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The Pittsburgh Steelers are slated to play in the Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks on February 5 at Ford Field in Detroit.  I have to say that I'm not very excited about the game.  Of course I'll watch it, as all avid football fans will be doing.  But I don't know much about the players on either team or what those teams had to do to make it to the ultimate game this season.  Nevertheless, I feel like I have a sentimental bond to the Pittsburgh Steelers dating back to early childhood.  Let me explain.

Even though I grew up in Chicago, the Bears teams of the late '70s and early '80s were so horrible that fans often looked elsewhere for a team to root for.  At least, that's the excuse that my father gave me as he consistently cheered on the strongest teams in the league back then.  That meant he alternately waved the flag of the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Raiders, Washington Redskins, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  I wouldn't call him a fair-weather fan so much as I would say that he was just a big football fan.  After all, he still watched every single embarrassing Bears game each season.

When I was about 4 years old, I started watching football alongside my father and brother.  At that time, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the two-time defending Super Bowl champions and they had some of the best players in the league.  Around the same time, the Dallas Cowboys were emerging as America's team and appeared in five Super Bowls during the 1970s.  They won two of those:  a 24-3 win over Miami in 1972 and a 27-10 victory over Denver in 1978.  The Steelers and the Cowboys also, not surprisingly, had something of a rivalry going on.  The two teams met in the Super Bowl twice that decade, with the Steelers winning both meetings.  This rivalry carried over to my own household as my older brother decided he was a Cowboys fan, which of course meant that I would be a Steelers fan.

So I asked for all the Pittsburgh Steelers merchandise I could get my hands on.  I had Steelers pajamas, t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, jackets, and socks that I would wear nearly every day of the week.  I also decorated my room with Steelers pennants and posters of the biggest stars of that time, including Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, Franco Harris, John Stallworth, Mike Webster, and "Mean" Joe Green.  I had Steelers sheets and blankets on my bed.  Anyone walking into my room would have thought I lived in Pittsburgh!

I also watched as many Steelers games as I could, but this was a time well before satellite television, so I didn't get to see that many.  I probably saw four or five regular season games per year between Monday Night Football and other national broadcasts, then I got to see all the playoff games on TV.  I knew the starting lineup of both the offense and defense by the time I was six, and would rattle it off to anyone who would listen.

After the Chicago Bears emerged as a solid team in the mid-1980s, I gave up on the Steelers and focused more on the hometown guys.  I don't think I missed that much, however, as the Steelers were then led by quarterbacks such as Bubby Brister, Kordell Stwart, and Tommy Maddox.  Sure, the Steelers were still making the playoffs pretty regularly in the 1990s, but they weren't the same dominating team that they were in the late 19070s.

So this year, I'll be rooting for the old black and gold team in the Super Bowl, even though I haven't followed them for years.  I hardly know any of their personnel beyond Jerome Bettis and Ben Roethlisberger -- and I couldn't even tell you what numbers those two stars wear without having to look it up first.  

However, the funny thing about sports teams is that when you cheer for them long enough, you always feel a kind of sentimental attachment to them no matter how many years have passed since you last watched one of their games in its entirety.  No, I won't go so far as to jump on the bandwagon and call myself a fan of the 2005 Steelers.  But as I'm watching the game, I'll no doubt think back to my old room filled with Steelers memorabilia and smile as the memories of those times come flooding back.