What's the big deal about Steeler football?

Being a Steeler fan means so much more than football. At least that's what 30+ emails have been telling me since Pittsburgh beat Denver in the playoffs last week. Residents of Pittsburgh are telling me that the city is all about heritage, hard work and pride. To me, that's just bullshit. While I now live in Portland, Oregon; spending my first 25 years in Pittsburgh will always make that town my 'home.' However, my memory of Pittsburgh residents is not the stalwart, Blue-collar superman as depicted in these emails, but more a Stanley P. Kachowski security guard who spends most of his time ‘waitin’ for the ol' disability check.’ I was taught, via school and through example, that these hard core/ex-steelworker-types, were not worth aspiring to and that the goal of existence was to never have to perform a 'dirty job' like mill work. There always seemed to be an extreme predjudice and negative connotation towards people who chose to work inside Pittsburgh's dead art of steel. That is, until football season came around. Come preseason everyone is supposed to believe that anyone who lives in Pittsburgh has smelt iron and shat rivets at one point in their life. My choice to move away from a city of such history and greatness was a difficult one. Carnegie Museum, The Cathedral of Learning, multiple sports teams, and a rich tapestry of cultural diversity made Pittsburgh a city that had a little something for everyone. However, day to day life around the city seemed to be fraught with a debilitating sense of depression. It was like once the steel mills left, the city no longer had an identity. The key identifier of what made Pittsburgh strong was gone, leaving a gaping expanse of ‘what in the fuck do we do now?’ Through most of the 80’s and 90’s, Pittsburgh reinvented as a city of business. It is now a strong city and a proud city; however, it seems to be a city stuck doing splits between the concept of what it was and what it can become. Once defined in the steel mills, strong in muscle and covered in sweat, this city is now dry cleaned and pressed. Where my grandparents fought with fire and white-hot embers to make steel, the next generation fought to make sure the steel on their $75,000 Harley Davidson was properly chromed. Pittsburghers still want to be tough, but their collar has changed from blue to whatever color collar comes with a $90 golf shirt. When you drive a Lexus and make more in a month than your entire family made in the year 1970, it is hard to comprehend what a Steelers victory actually meant to those people who were out of work, trying to claw through life with a dreadful case of black lung. I want the Pittsburgh Steelers to win on Sunday. My ritual will be the same; same clothes, same place on the couch, same coffee cake and with the same cathartic ranting of a lunatic. But, let’s put this in perspective; these are ‘Our Steelers.’ This isn’t Mean Joe Greene or Jack Lambert, this isn’t Rocky Blier or Terry Bradshaw; and this game certainly isn’t for steel and Pierogies. This Super Bowl is about strength in a new world and the possibility of greatness for Pittsburgh outside of silt and slag.