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The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are currently members of the Northern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The team has appeared in six Super Bowls and is, with the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys, one of three teams to have won five of them, and has appeared in thirteen Conference Championship Games, winning six. They are the only team in NFL playoff history to win a Super Bowl after being seeded sixth in the playoffs, winning three consecutive games on the road followed by a Super Bowl victory in Detroit on February 5, 2006.
Originally named the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team, along with the Philadelphia Eagles and the now-defunct Cincinnati Reds football team, joined the NFL as 1933 expansion teams, after Art Rooney, Sr. paid a $2,500 fee. The team was renamed the Steelers in 1941 after the city's prominent steel industry to reflect the "blue-collar worker" ethic of the many Pittsburgh fans as well as to avoid confusion with the major league baseball team with the same name.
The Steelers conduct summer training camp at nearby Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
FRANCHISE HISTORY
The Pittsburgh NFL team first took to the field on September 20, 1933, losing 23-2 to the New York Giants. Through the 1930s the Pirates never finished higher than second place in their division, or with a record better than .500 (1936). Pittsburgh did make history in 1938 by signing Byron White, a future justice on the U.S. Supreme Court to what was at the time the biggest contract in NFL history, but he only played one year with the Pirates before signing with the Detroit Lions.
In 1941, the team was renamed the Steelers after the city's prominence as a steel-making center. But the team maintained a long history of futility for the next three decades.
During World War II, the Steelers experienced player shortages. They twice merged with other NFL franchises in order to field a team. During the 1943 season, they merged with the Philadelphia Eagles forming the "Phil-Pitt Eagles" and were known as the "Steagles". This team went 5-4-1. In 1944 they merged with the Chicago Cardinals and were known as "Card-Pitt" and derisively known as the "Car-Pitts" or "Carpets", as they finished the season winless.
The Steelers made the playoffs for the first time in 1947, tying for first place in the division at 8-4 with the Philadelphia Eagles. This forced a tie-breaking playoff game at Forbes Field, which the Steelers lost 21-0. That would be Pittsburgh's last playoff game for 25 years.
Their luck changed with the hiring of coach Chuck Noll. Noll's most remarkable talent was in his draft selections, taking Hall of Famers "Mean" Joe Greene in 1969, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount in 1970, Jack Ham in 1971, Franco Harris in 1972, and finally, in 1974,considered by many the best draft in NFL history, pulled the incredible feat of selecting four Hall of Famers in one draft year, Mike Webster, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth and Jack Lambert. This group of players formed the base of one of the greatest teams in NFL history, making the playoffs 8 seasons, and becoming the only team in NFL history to win 4 Super Bowls in 6 years.
The Steelers suffered a rash of injuries in the 1980 season and missed the playoffs with a 9-7 record. 1981 was no better, with an 8-8 showing. The team was then hit with the retirements of all their key players from the Super Bowl years. Mean Joe Greene retired after the 1981 season, Lynn Swann and Jack Ham after 1982, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount after 1983, and Jack Lambert after 1984.
In 1992 Chuck Noll retired and was succeeded by Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Bill Cowher, a native of the Pittsburgh suburb of Crafton. Cowher led the Steelers to the playoffs in each of his first six seasons as coach, a feat that had only previously been accomplished by legendary coach Paul Brown of the Cleveland Browns. Overall, Cowher has taken his team to the playoffs in 10 out of his 14 seasons, including appearances in Super Bowl XXX in 1996 and the franchise's record-tying fifth Super Bowl win in Super Bowl XL in 2006 over the National Football Conference champion Seattle Seahawks. With their Super Bowl XL victory, the Steelers became the third team to win five Super Bowls. The 2006 Steelers were the first sixth-seeded playoff team to reach and win the Super Bowl since the NFL expanded to a 12-team postseason tournament in 1990.
Since the NFL merger in 1970, the Pittsburgh Steelers have compiled an overall record of 333-217-2, reached the playoffs 22 times, winning their division 17 times, played in 13 AFC Championship Games, and won 5 Super Bowls.
LOGO AND UNIFORMS
The Steelers have used black and gold as their colors since the club's inception (excluding the 1943 season when they merged with the Philadelphia Eagles and formed the "Steagles"; the team's colors were green and white as a result of wearing the Eagles uniforms). Originally, the team wore solid gold helmets and black jerseys. Unlike most other cities, the colors are currently also used by the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team and the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, making it the official team colors of every professional sports team in the city.
The Steelers logo was then introduced in 1962, and is based on the "Steelmark", originally designed for U.S. Steel, by Cleveland, Ohio based Republic Steel, and now owned by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). It consists of the word "Steelers" surrounded by three astroids (hypocycloids of four cusps). The original meanings behind the astroids were, "Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world" and later the colors came to represent the ingredients of steel, the yellow representing coal; the orange, ore; and the blue, steel scrap. [1] While the "Steelmark" logo only contains the word "Steel", the Steelers were given special permission to add "-ers".
The Steelers are the only NFL team that puts their logo on only one side of the helmet (the right side). Long time field and equipment manager Jack Hart was instructed to do this by Art Rooney. At first, it was a test to see how the logo appeared on their gold helmets, but its popularity led the team to leave it that way permanently. [2] A year after introducing the logo, they switched to black helmets to make it stand out more.
The Steelers have had the same basic look for their uniforms since 1936 (save for during the 1967 season when the team experimented with a "triangle" theme), and started to use the current uniform design in 1968. The design consists of gold pants and either black jerseys or white jerseys, except for the 1970 and 1971 seasons, when the Steelers wore white pants with their white jerseys. The helmet is solid black with a gold central stripe and small white uniform numbers on the forehead. In 1997 the team switched to rounded numbers instead of the traditional block numbers, and a Steelers logo patch was added to the left side of the jersey.
While teams in recent years have been occasionally wearing their white jerseys at home (or in the case of the Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins, and Miami Dolphins, wear white at home all the time), the Steelers are currently one of the few NFL teams (and the only one in the AFC North) that consistently wears its team colored jersey at home, always opting for black. This appears very unlikely to change in the future, although the Steelers did opt for white as the designated "home" team in Super Bowl XL as a result of their road success in the 2005 season, since Bill Cowher did say that "the game is not at Heinz Field, so this is an away game." In addition, there appear to be no plans to introduce an alternate gold jersey.
The "Terrible Towel" is a gimmick created by Myron Cope, a broadcaster, for the Steelers. Needing a way to excite the fans during a 1975 playoff game against the Baltimore Colts, Cope urged fans to take yellow dish towels to the game and wave them throughout.
The Terrible Towel is a gimmick created by Myron Cope, a broadcaster for the Pittsburgh Steelers (an American football team). Needing a way to excite the fans during a 1975 playoff football game against the Baltimore Colts, Cope urged fans to take yellow dish towels to the game and wave them throughout. Some Steelers players were unenthused (notably linebacker Andy Russell who told Cope they weren't "a gimmick team"). Nevertheless, the stands were filled with yellow towels that day, and the Steelers always seemed to complete terrific plays when the towels were waving. The Steelers won that game 28-10, and ironically, Russell himself scored a defensive touchdown.
The Steelers introduced gold towels with the words "Myron Cope's Terrible Towel" in black on them just in time for Super Bowl X. The Steelers went on to win, "thanks to the Towels," many claimed, against the Dallas Cowboys.
Today, there are many other types of Terrible Towels for sale, such as golf towels, black towels, beach towels, and towels with the Steelers logo on it. In addition, fans of many other college and NFL teams have begun waving towels in their teams colors.
In 1996 Mr. Cope gave the rights to Myron Cope's Official Terrible Towel to the Allegheny Valley School in the Pittsburgh suburb of Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. The school provides care for more than 900 people with mental retardation and physical disabilities. Proceeds from the Terrible Towel have helped raise almost $1.1 million for the school.
On October 31, 2005, a special Terrible Towel was created to honor Cope for his 35 years as a Steelers broadcaster and was waved prior to the Monday Night Football game between the Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens at Heinz Field. A limited edition of 35,000 were made, all with familiar "Cope-isms" like "Yoi!".
In the days leading up to 2006 Super Bowl, Terrible Towels became more popular than ever with many Pittsburgh stores running out of them, including the special commorative towel shown on the right.
This is Box 3. Type anything you like here or use HTML. This area will automatically become a scrollbox if there is enough text here. One day in a small sports bar in Eastern Tennessee several devoted football fans gathered as they normally do to watch thier favorite football sports team, the Pittsburgh Steelers take the field against the local favorites, the Tennessee Titans. After toughing out another long monotonous summer of baseball, soccer, Nascar and spelling bees highlights monopolizing the sports world, the fans all greet each other like long lost family members that have once again been reunited. The excitement in the air grows more intense as more friends and family enter the bar. As a few other patrons at the bar decked out in orange, blue or silver can do nothing but shake thier heads in disgust as they slowly watch the place turn into a sea of black and gold. As the time nears one o'clock the tables down in front of the projection wall were full, despite the bars decision to reserve seating for thier most consistant and loyal clients. Eventually the area is standing room only and was so crowded that even the waitresses couldn't even get through to serve thier guests without spilling anything.
As the bar manager, a Cincinnati Bengals fan, attempted to squeeze through the crowd of Steeler fans, he looks back at us in frustration and yells "Damn Steeler fans, think you run this place? You're like the freakin' Mafia!" As several fans voiced thier pleasantries back to the disgruntled gentleman, several of us saw that as a reason to take pride in what we where just labeled. Realization then set in. The realization about how regardless the Steelers' seasons success, despite of the other NFL teams bandwagoning popularity, in addition to playing in a league that thrives off of the more louder and flashier individual players, the Pittsburgh Steelers were a team that always ran deep in a tradition of guys that bled and sweat black and gold on and off the field. A team in a poor, blue collar town that not only demanded, but expected good hard work ethic and determination from those that would don a black and gold jersey. A team that has more loyal fans than any other team and many times and even takes over visiting stadiums. Most importantly, a team that is rich in a history the close bonds between a sports franchise and its fans.
Although most true Steeler fans understand the analogy between the close knit Steelers family and the comparison to the Mafia. However the Steel City Mafia understands there are negative connotations associated with the word "mafia" and chooses to focus more on the positive family aspects that can be found only among the Steelers faithful. We do not condone or encourage any criminal behavior or illegal activity unless it is in the form of a bone crunching sack on the football field. Like it or not, just like the mob we are everywhere, and we will soon take over your town. Hate us, boycott us, talk all the smack you want about us. Unlike other fans, the Steeler fans are strong, we are family, and we are here to stay. If you believe in our cause, join the family now and spread the word.
The GodfatherThis is Box 4. Type anything you like here or use HTML. This area will automatically become a scrollbox if there is enough text here.