Pennsylvania has experienced just about everything in football: home-grown quarterbacking legends, national college championships, National Football League titles, even an "Immaculate Reception." Yet Pennsylvania is on the brink of something that has happened only twice in Super Bowl history.
With victories at home Sunday in their respective conference championship games, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles would advance to the Super Bowl on Feb. 6 in Jacksonville, Fla., to decide not only the NFL championship but, in an unexpected development, Keystone State bragging rights. The rare prospect of such an intrastate meeting -- the New York Giants and Buffalo in '91 and San Francisco and San Diego in '95 are the only others -- would find Pennsylvania football fanatics divided not just by an imaginary line somewhere between the two cities but even by different rooting interests within families.
Consider the Reitmeyers of Pottstown, Pa. Last Saturday afternoon near the corner of Ridge and Allegheny avenues in Pittsburgh, Carol Reitmeyer joined with a score of other Pittsburgh fans booing and waving yellow "Terrible Towels" at two New York Jets team buses roaring past behind a police escort toward Heinz Field for their playoff game with the Steelers. Nearby, her husband Jerry, who had on a black wool Steelers cap, smiled at this sampling of Pittsburgh's extraordinary fan fervor, then admitted the truth: He was an Eagles fan in disguise. "The Eagles and the Steelers are my two top teams," he said. "But, really, I'm just hoping we [the Eagles] have T.O. [injured wide receiver Terrell Owens] back for the Super Bowl."
If their dreams come to pass, the Reitmeyers promised to settle their differences amicably, explaining that a Steelers-Eagles Super Bowl would be not so much a confrontation of rivals (the teams seldom play and their true rivals are in their own conferences) but the opportunity for a state-wide celebration of Pennsylvania football. A mighty celebration it would surely be.
As it is, both cities have been consumed all season by their teams -- and the excitement is mounting. Last weekend, the Steelers, undefeated in all 14 games rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has started, edged the New York Jets, 20-17, in overtime to advance to the AFC championship game against New England, while the Eagles beat Minnesota, 27-14, to advance to the NFC title game against Atlanta. The cheering Saturday in Pittsburgh and Sunday in Philadelphia seemed almost loud enough to be heard at the other end of the state.
"It'd be great to see an all-Pennsylvania Super Bowl," Joe Gralinski of Stroudsburg, Pa., said. "That'd be fabulous. It would be a lot of people coming together to have a great time."
Toast of the Town
This is how it has been in Pittsburgh. One evening last month, more than 1,000 Steelers fans descended on an auto dealership in the suburb of Monroeville. A line of traffic backed up on Interstate 376, cars stretched to the Pennsylvania Turnpike entrance, people parallel-parked on busy Route 22 and walked up a steep grade in search of the attraction. "It was crazy," said Rob Cochran, president of the #1 Cochran dealership. "We didn't even advertise it that much."
The "it" was an appearance by Roethlisberger, the quarterback who with his unassuming, team-first approach personifies Pittsburgh's image as a hard-working, humble community. Roethlisberger signed about 800 items in two hours before he had to do an interview at halftime of a "Monday Night Football" game.
"I've never seen anybody take a town over like he did," said Ed Kiely, a former Steelers executive who has lived through some of the team's extraordinarily lean early years as well as its league domination in the 1970s (highlighted by Franco Harris's remarkable reception) and four Super Bowl victories. The 22-year-old Roethlisberger, from Miami of Ohio, began his streak of perfection after starting quarterback Tommy Maddox was injured during the Steelers' only setback, in the second game of the season against Baltimore. Despite his startling success, Roethlisberger has remained steadfastly unassuming, a demeanor made to order for Steelers fans.
"He comes along and does everything right," said Fred Zangaro, who played football with Pittsburgh-born quarterback Johnny Unitas at Louisville and, after college, with the local semipro Bloomfield Rams, who paid Unitas $6 a game in 1955 after the Steelers had cut him and before he joined the Baltimore Colts.
Through Roethlisberger, Zangaro relives his youth watching Steelers games at the James A. Garfield Club, whose members crowded around the bar Saturday as game time approached, talking considerably less about the former president than about the present day Steelers -- especially Roethlisberger.
"He's a down-to-earth kid, a young man, I should say," said Beverly Parrish, who tends bar at Jack's, a corner establishment on Pittsburgh's South Side which Roethlisberger has visited most Monday nights in a kind of ritual. He went there the Monday night before his first start, and after the Steelers won, he kept coming back. "I don't know if when he loses that will bring an end to it or not," said Scot McGrath, co-manager of Jack's, surprised by the instant celebrity's regular appearances.
"On Monday nights, there's more women here than you can imagine," Parrish said. "They just want to say hi, give him a pat on the back, get his phone number, get a date."
"Roethlisberger's not taking any credit," said Bill Bundy, a Steelers fan drinking a beer at the bar after getting off from work at a nearby commercial printing shop. "Part of his charisma is that he gives back to the team. He tries to share all the glory. You hear guys on other teams saying things like he does, but for some reason he comes across as sincere."
Steelers fans are so enraptured they show up in droves for road games, journeying even to Miami early this season despite weather that delayed the opening kickoff 7 1/2 hours. The game was played in torrential rain from the aftermath of Hurricane Jeanne. "If the Steelers were a college team," former club publicist Joe Gordon said, "all the bowls would be after them because the fans travel."
They also come from all over to Pittsburgh for home games.
At 2 in the morning Saturday at a local hotel, several men sharing a room started chanting for the Steelers. "Hey, you're [Jets quarterback] Chad Pennington," one of them cried out. There followed several shouts and a thud as apparently three of them brought "Pennington" to the carpet.
Another Steelers fan arrived from San Diego and, deciding he needed a haircut, found a small shop near Duquesne University. Inside was none other than Roethlisberger, getting a trim.
"I thought he was a college student the first couple times I did his hair," said Bob Traupman, a pleasant man almost as big as Roethlisberger, who is 6 feet 4 and 241 pounds.
One of the beauties of being a sports fan in Pittsburgh is never knowing when you turn a corner or cross a hill you just might bump into a famous athlete. In football season, the city combines a sense of being in a small, mystical place such as Green Bay, where the players are still part of the community, with a New York City rush-hour intensity as Steelers fans rushed toward Heinz Field, virtually all dressed in black and gold.
"This is like a miracle to me," cried a middle-aged woman, opening her arms as if to embrace the entire 64,000-seat stadium about 1,000 yards in front of her. She was jubilant Saturday over her beloved Steelers' remarkable season when she might well have been giving thanks for what she described as her recovery from midseason surgery for a brain tumor.
"It's, like, we need this," she said. "Pittsburgh needs this. Pittsburgh has always been a football town."
'This Is Our Time'
To Philadelphia. About 300 miles across the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the football frenzy was as evident Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field. But there were skeptics to be found, the result of the Eagles' three straight NFC title game losses. "I can't put my faith in them in games like this," said Lee Milliner, a taxi driver. "It just seems that fate works against us."
The great majority, however, predicted this would be the Eagles' year.
"Everybody thinks we need T.O.," said Phil DiMeo, as a band marched past in the parking lot. "But this is our time. We're ready to go."
Merrill Reese, the Eagles' play-by-play broadcaster, praised Eagles fans. "They're great fans. They come out in all kinds of weather," he said. "It's kind of tiresome to keep hearing that they booed Santa Claus. There were extenuating circumstances. . . .
Sunday was bitter, colder even than Pittsburgh on Saturday. Undaunted, fans bundled themselves in layers of clothing. Many brought heaters to sustain the joy of tailgating.
"If the Eagles and Steelers win, does that mean they'll play the game [the Super Bowl] at Penn State?" Bubba Nacrelli asked as he and friends, garbed in Eagles green and silver, fried a turkey next to their well-traveled, 1987-model camper in a stadium parking lot. Nacrelli, of course, knew where the Super Bowl would be played, as verified by posters affixed to countless nearby vehicles: "Jacksonville Or Bust."
