It seems most Pittsburgh Steelers fans tell stories of that one definable moment when they fell in-love with their favorite football team.
For most who have been fans since childhood, that moment is usually tied-in with a parental figure, such as their father. Every year around Father’s Day, the Internet is filled with stories from writers, each recalling a time in their youth when their dad took them to their first game, and how this created a life-long love for a specific sports team and an everlasting bond with their father.
- Alas, I have no such stories to share from my youth about becoming a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
Steelers fans take over Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego last fall; Photo credit: K.C. Alfred, San Diego Union Tribune
My father was never around, so I couldn’t develop any sort of bond with him–through sports or anything else.
My mom may have been a fan, but I don’t remember her donning Black and Gold or mentioning the Steelers in any way during the first six or seven years of my life.
Steelers Super Bowls of the 70’s a Formative Experience
I attended my first game back in 1988, at the age of 16, but by then, I was already a die-hard fan for almost a decade. And the person I attended the game with was my uncle, who is my age and more like a brother than any sort of parental figure.
- Yet, despite a lack of direct family influence during my toddler and kindergarten years, I somehow became a huge Steelers.
One year, January of 1979, I was six and watching an old rerun of Tarzan in the living room of my house in Bellevue (a suburb of Pittsburgh), while my mom watched Super Bowl XIII on the little black-and-white TV in the kitchen as she washed dishes, (video available as of 6/30/16):
I remember seeing Lynn Swann celebrate after Terry Bradshaw threw him the Steelers final touchdown in the fourth quarter of their 35-31 victory over the Cowboys, but at that very moment, I could have cared less.
But by the following year, January of 1980, I was seven and fully-invested, as I watched the Steelers take on the Rams in Super Bowl XIV. And, ironically enough, while my mom took in the action in the living room of our new residence in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh, I sat in the kitchen and watched Pittsburgh outlast Los Angeles, 31-19, on that same black-and-white TV that was tuned into Super Bowl XIII one year earlier.
- But how did I go from one extreme to the other in just one year of my life?
Obviously, there had to be something there. I do recall watching football games when I was no more than two or three years old, so maybe I was cheering for the Steelers all along and just don’t remember.
At the end of the day, however, it doesn’t really matter how I got from point A to point B. I may not have developed parental bonds through sports as a youngster, but I certainly fostered many bonds in my teenage years and early-20s, when I took in many games with my grandparents, my uncles, and my siblings.
And, believe it or not, in my 30s and 40s, I developed a bit of a Steelers-bond with my mother, who started to become a bigger fan right around the time Ben Roethlisberger came on-board and the franchise was about to add another Super Bowl chapter to its already storied history.
Back to my youth, and those many years I watched games all by myself without anyone else around. I guess when they say that Pittsburgh ingrains allegiance to the Steelers into a person, I’m the perfect example of that.
