At last gameday is here
Far-flung Steelers Nation makes its pilgrimage to Detroit for football's grandest theater
Sunday, February 05, 2006
By Robert Dvorchak, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Steeler fan Albert Holm, from Mexico City, gives a mean look while getting his photo taken in the Steeler cutout at NFL Experience in Detroit.
Click photo for larger image.
DETROIT -- Brothers Noel and Morgan Burbridge, clad in their subdued green and blue Seahawks gear, arrived at 4 a.m. yesterday on a red-eye flight from Seattle and felt like they had walked smack into the enemy camp.
"I feel as though we are alone," said Noel, 31, looking out over the wave of black and gold that has inundated Detroit on the eve of Super Bowl XL. "It's like we're on an island surrounded by sharks. We're out-numbered 700 to 1."
If raw numbers of fans provide any barometer, Pittsburgh has exerted its dominance. Spirited members of the far-flung Steeler Nation who made the pilgrimage here to experience football's grandest theater seem to be everywhere. Seahawks fan might as well be part of the background.
Even the weather has taken a Pittsburgh shift. Yesterday morning dawned gray and gloomy with a blanket of fog that made Seattle denizens feel right at home. But my mid-day, a steady rain had turned to snow -- Steeler weather.
Eight inches of the white stuff is expected to be on the ground this morning. It won't affect the game, which will be played indoors in the cozy surroundings of Ford Field. But a city that has toiled mightily to be a good host for America's party had to implement emergency plans because of the winter storm. Salt trucks and snow plows were on standby to deal with the accumulation, and the plan called for city crews to truck the white stuff to a landfill in Windsor, Ontario, to keep streets open for the big game.
A different sort of blizzard has already descended on Motown. Tens of thousands of Steelers fans, waving towels and chanting songs, have taken over the streets and bars of Detroit and its suburbs.
The migration peaked on Friday when the Ohio Turnpike was nearly bumper to bumper with cars, trucks, vans and bus loads in one long convoy headed to Detroit.
"They were blaring their horns, waving their flags, twirling their towels. I've never seen anything like it. It looked like an invasion," said Susan Anderson of Green Tree.
She and her husband, Carl, have been season-ticket holders for 38 years but couldn't score tickets to the Super Bowl. (The asking price for a ticket listed at $700 topped $3,000 yesterday, and isn't expected to fall. Seattle fans had issued a plea not to sell their tickets to anyone from Pittsburgh.)
But the Andersons didn't think twice about making the five-hour drive and paying $159 a night for a room at a Red Roof Inn in suburban Livonia. It didn't matter that they'll be outside the perimeter. It didn't matter that the weather was bad. It didn't matter that the game was in Detroit. All that mattered was the Steelers were in the Super Bowl.
"We just wanted to soak it all in," said Anderson, 70. "I wanted to get a flavor of it."
So many Steelers fans have made the trek that the Seattle contingent is wondering what ever happened to neutrality.
Joel Bearce, 42, checked into his hotel in Ann Arbor on Thursday to find himself surrounded. The banner at the door welcomed Steelers fans, the women behind the front desk were wearing Steelers jerseys and a busload of Pittsburghers were filing off their charter and into the lobby.
"Come on. Aren't hotels supposed to be neutral?" said Bearce, laughing.
Not only have Detroiters jumped on the Steeler bandwagon because native son Jerome Bettis came home to receive the key to the city, southern Michigan is heavy with transplanted Pittsburghers who maintain ties with their relatives.
That point was not lost on Casey Bricker, a native of Seattle who works at the M1A1 tank manufacturing plant in Warren, Mich. She and her son, James, wore their Seattle gear to yesterday's festivities and conceded being in the minority as they rode the elevated train that serves downtown commuters.
"The people mover was a sea of black and gold," she said. "I just wish the news would be a bit more two-sided. I can pick up any paper and find The Bus schedule everywhere. I looked on the internet and couldn't find anything about Seattle's schedule."
Make no mistake. Seattle fans are euphoric about being in the big game for the first time in the 30-year history of the franchise. They want to win, but the big difference between the two camps is, the Steelers need to win. If they had to, their following would have set out on foot.
There is no limit on the fervor that surrounds the Steelers.
Penguins rookie Sidney Crosby, upon being named the star of a recent home game, twirled a Terrible Towel during his curtain call. Newly acquired Pirates first baseman Sean Casey signed autographs at PirateFest wearing his Steelers sweatshirt.
The cultured crowd at the Pittsburgh Public theater has been greeted by the site of Terrible Towels in the lobby, but so have patrons of strip clubs.
The fever extends into church. At the Third Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh this morning, organist Charles Heaton will play as his postlude the notes that belt out "Here We Go, Steelers."
Blessedly, the countdown to the 6:22 p.m. kickoff is being measured in hours now, not days or weeks or years.
The ramp-up has been a study in Americana. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue refers to the Super Bowl as America's unofficial mid-winter holiday, with a worldwide audience of 1 billion viewers tuning in. From Detroit, it has felt more like Roman Bacchanalia meets Thunderome: two teams enter, one team wins.
Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette
Steelers fans post in front of a huge picture of Jerome Bettis at the NFL Experience at the Cobo Conference & Exhibition Center in downtown Detroit yesterday.
Celebrities and corporate movers-and-shakers have gathered to sip Cristol champagne and munch on yak steak at $50 a plate. At the same time, Detroit officials are luring homeless people off the streets with the promise of a meal and a place to catch the game on TV.
The media center has been ground zero for the big party. In the course of a week, anyone with a media credential could have pulled up a chair in an interview room and asked questions of the mayor, the governor, racing mogul Roger Penske, the coaches and players of both teams, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Aaron Neville, Dr. John and The Rolling Stones, who will be providing the halftime entertainment.
Mick Jagger conceded he didn't know much about American football, but his Super Bowl memory involved the Steelers.
"I remember Lynn Swann ... the levitated leap," Jagger said at the most heavily attended media function of the week.
Detroit opened its arms to visitors, aiming to reintroduce them to the city by throwing a winter party. At the same time, the Super Bowl was put on level one alert status by the Department of Homeland Security. NORAD fighter jets will provide air cover and enforce a no-fly zone within a 10-mile radius of Ford Field. In addition, 10,000 federal, state, local and private security officers patrol the ground and the Coast Guard cruises the Detroit River. Talk about playing dee-fense.
With the help of some Western Pennsylvania interests, the U.S. Army is providing some high-tech assistance. Robots that can look under vehicles for potential bombs are part of the milieu. The gadgets were provided by Kuchera Defense Systems of Windber, Pa., and were introduced to the NFL by FirstLink, a Department of Defense Center for National Excellence located at University of Pittsburgh.
One who has an insight on why people would drive five hours to watch a game on TV is Steelers defensive back Mike Logan, who played for McKeesport High School, West Virginia University and the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars before signing with the Steelers as a free agent in 2001.
He has 15 game tickets for the family and friends, but there will be at least that number driving to Detroit just to be here.
"They just want to share in the experience with us. We have a great fan base, and they travel well with us. You can't say enough about them. When you go into an opposing stadium and you see 10,000 Terrible Towels swinging, it just signifies what we're about -- hard working people. Some of my family members saved up money just to be here, to share in this experience with us, to make it a special event," Logan said.
"Pittsburgh has been gearing up for this moment for so long. I think this is a special moment, not just for this team, but for the whole city and the whole organization."
Logan grew up idolizing the Steelers. Pickup football games were played at 6C Rivers Stadium, which was his old apartment number in a McKeesport housing project. He used to wear a No. 12 jersey while his buddies wore Nos. 88 and 82.
"It wasn't one of them authentic jerseys, either. I just had one of them black and white shirts from Hills with No. 12 painted on it," Logan recalled, laughing. "There we were, pretending to be Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann and John Stallworth. We used to try to re-enact the Immaculate Reception and Swann's catch in the Super Bowl. We wanted to emulate the Pittsburgh Steelers."
What's more, Logan's grandfather once worked at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill on the South Side, the very reclaimed site where the Steelers now practice.
"I would never try to take away from Jerome's story. But in the little paragraphs, I have my own little story brewing. This is a special time for me," Logan said. "I would be cheating myself if I tried to put into words how I feel. It's almost too good to be true."
But a dream needs a happy ending to avoid becoming a nightmare, and the Steelers know it. It's game time.
"After the Denver game, I was almost overcome with emotion," Logan said. "But we have a game on Sunday, and we have to finish it off the right way."
The psyche of a city -- the psyche of a Nation -- depends on it.
― Stormy Davis (diamond), Monday, 6 February 2006 08:22 (eighteen years ago) link