(To commemorate the 6 month anniversary of PSaMP, I invited some of my favorite bloggers to take over PSaMP for a week. I’m calling it, PSaMP’s Halfie Birthday Extravaganza. Well, its been extended to an obnoxiously long two week blogapalooza, per se. Several kickass local and national blogs agreed to share their feelings on Pittsburgh sports. Hopefully, some will also provide a Mini Pony of the Day. In my mind, it will rule. I hope you enjoy it. Tuesday’s blog is Doubt About It. In its relatively short lifespan, DAI has become a PSaMP fave. Its written by, “four guys who all love Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh sports.” Well said.)
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I hate Red Sox Nation. Absolutely despise it. Any time I see a kid with a green Red Sox hat cocked slightly sideways on his head, you know they became a fan circa 2003. Apologies to those hardcore fans who suffered through the curse until ’03, but the new found fans have cheapened your image. Even Bill Simmons admits there is something wrong here. What bothers me even more is when people mention Steelers Nation in the same breath as the Red Sox or Yankees Nation. You see it on message boards, you hear it when you visit Ohio or go east of State College. There is a general hatred towards us. Part of it is encouraged by our own insecurities, part of it from jealousy, and the last part is from Seahawks/Bengals apologists who can’t admit the better team won in 2005.
People still think our ranks only swelled due our success in the ‘70s. In Mexico, where you’re either a Cowboys or Steelers fan due to the populations’ discovery of the gridiron in that time period, this may be true. But in the USA the emergence of Steeler Nation occurred due to the economically forced diaspora of the 80s and 90s. Everyone who has lived in Pittsburgh knows this. The rest of the nation, not so much. You want proof? The Post-Gazette has compiled a list of Steelers’ bars, a list as vital as the invention of the internet and printing press. There are over 120 reported Steelers’ bars in California, 9 in Alaska, 1 in Peru, and 3 in Iraq. Fans who pledged their allegiance when they were 15 because they enjoyed being with a winner do not start their own bars in honor of the team. These are mostly Pittsburgh originals or offspring of those emigrants, men and women born with an identity. There is an entire blog devoted to this phenomenon.
Don’t get me wrong, if you started rooting for the Steelers even though you lived in Arizona you’re welcome to join the party. Just know that you better be able to respect the city, nay, embrace the city as your own. Other fans hate us for this. They hate the fact we completely and totally connect the Steelers and the city of Pittsburgh, as if they were one symbiotic sentient being. They call us fools, they say our priorities are misguided, they claim we cling to the franchise because we have nothing else to cling to. As Doubt About It favorite Dejan Kovacevik over at the PG proves with his amazing “Thing I Love About Pittsburgh” feature at the end of every daily mailbag, we as Pittsburghers simply know the truth. More so than any city in the nation, Pittsburgh is analogous to college. You are there for a certain number of years, you wish you could come back after you leave, and you feel a loyalty to your alma mater and a general unity to all those who shared your experience.
I know, even if you agree with me, that last paragraph was probably the most romanticized crap you’ve read all week, so I’m going to move on to the next more aggressive topic: Global Domination.
I’m not a sociologist, or whatever field would work with population trends, but I think I understand some basic principles. In order for a population to increase, on average each woman needs to produce more than two kids. The two kids replace the two parents, thus keeping the population at the same level, while a third one would increase it. The Russians have faced a problem with this, as their women are only getting knocked up enough to produce 1.39 children each. I’m not the one to answer what 39% of the second child is produced, but bear with me. The U.S. faces a similar problem with the baby boomers, who had around 17 siblings each, and currently the ladies are only producing at a 2.09 baby/woman rate. Not a good rate for the U.S., but excellent for Steelers’ Nation.
When an Eagles fan marries another Eagles fan, a likely scenario since most fans are found in the Philly area, they need to produce 2 Eagles fans just to keep the fan base at the same level. The Steelers, on the contrary, have so much of their fanbase spread throughout the nation that they have a much higher rate of Steelers fans marrying non-Steelers fans. Let me ask everyone a question: if you married a Bungles fan (God forbid), what team would your progeny root for? I’m pretty sure I know the answer. Now before the ladies’ Steelers’ fans assume they can’t override their sports loving husbands, let me remind you that per tradition the children usually assume their mother’s religion, and in Pittsburgh what is a more universal religion than football? But apparently the Pittsburgh females already knew this.
Each time a Steelers’ fan marries a non-Steelers’ fan, then, they only need to have 1 kid to replace themselves, while having two kids doubles their presence. I’m not sure of the exact percentage, but when almost half of the Pittsburgh population goes to spread its seed elsewhere in the 80s, I’d be willing to wager that Steeler Nation has increased its ranks percentage-wise more than any other fanbase in the country.
In the future, I expect Steelers’ lobbyists on Capital Hill, annual meetings, and soon thereafter the first President of the United States who ran on a pro-Steelers platform. By the year 2379 resisting Emperor Art Rooney X will be futile.
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