Cleveland Star: Easy Targets

Never missing the opportunity to pile on Steelers and their slack jawed fans, I thought I'd make a quick post (Tom started it). Believe me when I say Steelers fans FROM Pittsburgh really don't bother me. Root for the home team, I get it. That said Steelers fans FROM Ohio, especially Cleveland, that have zero ties to Pittsburgh need to have a stern talking to. There's a guy at the recreation center that wears the same Steelers shirt and Indians hat everyday. Babies with AIDS, world hunger and Al-Qaeda make me less upset than this douche. It's not just him, I see this a lot around town. It's inexplicable.

Let's examine the prototypical Steeler fan. They say imaginary words like "Yinz" and "Stillers". They are also crazy over a Pittsburgh delicacy they affectionately refer to as "Jumbo". What's "Jumbo"? It's freaking bologna. Literally. They eat it on white bread and toss some mayo on it if it happens to be a special occasion.

Martin Cizmar of the Phoenix New Times wrote this right before this last Super Bowl, "I once called the Steelers "White Trash America's Team" and they are. There's something about the black and yellow -- perhaps it is the black and yellow itself -- that draws food stamp re-sellin', meth-cooking rednecks into the fold. Every team has a few loud, boorish fans; the "Stillers" have a few normal ones. Go into the shittiest dive bar within five miles of your house anywhere in America and start shit-talking the team -- you'll find a guy in jean shorts to argue with. Try the same thing with the Bears, the Patriots or even the Packers -- the percentages won't compare."

Cizmar continues, "In 1967, the NFL came up with a really great marketing gimmick and started calling its championship game the "Super Bowl." No one outside Pittsburgh considers championships any less impressive if they occurred before that date, but ask a Steelers fan about it and you'll hear that such games are "ancient history" and that "no one cares." The roots of this disconnect run to the fact that, as best I can tell, the average Steelers fan is born to a mother who is 16.2 years old, meaning it really has been like four generations since the Super Bowl started. Also, however, they're covering a deep-seeded insecurity about their pathetic past. For the first 40 years of their existence, the team was a joke. In terms of championships, they're still behind this weekend's opponent, the Packers, as well as the Bears, Giants, and Browns." What does that distinction mean? Those other teams are old money. Class acts, all of them. The Steelers are, in contrast, like the owner of a really, really successful dirtbike dealership. He's got a lot of money, but no one in polite society has much interest in socializing with him, and no one wants him moving into their neighborhood and installing a jacuzzi the size of a small golf-course pond. Just look at a guy like Toby Keith --

the Okie is a lifelong Steelers fan with analbum called White Trash With Money -- and you get a pretty good picture of Steeler success. They (and the refs) deserve credit for their championships -- especially the ones in the '70s, which former Steelers players have admitted they did Mark McGwire-style, with the assistance of steroids, a drug the team is largely responsible for having introduced into the league. Should those championships therefore have a big, fat asterisk on them?"

I know the article is slightly dated, but the message is timeless; despite the Steelers championships, the team and their fans are garbage. As Tom pointed out so delicately in the previous post, the team has some unsavory characters.

Steelers QB and a female that may or may not have ingested Rufalin...