I Laugh

[Tim Steelersfan]

I laugh.

Really. I'm just laughing. This is systemic. It's Tomlin, always has been. But moreso, it's Art. And we are locked in with the Rooney Rule we created. We, my friends, are stuck. The Standard is what we have seen for the past two weeks- and the past 13 years or more. And it isn't changing. I fear for a long, long time.

Save those brown bags and put them to good use.

 

[Blacksheep13]

Did you know he never had a losing season tho?

 

[SteelerFan448]

https://x.com/sharpfootball/status/1732979101915373968?s=46&t=HllU_1syy4YuwQKLLbNctg

 

[Chicoman]

Did you know he never had a losing season tho?

He will this season.....7-10 incoming! No way do we beat the Colts in Indy or the Bungles in the Burgh! As for Seattle & The Ratbirds on the road FORGET IT!

This is a 7 win team!

 

[mightyguru]

I laugh.

Really. I'm just laughing. This is systemic. It's Tomlin, always has been. But moreso, it's Art. And we are locked in with the Rooney Rule we created. We, my friends, are stuck. The Standard is what we have seen for the past two weeks- and the past 13 years or more. And it isn't changing. I fear for a long, long time.

Save those brown bags and put them to good use.

dude has no nipples.

 

[mightyguru]

I laugh too...while I cry. There are teams with half the talent the Steelers have and win...a few games anyway. This team underachieves so insanely...it boggles the mind. Fire everyone.

 

[Tim Steelersfan]

I laugh too...while I cry. There are teams with half the talent the Steelers have and win...a few games anyway. This team underachieves so insanely...it boggles the mind. Fire everyone.

And the boos last night. The boos were as loud as any I've heard at Heinz (AcneSure) ever.

 

[SteelerFan448]

And the boos last night. The boos were as loud as any I've heard at Heinz (AcneSure) ever.

Chanting for Mason Rudolph was worse than the boos. It has come full circle to the guy many wanted out of a Steelers uniform was all of a sudden the guy they wanted to see on the field.

 

[Ye Black Knight]

We aren’t stuck. Just quit watching and supporting this garbage product. We have the power. So let’s use it because this is unacceptable.

 

[diver]

I laugh too...while I cry. There are teams with half the talent the Steelers have and win...a few games anyway. This team underachieves so insanely...it boggles the mind. Fire everyone.

I'm not sure the Steelers have that much talent. I think they think they are talented. But...

 

[Drink IRON City]

dude has no nipples.

That’s how you know it’s Tim Steelersfan, that’s the give-away.


Salute the nation

 

[Ron Burgundy]

We aren’t stuck. Just quit watching and supporting this garbage product. We have the power. So let’s use it because this is unacceptable.

It hasn’t worked with the Pirates. People still go to games.

 

[Steelr4evr]

It hasn’t worked with the Pirates. People still go to games.

That's nuts isn't it? I guess some people are conditioning to accepting much less and just enjoy getting out.

I spend as little money as possible on professional sports. I'm not an NFL fan since they've wrecked the game. I'm just a Steeler fan.

The last 3 years have pretty much made me question why I'm wasting my time. For the first time in a long time,I'm really looking forward to the season being over. If they don't make some serious changes this offseason I'll be fishing and hitting the rifle range on Sundays next year.

It's not that hard to replace something that is no longer entertaining or enjoyable.

 

[Drink IRON City]

It hasn’t worked with the Pirates. People still go to games.

That's nuts isn't it? I guess some people are conditioning to accepting much less and just enjoy getting out.

I spend as little money as possible on professional sports. I'm not an NFL fan since they've wrecked the game. I'm just a Steeler fan.

The last 3 years have pretty much made me question why I'm wasting my time. For the first time in a long time,I'm really looking forward to the season being over. If they don't make some serious changes this offseason I'll be fishing and hitting the rifle range on Sundays next year.

It's not that hard to replace something that is no longer entertaining or enjoyable.

Sorry guys, but if I’m ever in PITTSBURGHBURGH and there is a Pirates / Penguins / or STEELERS game going on, ……

I’m going to it. Travel to far, fan to long, to NOT go.


If I lived in PITTSBURGH, it would posssibly be a different story.



Salute the nation

 

[Ye Black Knight]

It hasn’t worked with the Pirates. People still go to games.

But that’s my point. If people stopped going to games and supporting the product with their cash things would change.

 

[SteelerFan448]

But that’s my point. If people stopped going to games and supporting the product with their cash things would change.

It's not really that simple. People aren't going to give up their seat licenses and season tickets.

 

[Drink IRON City]

It's not really that simple. People aren't going to give up their seat licenses and season tickets.

100% correct as when that PSL came into IDEA, it was also thought as a way to guarantee attendance. It has morphed to somewhat back-fire for home town advantage as they are now sold, similar to public trading on the tickets but keeping the ownership of the seat.


ALSO

To many people who can now afford that “first time ever” trip to the NFL football game of their favorite LIFE team. Add in kids, and helicopter parents who give them everything…………



Salute the nation

 

[Djfan]

Right. It's too crazy expensive to get the product they are offering.

I can watch it for free, or skip it all together. I have skipped quite a few these last five or six years.

 

[Steeltime]

It hasn’t worked with the Pirates. People still go to games.

Look, I get that we fans are irritated beyond description with the incessant failures of the Pirates franchise over the past 30 years but comparing MLB teams to NFL teams is comparing apples and dinosaurs. MLB does NOT have a salary cap or true revenue sharing while the NFL has both. The Pirates are sad but at least they have an excuse; the Steelers are sad and have no excuse.

 

[Misstha70’s]

This seems so long ago:

WDVE’s Scott Paulsen changed it all in just over 900 words with his seminal “Nation Building” essay released shortly before the Steelers AFC Championship Game vs. Denver.

Steelers Nation; Photo credit: Fabus, Getty Images/New York Daily News
Paulsen’s piece spread like wildfire in cyberspace, yet was not to be found in a Google search nor did it turn up on WDVE’s site. Fortunately, an Inbox cleaning effort turned up a copy Paulson’s “Nation Building,” and Steel Curtain Rising now offers it here, for everyone in Steelers Nation to enjoy.

Scott Paulsen Gives Us Steeler Nation​

Nation Building By WDVE‘s Scott Paulsen – January 18, 2006

Think about this the next time someone begins to argue with you that a professional sports franchise is not important to a city’s identity:

In the 1980’s, as the steel mills and their supporting factories shut down from Homestead to Midland, Pittsburghers, faced for the first time in their lives with the specter of unemployment, were forced to pick up their families, leave their home towns and move to more profitable parts of the country. The steel workers were not ready for this. They had planned to stay in the ‘burgh their entire lives. It was home.


Breath taking Pittsburgh sunrise by Dave DiCello
Everyone I know can tell the same story about how Dad, Uncle Bob or their brother-in-law packed a U-Haul and headed down to Tampa to build houses or up to Boston for an office job or out to California to star in p_rn vide_s.

• All right. Maybe that last one just happened in my family.

At this same time, during the early to mid-eighties, the Pittsburgh Steelers were at the peak of their popularity. Following the dynasty years, the power of the Steelers was strong. Every man, woman, boy and girl from parts of four states were Pittsburgh faithful, living and breathing day to day on the news of their favorite team. Then, as now, it seemed to be all anyone talked about.

• Who do you think the Steelers will take in the draft this year?
• Is Terry Bradshaw done?
• Can you believe they won’t give Franco the money – what’s he doing going to Seattle?

The last memories most unemployed steel workers had of their towns had a black and gold tinge. The good times remembered all seemed to revolve, somehow, around a football game. Sneaking away from your sister’s wedding reception to go downstairs to the bar and watch the game against Earl Campbell and the Oilers – going to midnight mass, still half in the bag after Pittsburgh beat Oakland – you and your grandfather, both crying at the sight of The Chief, finally holding his Vince Lombardi Trophy. Good times baby …. good times.

• And then, the mills closed.

Damn the mills.

One of the unseen benefits of the collapse of the value systems our families believed in – that the mill would look after you through thick and thin – was that now, decades later, there is not a town in America where a Pittsburgher cannot feel at home.

Pour House, a now defunct DC Area Steelers Bar. Photo Credit: SteelersBars.com
Nearly every city in the United States has a designated “Black and Gold” establishment. From Bangor, Maine to Honolulu, Hawaii, and every town in between can be found an oasis of Iron City, chipped ham, perogies, kilbosa, and yinzers. It’s great to know that no matter what happened in the lives of our Steel City refugees, they never forgot the things that held us together as a city – families, food, and Steelers football.

• It’s what we call the Steeler Nation.

You see it every football season. And when the Steelers have a great year, as they have had this season, the power of the Steeler Nation rises to show itself stronger than ever. This week, as the Pittsburgh team of Ben Roethlisberger, Troy Polamalu, Jerome Bettis and Joey Porter head to Denver, the fans of L.C. Greenwood, Jack Lambert, Rocky Bleier and Mel Blount, the generation who followed Greg Lloyd, Yancey Thigpen, Rod Woodson and Levon Kirkland will be watching from Dallas to Chicago, from an Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, to a tent stuck in the sand near Fallujah, Iraq.

I have received more email from displaced Pittsburgh Steelers fans this week than Christmas cards this holiday season.

• They’re everywhere.
• We’re everywhere.
• We are the Steeler Nation.

And now, it’s passing from one generation to the next. The children of displaced Pittsburghers, who have never lived in the Steel City, are growing up Steelers fans. When they come back to their parents’ hometowns to visit the grandparents, they hope, above all, to be blessed enough to get to see the Steelers in person.

• Heinz Field is their football Mecca.

And if a ticket isn’t available, that’s okay, too. There’s nothing better than sitting in Grandpa’s living room, just like Dad did, eating Grandma’s cooking and watching the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Just like Dad did.

So, to you, Steeler Nation, I send best wishes and a fond wave of the Terrible Towel. To Tom, who emailed from Massachusetts to say how great it was to watch the Patriots lose and the Steelers win in one glorious weekend. To Michelle, from Milwaukee, who wrote to let me know it was she who hexed Mike Vanderjagt last Sunday by chanting “boogity, boogity, boogity” and giving him the “maloik”. To Jack, who will somehow pull himself away from the beach bar he tends in Hilo, Hawaii, to once again root for the black and gold in the middle of the night (his time), I say, thanks for giving power to the great Steeler Nation.

All around the NFL, the word is out that the Pittsburgh Steeler fans “travel well”, meaning they will fly or drive from Pittsburgh to anywhere the Steelers play, just to see their team. The one aspect about that situation the rest of the NFL fails to grasp is that, sometimes, the Steeler Nation does not have to travel. Sometimes, we’re already there.

• Yes, the short sighted steel mills screwed our families over.

But they did, in a completely unintended way, create something new and perhaps more powerful than an industry.

They helped created a nation. A Steeler Nation