83 posts tagged “steelers”

Fuck the Raiders.  Fuck the ***skins.  Fuck Dan Snyder.  Fuck the Just Us League.  Fuck Dabysan.  And fuck Cap'n fucking Crunch.  I hate football and I got a lotta anger to spread around.

[UPDATE: Okay, so the Saints held on and managed to keep my Monday from being utterly miserable.  But you know what?  Fuck the ***skins anyway.]

I had been kicking myself for not trying to extend my stay in the Emerald City through the weekend, but I guess things have a way of working out for the best whether we realize it or not.  M-----l headed west the day after I came home, and he and Homebody spent the morning watching my team play his team.  I could have been there watching with them.  It's best that I wasn't.  There are worse fan bases in sports, but no fans are worse than Bengal fans when it comes to keeping a little bit of success in proper perspective.  I still remember vividly the bitching and moaning on the part of Bengal fans when the Steelers shredded them (and Carson Palmer's knee) on the way to Super Bowl XL.  You'd have thought the league promised them a championship or something, the way they cried about "being robbed."  And I have no doubt that everyone in southwest Ohio believes after today that they are owed a Super Bowl victory.  After two flukey losses, I kind of hope we face the Bungles a third time in the playoffs.  I look forward to seeing them (and, hopefully, Carson Palmer's knee) shredded by the Steelers once again on their - the Steelers' - way to a seventh Lombardi Trophy.

Who dey?  Dey ain't nuthin', that's who dey.

Nine times out of ten, my motivation for doing anything is: spite.  There's no better way to illustrate this than to describe how the Boston Red Sox became my least favorite sports team of all time.

I'm not really a baseball fan.  I enjoy baseball, I guess, in the same way that I enjoy the Olympics; I like the concept in general and I enjoy watching every once in a while, but I'm glad it doesn't occupy too much of my time.  I pay just enough attention to know basically what's going on because it feels like at least that much is required of a "sports fan."

I am, however, an avid football fan.  Earlier this decade, the New England Patriots cheated their way to a couple of Super Bowl victories and a whole crowd of douchey Massholes crawled out from under the rocks they'd been using for shelter.  They started talking about the Patriots as a "dynasty" despite that the team had only - at the time - two good seasons.  A few of them even went so far, in 2004 mind you, to label the Patriots the "team of the decade."  We all know that's ridiculous.  Everybody knows the Pittsburgh Steelers, who just so happen to be the team I root for, are the team of the decade.  Somehow, the mouth-breathing neanderthals in Massachussets gruntedly loudly enough that the national sports media noticed their bullshit claim and began lavishing undue attention on the Patriots.  They - the Pats - began turning up on those nationally televised late Sunday and prime-time games, taking some of the exposure which the Steelers so richly deserved.  So I got to watch my team less, and what coverage I did get fawned over a lesser team.  This situation affected me personally; the Patriots actually made my life worse.  So, naturally, I fucking loathe the New England Patriots.

This is where it starts to get a little complicated.  Because I hate the Patriots so much, I am obligated by spite to hate the Red Sox even more.  I know that every single Patriot fan would happily watch the Patriots go winless for the rest of time if that resulted in a World Series victory for the Red Sox.  I have to hate the Red Sox more than the Patriots because all the Pats fans love the Red Sox more.  So the Red Sox are my least favorite sports team of all time.  It makes perfect sense.

But I've noticed something a little strange happening over the past few years.  I despise the Red Sox so much that subconsciously, I've wanted the New York Yankees to do well.  You see, Red Sox fans hate the Yankees.  They chant "Yankees suck!" at the NFL Draft.  (This is more evidence, by the way, that Sawx fans are retarded and that I am right to hate them more.)  Every Yankee victory hurts a Red Sox fan deep in the most primative quadrants of his unenlightened simian brain (even though he will never know why), and that gives me great pleasure.  Lately I have told a few people that "I hate the Red Sox so much that I am practically a Yankee fan."  It was only last week that I realized that statement was actually true.

So consider this my official coming out as a fan of the New York Yankees.  I didn't have an axe to grind in the MLB anyway, so why not the Yankees?  They fit all my criteria.  They have a long and storied history of winning a lot.  Rooting against their chief rival is easy.  Jerry Hairston, Jr. is on their roster.  But perhaps best of all, my very first act as an official Yankee fan is that I get to root for them to reduce Cap'n Crunch to a whimpering and pathetic heap.  Yes, I would enjoy Cappy's devastation very much.  That, there, is just the kind of personal connection that makes sports so much fun.

I think a lot about why I like football so much.  Seriously, I do.  On the surface it doesn't make any sense to me at all.  None of anything that happens in the NFL on any given Sunday has any bearing on my day-to-day life.  And yet, I was just a little bit happier yesterday because my Steelers won and their division rival Bengals and Ravens both lost.  I was pleased that the Saints won and the ***skins lost, even though neither game directly affected my specific rooting interest.  (Unless, of course, you count "spite" among my rooting interests. That had a little to do with my reveling in that Skins loss.  And, oh yeah - ask me how the Toledo Maroons fared.)  There's really no way to rationally explain why watching my team win the Super Bowl - at the Super Bowl - will always rank among the very best moments of my life.  Or so I thought.

I'm not going to say Chuck Klosterman's explanation is perfect, but it's the best one I have ever read.  And whatever is second isn't close.  If only everything ever written about football could be this good, all the time, always....  Including my lame-ass blog post.

The main reason for my trip to the flyovers on this particular weekend is to go to the Steelers game.  They're playing the Lions in Detroit, and my brother-in-law (poor guy) is a lifelong Lions fan.  One of us - the one who roots for the team who has won the most Super Bowls and has been enormously successful over the past forty years - is going to be pretty pleased at four o'clock this afternoon.  At least my brother-in-law is accustomed to disappointment.  He is, after all, a lifelong Lions fan.

It's the least I can do to post a Rocktober song just for him, though.  We used to work together at the service station during the summers when I was in college, and there were several songs with which we always sang along whenever they came on the radio.  We sounded good.  You never would have guessed - way back then - that I would one day be an award-winning bad singer.  Our tickets for the game are in the all-you-can-eats-seats, which makes today's song a little ironic.

Fun fact: though widely considered by most (including me until just now) to be a crass cross-promotional attempt by Soundgarden and Pearl Jam to capitalize on the success of Badmotorfinger and Ten, this song - and the record on which it appears - predates those albums by six and four months, respectively.  It was only after both of those records broke big that this one was reissued and crassly cross-promoted.  Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

As a lifelong Steeler fan, I've had much to enjoy over the past ten or sixteen football seasons.  Some of my favorite memories are obvious.  Watching the Steelers win the Super Bowl in Tampa and Pittsburgh are first and second, in that order.  Some of my favorite memories are less obvious.

The 2005 Cincinnati Bengals had awful big mouths for a team that hadn't done anything since the first George Bush was President.  They got real cocky, real fast.  And when you get real cocky, real fast, the karma police are going to knock on your door and ask you to take a ride with them downtown.  (I thought I'd use a metaphor that Bengals fans would understand.  Because every member of the Bengals has been arrested, you see.) That's why the Bengals not only lost to the Steelers in the playoffs, but lost the better part of their next three seasons as their star quarterback recovered from a debilitating and hilarious knee injury on a completely legit play.

Three years later, the Bengals are becoming unjustifiably arrogant again.  Pittsburgh heads to Cincinnati this weekend with an opportunity to shut them up.  I'm looking forward to it.  And to more Youtube videos posted by bitter Bengal fans.

...was turning my lousy draft position into one of the strongest teams in the league.  I drafted tenth of ten teams, and I knew going in that all the best running backs would be gone.  I decided to draft the best available player and let the RB's take care of themselves.  So I took Drew Brees and Andre Johnson, who was the top receiver on my board.  (I think the Cardinals are going to take a step back this year and the Texans are going to contend for the playoffs in a tough division.)  We've got some real knuckleheads in the Just Us League, so I was also hedging my bet on a few idiotic decisions (like the guy who drafted Ryan Grant sixteenth overall).  I was able to pick up Marion Barber and Pierre Thomas with my next picks, and Willie Parker and Ray Rice to back them up.  I feel pretty good about my running back corps.  I've got Anthony Gonzalez and Braylon Edwards lining up with Johnson, and while I'm not overly bullish on Butterfingers Edwards, he was a good value pick.  Plus, I've got a trio with a lot of upside backing them up.  My tight end, kicker, and backup quarterback aren't flashy, but they're serviceable and consistent and they're not going to lose me any games.  My only somewhat questionable move was a slight reach for the Steelers Defense/Special Teams in the ninth round.  But hey, they're the best defense on the board (not to mention the NFL) and they're the Steelers.  I never said I wasn't a homer.

I'm feeling really good right now about my prospects for bringing home the JUL Trophy for a second time.  I look forward to the six weeks or so it will share space on my shelf with the Ramsey Cup.

A couple hours ago, I was hobbling out of FedEx Field wearing my Polamalu jersey.  A gentleman walking next to me said, "Meaning no disrespect, that's kind of symbolic, isn't it?"  "What is?" I asked, and he gestured toward my crutches.  I could hardly believe it.  "These?  It's symbolic I'm physically limping out of here after a preseason loss?"

In hindsight, I guess I understand a little bit better.  For the Steelers, this was just a normal preseason football game.  The starters played a quarter and hoped they didn't get hurt.  Sixty other guys battled for what will amount to maybe five open spots on the team.  The vanilla game plan was designed less to put points on the board than to avoid giving nothing away.  But for the ***skins this was the most important game of their season.  This was their Super Bowl, since there's no chance they will make it to the real one.  And yes, the ***skins and their fans can say they beat the World Champions.  Congrats, ***skins fans.  I hope this hollow victory is some comfort in January.

I wasn't quite as psyched as I should have been for this game.  It started pouring here about a half-hour before my ride was to pick me up, and it continued raining heavily all the way to the stadium.  But as it turned out, we were pretty lucky with the weather.  Or as lucky as is possible given an 80% chance of thunderstorms.  The rain halted as we pulled into the parking lot, and during the respite, we were able to get our tent and grill set up.  It began raining again at about the time we started the burgers cooking, and continued until shortly after we found our seats.  And then it was fine for the rest of the game until final two-minute warning.  Things definitely could have been worse. Our seats were in the fourth row from the field at the five yard line.  They weren't the best for actually watching  football, but they were outstanding for watching the ***skins cheerleaders.  Which reminds me - I'd like to introduce yinz to the new lady in my life.  Her name is Sheridan.  We met in the third quarter.  I've never believed in love at first sight, but she swears that's what she felt when she saw me in the stands.