Birth Of A Nation
Capturing The Identity of a Region
By John Mehno

If you lived in western Pennsylvania in the 1960s, there were two things you could count on:

1. There was always work in the mills.

2. The Steelers would always disappoint you.

The mills were humming around the clock with the ferocious fire and noise that were part of the landscape. Mills grew between the river banks and railroad tracks, the better to move out finished products. Although the era when the skyline would disappear beneath smoke and grime had passed, there was still the 'black snow' that would accumulate on window sills. Who knows what the soot did to young lungs but that filth was a sign of prosperity, tangible proof that Pittsburgh was making and shipping the nation's steel.

The industry was so pervasive that the local football franchise took its name from it.

Football was made for Pittsburgh. It was a violent sport that required the kind of toughness that resonated with blue collar workers.

'I think the Steelers were always the No. 1 sports entity in this market, even before the '70s,' says retired Steelers executive Joe Gordon. 'Even in the early years, there was always tremendous passion. It was almost like a religion. People went to church in the morning and watched the Steelers in the afternoon.'

Chuck Noll built a winner by drafting wisely and discarding most of the players he inherited. The Steelers took some small steps in 1970 (5-9) and 1971 (6-8) and slowly started to look like a real football team. Instead of having separate locations for their practice field, executive offices and game site, they ran everything from Three Rivers Stadium. The surroundings and Noll's leadership brought a more professional atmosphere.

The breakthrough came in 1972 when Franco Harris was drafted and quickly gave the team a dependable running game. The defense had been developing per Noll's plan. Harris' arrival gave the Steelers a chance to control the ball and get by with an iffy passing attack.

'That was the year we got over the hump,' Gordon says.

The excitement was palpable. The home games started selling out, beginning a streak that was only interrupted by the NFL's decision to stage games with replacement players during a labor strike in 1987. Traditions were established. Fans not only had the same seats each week, they claimed the same parking spots. Tailgating became a block party on asphalt, regardless of weather. You brought the kielbasa and the guy in the next van brought the rolls. Jimmy Pol's catchy fight song got played on radio stations that would ordinarily use a polka record for a Frisbee. Everyone loves a winner but Pittsburgh's fervor for the Steelers was out of the ordinary. The Pirates had just won the World Series but they didn't inspire the same kind of passion. Baseball was finesse.You could sneak a curveball past a hitter in baseball; you could knock a guy on his can in football.

Phil Musick addressed the issue in a Dec. 3, 1972 Pittsburgh Press column:

'This is a football town. The Pirates win all the time and that's fine. But this town has thick wrists and hot blood and men who when they bump one another on the street say, 'Watch it, Mac,' instead of 'Pardon me' and in a place where some of the women even wash down their whiskey with beer, the gut game is football.'

The producers at NFL Films studied the phenomenon of fans swarming Three Rivers from all directions and pronounced them the 'Steeler Nation,' a name that would stick.

It was a great place to be. The lower stands at Three Rivers literally rocked when emotions peaked.

Gordon, who joined the Steelers in 1969, had the nominal title of publicity director. The Steelers had a small front office staff and Gordon was the ultimate multi-tasker before anyone invented the term. In addition to handling the media, he arranged corporate sponsorships and booked players for commercials and personal appearances. It was a wonder his phone didn't melt.

Once in the middle of a season, Bradshaw told Gordon that he had yet to cash a salary check. He was covering all his expenses from the money he made doing appearances.

It was a great time to be a Steeler or to be a Steelers' fan. But there was a cruel irony associated with the success of the team. While the Steelers were dominating, the local steel industry was crumbling. Layoffs were followed by plant closings. Families that had assumed steel would always provide a living were shocked to find the mill gates locked.

Schools got into the habit of staging Steeler Fridays, when faculty and students would sport black and gold. Some of the same schools were collecting canned goods for needy families. The local steel industry fell victim to a number of culprits, cheap imports, outdated plants, a labor climate steeped in toxic mutual distrust and a recession. In 10 years, 100,000 jobs were lost.

Christopher Briem, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote, 'The uniqueness of the Pittsburgh experience was not just the scale of the decline but the speed at which it happened.'

For a lot of people who fell on unexpected hard times, their salvation came on Sundays. They could live vicariously through the Steelers, who beat glamour teams like Dallas and Los Angeles in the Super Bowl.

'The most gratifying part of that is it came when this community really needed a lift,' Gordon says. 'The steel industry was going down the drain and people were really depressed. The Steelers provided a morale lift and were a source of pride, something they could brag about.

'Anywhere you'd go in the rest of the country, people would ask where you were from. When you said Pittsburgh, people would say, 'Oh, the Steelers,' and people took great pride in that. That was something special for them and that's another reason for the great popularity of the team. The success came at a very critical time in the history of the region.'

Pittsburgh celebrated its blue-collar nature even as jobs disappeared. When Charlie Daniels was searching for an image to fit his don't-mess-with-the-U.S. anthem 'In America,' he wrote, 'You just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steeler fan.'

The team fit the mold, too. Until a passing game developed in time for the last two Super Bowls, the Steelers were a team that simply smashed people on both sides of the ball. The defensive backs were so effective that the NFL changed its rules to open up the game for more passing.

Pittsburgh may have been reeling but no one pushed the Steelers around. The offensive linemen got into the habit of wearing the shortest sleeves possible. It was ostensibly to prevent defensive players from having any cloth to grab but it was also a subliminal message to opponents: 'Cold? What cold?' Even in the years when the Steelers didn't go to the Super Bowl, they usually determined who did. Houston Oilers' coach Bum Phillips wasn't exaggerating when he said the road to the Super Bowl ran through Pittsburgh.

The players, most of whom were not local, came to embrace the region's mentality. Texas native Dwight White said, 'When I think of Dallas, I think of El Dorados and Sevilles. We have El Dorados and Sevilles in Pittsburgh, too. But the salt on the roads has eaten big holes in them.'

The Steelers tended to look with bemusement on a lot of the glitz that was prevalent in the NFL. The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders became pin-up celebrities and other teams rushed to hire minimally-dressed squads of big-haired dancers. The Steelers briefly used a more traditional cheerleading squad in the late '60s, but never considered jumping on that bandwagon. The tone was set by franchise founder Art Rooney and Noll, neither of whom had much tolerance for nonsense. For the longest time, Noll rejected the revival of the shotgun offense as another Dallas gimmick that was unnecessary. The Steelers didn't need to surprise anyone. They beat teams that knew exactly what they were going to do on offense. They lined up and moved the defense out of the way, like they were rearranging furniture.

Much as they rejected the trappings of stardom, the Steelers became national celebrities. Joe Greene was cast in a Coca-Cola commercial that's considered a classic. Bradshaw landed a recording contract. Rocky Bleier's inspirational life story was turned into a movie made for television. Franco's Italian Army got an audience with Frank Sinatra on a Steelers' trip to Palm Springs.

Monday through Friday may have been a blur of unemployment forms and job hunting and headaches in much of Pittsburgh. But when Sunday came, the problems were put aside at least for a few hours when the Steelers played.

'Is it important for a region? I think it's very important,' says Dr. Paul Friday, the head of clinical psychology for UPMC-Shadyside. 'I think this is the reason we have sports. That's why teams have colors. You associate with the color and you can immediately go to good guy-bad guy.

'It becomes more of a toggle switch , yes-no, right-wrong, on-off. That's a more primitive part of our brain. If we can more quickly align with good guys-bad guys winning and losing, we can vicariously get involved so much with a game that we can leave behind this, 'Are we a loser?' Well, at least we're not Cleveland.'

It crossed all lines. Gordon said he'd regularly overhear Steelers-related conversations in restaurants ranging from pizza joints to the fanciest places in town.

Despite the economic downturn, support for the Steelers didn't waver. Unlike a lot of teams who have season ticket lists comprised mainly of corporations and high rollers, the Steelers have always had a healthy share of individuals, some of whom aren't especially affluent.

'In some cases, obviously they had to make sacrifices but they would give up almost all their other luxuries so they could buy Steelers' season tickets,' Gordon said. 'Somebody would call up the season ticket office when the money was due and say, 'Hey, I'm a little short, can you can carry me for a while?' The season ticket people had instructions from the Rooneys to be as flexible as possible with those people. It was just incredible the sacrifices people would make for season tickets. In no way were they were going to give up their tickets.'

Of course, when jobs disappear, so do people. Pittsburgh had a population of 640,000 in 1960. The figure was 350,000 in 1997. One of the reasons the Steelers have a strong presence in every NFL stadium that has available tickets is there are so many displaced Pittsburghers living in other places. They headed elsewhere for work but their hearts still belong to Pittsburgh. When the Steelers arrive in almost any road city, they can count on seeing Terrible Towels waving.

It's been 25 years since the last Super Bowl championship but the zeal for the Steelers hasn't dimmed. They're still No. 1 in the region and Steeler talk will fly on any call-in show at any time of the year. The region is dealing with a slew of economic problems but Sundays, as usual, are a chance to escape those harsh realities.

These days the Steelers are headquartered in the complex they share with the University of Pittsburgh on the banks of the Monongahela River. The buildings sprung up on the South Side between the river and the railroad tracks, where steel used to be made.

'That's so appropriate,' Gordon says. 'They're in that area right along the river where millions and millions of tons of steel passed up and down. It's just a perfect fit, the irony of the thing.'

John Mehno has covered Pittsburgh sports since 1974 and is the author of 'The Chronicle of Baseball' (Carlton, 2000) and 'The Best Book of Football Facts and Stats' (Firefly, updated for 2004).