiced and critical eye, and realize that we still live in one of the world's great mid-sized cities. Oh sure, other cities (or even us natives) can point to the facts and figures that would point to a city still in transition, struggling to put to rest past industrial glories and to find a future that fits. But it's a place that has what no other place in the world can claim and, while I can't quite describe it, I know that it is good and I know that it has something to do with a bunch of guys who will be strappin' it on tomorrow night.