It might as well be an invasion. The Pittsburgh Steelers arrived today and it felt more like homecoming than Super Bowl Monday.
Black-and-gold jerseys are everywhere already. It's six days before the game and Steelers people have taken up all the hotels, from Detroit halfway to Chicago. They'll offer you money for a ticket, and if that doesn't cut it, they'll offer you, ummm, services. They'll trade you almost anything -- piano lessons for life, a free surgical procedure. The mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, has considered honoring Detroit's native son by making it Jerome Bettis week. Yep, the entire week.
Look, it's a fact of NFL life that some teams "travel" better than others. Supporters of the traditional teams hit the road pretty well when they make the playoffs, starting with the Packers, Giants, Eagles, Bears and Redskins. Mercy on the Super Bowl if the Browns ever make it. The Cowboys and Raiders fans can make a nuisance of themselves. The Broncos fans don't seem to care about distance and time changes. But when it comes to taking over a town, the Steelers are at the top of the pyramid.
They'd have turned out if the Super Bowl had been in San Diego, but it isn't.
Detroit is a mere 285 miles from Pittsburgh, less than a five-hour drive. Detroit is right up their alley. If they can't be at home, they might as well be in Detroit. Pittsburgh and Detroit probably have more in common than any two big cities in the country. One is steel, the other autos, both rust-belt cities that thrived after WWII, but have struggled in the larger global economies. As my friend, Detroit Free Press columnist Drew Sharp, wrote in Monday's editions: "The rusted dreams of the blue-collar workforce have hit the Steel City and Motor City equally hard in the generation of economic globalization. Both cities live and die vicariously through the exploits of their beloved sports teams to the point that it has become an embedded part of their identities."
Oh, the Steelers' supporters are going to feel right at home as they invade Detroit. And Motown, while trying to give the appearance of neutrality, is quite happy with the Steelers, specifically Bettis, who grew up right here doing what people in Detroit, and for that matter Pittsburgh, do. Bettis, you see, was a fine bowler growing up. "I didn't play football," he reminded folks Monday, "until high school, so I wasn't that familiar with football. I was a bowler. I bowled until high school. I bowled. Citrus City Lanes, Garden Bowl. Football was a second thought. Bowling was my first love. I decided to play football once I got to high school. I had a lot of friends on the block. We played games on the block."
You think he's kidding? Bettis is having a bowling party on Thursday.
Detroit doesn't have all that much to celebrate all that often. So you think Detroit is shy about embracing a future Pro Football Hall of Fame member?
So forget the neutrality. The Lions haven't been worth a dime for years and years, so this week the Steelers belong to Detroit. Of the 75,000 or so people who will be in Ford Field on Sunday evening, bet on 40,000 or so Steelers fans, maybe 6,000 or so Seahawks fans, and all the folks who thought they were neutral will find themselves swept up in all that Steelers emotion, waving those Terrible Towels.
Thing is, the Seahawks know what they're up against. Seattle wide receiver Darrell Jackson said, "We're the other team."
Jackson is one of the Seattle players who is convinced that even Las Vegas is in the Steelers' corner. He called it "ridiculous" that the Seahawks, a No. 1 seed, are a four-point underdog to a No. 6 seed.
But even that's indirectly a function of Steelers mania. Oddsmakers don't care about the game itself when setting the betting line. They simply want, ideally, to have equal money being bet on both teams. If the Steelers had been installed as two-point favorites, all the money would have been bet on Pittsburgh. As is, some wonder if the number won't rise before kickoff.
But this is what happens when one team has been in the league for 75 years, when that franchise won four Super Bowls in six seasons, when those teams put nine of 22 starters (Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, John Stallworth, Lynn Swann, Mike Webster, Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, and Mel Blount) in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The mystique of that team, in spite of the fact that the last championship came 26 years ago, has kept even non-Steelers fans interested in the Steelers. Before the Seahawks arrived Sunday, it seemed nearly all the talk was about the team from Pittsburgh:
Why did the Steelers arrive a day later than the Seahawks, on Monday? And is it possible this departure from the traditional arrival will somehow hurt the Steelers' preparation? (No!) Is Big Ben Roethlisberger going to shave his Lincolnesque beard before the game? (No!) Will this week be Jerome Bettis week in Detroit? (Not yet?) Why are the Steelers wearing the road white uniforms? How will the Steelers continue to justify their us-against-the-world crusade when they're actually the favorites?
You walk into joints in and around downtown, you see Steelers caps and jerseys. It's Monday. Folks in Pittsburgh should be working. Maybe these are transplants living in Detroit. Regardless, they're Steelers fans. They talk Steelers talk. They're looking for tickets. Even if they have tickets, they know more Steelers fans who are on the way, driving on Thursday or Friday, maybe Saturday, happily joining the invasion.
