Every year – heck, every week – we hear about how this team or that team has such great fans. National publications attempt to quantify with metrics to what will always be a highly subjective topic. Message board and internet columns will argue endlessly about how their fans are so great while their rival’s fan base is pathetic, in search of the invisible Best Fan Base Trophy.
So what makes a great fan, or a great fan base? Rooting for a team that has been successful and competitive for forty years is easy; that holds true for fans of the Yankees, Red Sox or Lakers. Rooting for a team that has had a long history of winning seasons sprinkled with some championships that is not local to you begs the question: is it admiration for their success, or is it simply being a fraudulent front runner attempting to align yourself with a winner?
One fan base gets continuously paraded in the “great fans” category by the networks that broadcast NFL games every time they appear on television: Pittsburgh fans. But is that a truly accurate portrayal?
If the Steelers were to go through a stretch of several losing seasons that included season like the Colts are experiencing, what would happen? Perhaps for an answer we can look at how Pittsburgh Fan has responded to his baseball team.
From the start of the century to the 70′s the Pirates were the only professional team Pittsburgh Fan cared about and followed. Only when the Steelers came out of nowhere and finally turned thing around after four decades of futility did Pittsburgh Fan suddenly care about his NFL team. Then BOOM, just like that, everyone in the area is a football fan. Attendance goes from somewhere in the 20,000′s to triple that, and the team remains competitive for the next forty years.
Back to what had been the primary sports team, the Pirates. Loyal Pittsburgh fans continue to follow them since they’re such solid fans, right? Out of 30 teams I see rankings of 22, 26, 27, 27, 27, 27, 28, 28, 27 and 22 this past decade. Crap, they typically draw fewer than the much maligned Tampa Bay Rays.
But what about that uptick to a #22 ranking? Well, they started out with fewer than 10,000 fans four times in their first month of play. Then they played well and consistently drew over 30K – and then after losing a few games went right back to crowds of 9,000 and 12,000.
If this is the way Pittsburgh goes hot and cold over one sports team, is it unreasonable to expect them to do the same when the day comes that the Steelers should falter? And if so, then how does that make them to be such a great fan base? If anything doesn’t this make them pink hats?
There are two primary reasons that the media – and Pittsburgh fans – latch onto this ‘great fans’ concept. The first is because so many Steeler fans show up in opposing stadiums when the team has an away game. The other is a long streak of games being sold out at home. Let’s take a closer look at these two pieces of evidence.
The steel industry collapsed at the same exact time that fan interest in the local pro football team was piqued for the first time in their existence. People leave the area to find jobs elsewhere, all across the country, but still follow their local team because they are doing well, and remind them of home. They win a couple more championships, and the love of the team they left behind grows. Why change hats and root for the new local team you’re not familiar with when the team whose bandwagon you just jumped on is doing so well?
Fast forward and the team remains very competitive for forty years, with rare, minimal and very short downturns; again, no reason to jump off the band wagon except for the very worst front runners – and they or their children quickly return with two more recent championships.
As for the other reason, the sellouts, a couple things to consider. First, this is Pittsburgh, this isn’t Miami or San Diego; similar to Green Bay, your options for other entertainment are relatively limited. I suppose you could go water skiing on the Allegheny now that local hero Dave Wannstedt is no longer coaching the Pitt Panthers, but I suppose there’s a limited interest in that exercise. Second, I somehow think the streak would have been broken a long time ago if there were a few more final results from 1920-1970 interspersed in the 1990-2010 time frame.
So what we have is a fan base that ranks near the bottom in their leagues in attendance when they lose, and three to four times as many as those team win. To me you can call that fair weather fans, you can call that band wagon fans, you can even call that a typical fan base – but please, spare me the soliloquy  on how this base of sports fans are so much more loyal or in some way better than any other group of fans. They are there when the team wins and if not for four championships that they did not witness because they happened before they were born, then they would already have departed for the latest flavor of the month. Basking in the glory of something you were not there to see is lame, and something shared by only one other equally arrogant group of fans – Yankee fans that pat themselves on the back for 26 championships that they too did not watch.
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Complete speculation, this is why fans should stick to their day jobs!
Im sorry, your saying Steelers fans aren’t loyal fans because they follow a consistent championship condender.
No, I did not say that. I’m saying that they are not ‘better’ fans that many in the media portray them to be. No better, no worse – they’re pretty much the same.
Speculation based on the facts of how the same fans follow their baseball team.
Completely different sport, Pittsburgh is a.football city, anyone who has ever been to that city will tell you that. The Pirates have been losers for two decades. I dont know what youve written in the past, but this article is just plain bad. There are no facts backing your statements…..because they dont go to pirate games their fans are overrated, and will turn on the Steelers? Come on man, the Steelers have one of the best fanbases not only in the football world, but in the whole sports world!
“Speculation based on the facts of how the same fans follow their baseball team.”
Two different sports, Football is everything in western PA. Thus two very different fans! Think before you write.
Joe, prior to the arrival of Chuck Noll Pittsburgh was a baseball city. Look at the attendance figures for the Pirates and Steelers prior to 1970. If you were old enough to have been alive then you would know that. While there has been a shift nationwide from MLB to the NFL, you can’t discount the shift in winning with the two organizations as a mere coincidence.
Steeler fans are great; they’re loyal and loud. I just don’t buy the notion that they are ‘better’ than that of most other fanbases.
This will be my final thought on this. ESPN did an article a few yrs back ranking.all of the states based on football, they accounted pro, college, and highschool. PA was #1. Football is western PA. Mike Ditka, Joe Namath, Johnny U, Dan Marino, Ty Law, Tony Dorsett, Darelle Revis, I can keep going, but you get my point. All of those players are from the Pittsburgh area, and there are many more. The first ever professional football game was played where heinz fields.stands today, the first player to ever be paid to play footballwas from Pittsburgh. You can.find that info on NFL.coms hall of.fame site. My point is you cant speak on something and make.a statement like that without knowing the facts. Go to Pittsburgh and see for yourself and then make your opinion
“Football is to Pittsburgh what showbiz is to LA, what jazz is to New Orleans, what the car industry is to Detroit.”
I stole that from sports ill.
Heres a wikipedia link
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_football
In the early 20th century, football began to catch on in the general population of the United States and was the subject of intense competition and rivalry, albeit of a localized nature. Although payments to players were considered unsporting and dishonorable at the time, a Pittsburgh area club,the Allegheny Athletic Association, surreptitiouslyhired former Yale All-American guard William “Pudge” Heffelfinger. On November 12, 1892, Heffelfinger became the first known professional football player. He was paid $500 to play in a game against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Heffelfinger picked up a Pittsburgh fumble and ran 35 yards for a touchdown, winning the game 4–0 for Allegheny. Although observers held suspicions, the payment
remained a secret for years. [2][3][61][62]
On September 3, 1895 the first wholly professional game was played, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, between the Latrobe Athletic Association and the Jeannette
Athletic Club. Latrobe won the contest 12–0. [2][3]
During this game, Latrobe’s quarterback, John Brallier became the first player to openly admit to being paid to play football. He was paid $10 plus
expenses to play. [63] In 1897, the Latrobe Athletic Association paid all of its players for the whole season, becoming the first fully professional football team. In 1898, William Chase Temple took over the team payments for the Duquesne Country and Athletic Club, a professional football team based in Pittsburgh from 1895 until 1900, becoming the first
known individual football club owner. [64] A year later in 1899, the Morgan Athletic Club, on the South Side of Chicago, was founded. This team later became the Chicago Cardinals, and now is known as the Arizona Cardinals, making them the oldest continuously operating professional football
team. [3]
The first known professional football league, known as the National Football League (not the same as the modern league) began play in 1902 when several baseball clubs formed football teams to play in the league, including the Philadelphia Athletics, Pittsburgh Pirates and the Philadelphia Phillies. The Pirates’ team the Pittsburgh Stars were awarded the league championship
Well Joe, actually it wasn’t your final thought since you went on to post two comments after this one. Your wikipedia (a site where anyone can write anything, making it the most unreliable source of information, by the way) cut and paste is a nice story but doesn’t really have anything to do with what I said. And the number of players to come out of the area has nothing to do with it either. For example, look at the number of baseball players to come out of Florida and then look at the fan bases of those two teams, or the number of hockey players from Canadian cities of NHL teams that were forced to move due to low attendance.
Yes, there are a lot of Pittsburgh fans. That’s what will happen to any franchise that is consistently competitive for forty straight years. And there are lots of Steeler fans around the country due to what happened to the steel industry right at the same time the team started winning.
Ask yourself this: if the success of the Pirates and Steelers over the last two decades was reversed, do you still think the number of fans of those two teams would still be the same?
I never said that there are not a lot of Steeler fans. I’m just saying it is due to all those circumstances. It’s easy to stay loyal to a team that’s almost always competitive; same is true for the Yankees, Red Sox, Lakers, etc. That makes Steeler fans no different, no better and no worse than any other fan base. And since they are no different when you get right down to it, then it doesn’t really make them a ‘better’ group of fans in my opinion.
It’s like I’m saying ‘the square is blue’ and you’re responding ‘no, the circle is red’ … you’re completely missing my point in blind defense of your fellow fans.
This dudes just mad the steelers put an asswhippin on New England
STEELER NATION!!!!!
Best fanbase in the world!
NFL best 6 championships!!!!
Hes right though theres a plaque right outside of Heinz that says location of first pro game
Try again Chris … check the date the column was written.
Congrats on your team’s win. Better game plan and better execution; not remotely as close as the final score.
Biggest fanbase? Maybe, maybe not. But re-read the article; biggest and best are not the same. Considering what they have gone through I think I’d give that honor might just go to your neighbors in Cleveland.
“NFL best 6 championships” is factually incorrect. As you pointed out, the NFL was not founded in 1970 – a fact many Steeler fans usually refuse to acknowledge … unless it is convenient to think otherwise, such as in your response. The truth is that the Packers, Bears and Giants all have more NFL championships than the Steelers.