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Image:ThreeRivers.jpg Three Rivers Stadium, home of the Steelers 1970-2000. Image:Heinz Field (2005).jpg Heinz Field. Current Home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Originally named the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team, along with the Philadelphia Eagles and the now-defunct Cincinnati Reds football team, joined the NFL as 1933 expansion teams, after Art Rooney, Sr. paid a $2,500 fee. However the Steelers are the heirs to the first ever pro-football team, Pittsburgh being the city to host the world's first pro game in the 1890s, a franchise that fell victim to the strict state blue laws preventing any activity during the sabbath (NFL Sundays) up until 1933. The team was renamed the Steelers in 1940 after the city's prominent steel industry to reflect the "blue-collar worker" ethic of the many Pittsburgh fans as well as to avoid confusion with the major league baseball team with the same name.
Franchise history
The Pittsburgh Steelers (Pirates) first took to the field on September 20, 1933, losing 23-2 to the New York Giants. Through the 1930s the Pirates never finished higher than second place in their division, or with a record better than .500 (1936). Pittsburgh did make history in 1938 by signing Byron White, a future justice of the U.S. Supreme Court to what was at the time the biggest contract in NFL history, but he only played one year with the Pirates before signing with the Detroit Lions. During World War II, the Steelers experienced player shortages. They twice merged with other NFL franchises in order to field a team. During the 1943 season, they merged with the Philadelphia Eagles forming the "Phil-Pitt Eagles" and were known as the "Steagles". This team went 5-4-1. In 1944 they merged with the Chicago Cardinals and were known as "Card-Pitt" and derisively known as the "Car-Pitts" or "Carpets", as they finished the season winless.
Their luck changed with the hiring of coach Chuck Noll. Noll's most remarkable talent was in his draft selections, taking Hall of Famers "Mean" Joe Greene in 1969, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount in 1970, Jack Ham in 1971, Franco Harris in 1972, and finally, in 1974 pulled off the incredible feat of selecting four Hall of Famers in one draft year, Mike Webster, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth and Jack Lambert. The Pittsburgh Steelers' 1974 draft has gone down in NFL history as the best ever, considering no other team has ever drafted four future Hall of Famers in one year. The players drafted in the early 70's formed the base of one of the greatest dynasties in NFL history, making the playoffs eight seasons, and becoming the only team in NFL history to win four Super Bowls in six years, as well as the first to win more than two. The Steelers suffered a rash of injuries in the 1980 season and missed the playoffs with a 9-7 record. 1981 was no better, with an 8-8 showing. The team was then hit with the retirements of all their key players from the Super Bowl years. Mean Joe Greene retired after the 1981 season, Lynn Swann and Jack Ham after 1982's playoff berth, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount after 1983's divisional championship, and Jack Lambert after 1984's AFC Championship Game appearance. After those retirements the franchise skidded to their first losing seasons since 1971. Though still competitive the Steelers would not finish above .500 in 1985, 1986 and 1988. In the strike year of 1987,the Steelers finished with a record of 8-7, but missed the playoffs. In 1989 they would reach the second round of the playoffs on the strength of Merrill Hoge and Rod Woodson before narrowly missing the playoffs each of the next two seasons. In 1992, Chuck Noll retired and was succeeded by Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Bill Cowher, a native of the Pittsburgh suburb of Crafton. Cowher led the Steelers to the playoffs in each of his first six seasons as coach, a feat that had only previously been accomplished by legendary coach Paul Brown of the Cleveland Browns. Overall, Cowher lead the Steelers to the playoffs in 10 of his 15 seasons, including appearances in Super Bowl XXX in at the end of the 1995 season, and the franchise's record-tying fifth Super Bowl win in Super Bowl XL over the National Football Conference champion Seattle Seahawks ten years later. With their Super Bowl XL victory, the Steelers became the third team to win five Super Bowls, and the first sixth-seeded playoff team to reach and win the Super Bowl since the NFL expanded to a 12-team postseason tournament in 1990. Cowher resigned from coaching the Steelers on January 5, 2007, citing a need to spend more time with his family. He did not use the term 'retire', leaving open a possible return to the NFL as coach of another team. A three-man committee consisting of Art Rooney II, Dan Rooney, and Kevin Colbert was set-up to conduct interviews for the head coaching vacancy[1]. The candidates interviewed included: offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt, offensive line coach Russ Grimm, former offensive coordinator Chan Gailey, Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Tomlin, and Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Ron Rivera. January 22, 2007, Mike Tomlin was announced as Cowher's successor as head coach. Tomlin is the first African-American to be named head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in its 74-year history. Since the NFL merger in 1970, the Pittsburgh Steelers have compiled an overall record of 333-217-2, reached the playoffs 22 times, won their division 17 times, played in 13 AFC Championship Games, and won 5 Super Bowls. The team's current divisional rivals consist of the Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, and the Cleveland Browns. What was once a brutal rivalry with Cleveland has now been dominated by the Steelers as of late. Since their rebirth in 1999 the Browns have only beat the Steelers 3 times in 17 contests, the last one coming early in the 2003 season. In 2006, the Steelers evened the all-time record versus the Browns, 55-55. Other rivals in Steelers franchise history include the Oakland Raiders, Dallas Cowboys, and most recently, the New England Patriots. Logo and uniformsImage:Pittsburgh Steelers logo.svg The primary Steelers logo. Image:Steelers.PNG The stylized Steelers logo, sometimes used on the team's web site and other promotional materials. Image:PittsburghSteelers 1000.png The Steelers sometimes seen alternate logo, with a black outline instead of a gray one. For the 1934 season, when they were still the Pirates, they wore uniforms with vertical black and white stripes from neck to toe. Players looked like inmates and were ridiculed throughout the season as such. The uniforms were retired after that year. The Steelers have used black and gold as their basic colors since the club's inception (excluding the 1943 season when they merged with the Philadelphia Eagles and formed the "Steagles"; the team's colors were green and white as a result of wearing the Eagles uniforms). Originally, the team wore solid gold helmets and black jerseys. Unique to Pittsburgh, the Steelers' colors are shared by other professional teams in the city; the Pittsburgh Pirates in baseball and the Pittsburgh Penguins in hockey, (also the colors of the flag for the City of Pittsburgh) making it the official team colors of every professional sports team in the city. The Steelers logo was then introduced in late 1962 and is based on the "Steelmark," originally designed by Pittsburgh's U.S. Steel, and now owned by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). In an ironic twist, it was Cleveland-based Republic Steel that suggested the Steelers adopt the industry logo. It consists of the word "Steelers" surrounded by three astroids (hypocycloids of four cusps). The original meanings behind the astroids were, "Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world" and later the colors came to represent the ingredients of steel, the yellow representing coal; the orange, ore; and the blue, steel scrap. [2] While the "Steelmark" logo only contains the word "Steel", the Steelers were given special permission to add "-ers" in 1963 after a petition against AISI. The Steelers are the only NFL team that puts their logo on only one side of the helmet (the right side). Longtime field and equipment manager Jack Hart was instructed to do this by Art Rooney. At first, it was a test to see how the logo appeared on their gold helmets, but its popularity led the team to leave it that way permanently. [3] A year after introducing the logo, they switched to black helmets to make it stand out more. Another distinctive feature of the helmets is that the players number appears on both the front and back of the helmets. The Steelers are only one of two teams in the NFL to do so. The numbers traditionally do not appear on the helmet fronts during the exhibition season. The Steelers have had the same basic look for their uniforms since 1936 (save for during the 1967 season when the team experimented with a "triangle" theme), and started to use the current uniform design in 1968. The design consists of gold pants and either black jerseys or white jerseys, except for the 1970 and 1971 seasons, when the Steelers wore white pants with their white jerseys. The helmet is solid black with a gold central stripe and small white uniform numbers on the forehead. In 1997 the team switched to rounded numbers on the jersey to match the number font (Futura Condensed) on the helmets, and a Steelers logo patch was added to the left side of the jersey. Franchise traditionsThe "Terrible Towel"
The "Terrible Towel" is a gimmick created by Pittsburgh broadcaster Myron Cope for the Steelers. Needing a way to excite the fans during a 1975 playoff game against the Baltimore Colts, Cope urged fans to take gold dish towels to the game and wave them throughout. The Steelers beat the Colts 28-10, and the Terrible Towel was born. By the time the Steelers made it to Super Bowl X against the Dallas Cowboys, the craze had caught fire and the majority of Steelers fans waved Towels of their own. Since 1996, all of the proceeds from each Towel sold are donated to the Allegheny Valley School, a Pittsburgh school for the mentally disabled. Training campImage:Steelerstrainingcamp.jpg The Steelers in training camp at Saint Vincent College. Cheerleaders and MascotThe Pittsburgh Steelers made NFL history by having the first cheerleading squad for a professional team in 1961. The then-director of Steelers entertainment, Mr. William Day, was also the vice president of Robert Morris Junior College (now Robert Morris University) in Moon Township, Pa., decided to use women from the school as cheerleaders for the Steelers. They were known as the Steelerettes.[1] In 1969, the Robert Morris women cheered their final season. With Robert Morris now having its own football team, interest in the Steelers on campus had dwindled.[2] Now, the team that began the tradition of sideline cheerleaders in the NFL does not have its own squad. In fact, according to an About.com article, the Rooney family believes cheerleaders are pointless and are just blocking the spectator's view.[3] Steelers in popular cultureThe Steelers have been immortalized by film, television and print. The Steel Curtain teams of the 1970s dynasty had many big-screen moments, including the 1977 John Frankenheimer thriller Black Sunday. A year later, it was Warren Beatty playing the prelude to the Steelers fourth championship in 1978's Heaven Can Wait, and then a team cameo in the 1980 Burt Reynolds film Smokey and the Bandit II. In more recent times Adam Sandler's 1998 film The Waterboy featured a few Steeler greats as well as Coach Cowher arguing with real-life rival and former Cowboy and Dolphin head coach Jimmy Johnson. Sandler, a Steelers fan, also made Paul Crewe a former Steelers quarterback in his remake of The Longest Yard. In 2002, the independent film Icarus of Pittsburgh by Evan Mather delved into the world of a 70's Steeler fan. Major celebrities from all ends of the industry, rapper Snoop Dogg, comedian Dennis Miller, rock singer Bret Michaels, actor Michael Keaton, political pundit Rush Limbaugh and country singer Hank Williams, Jr. are widely known to be avid Steelers fans. All have been seen in a number of music videos/appearances wearing Steeler hats and jackets. Both also attended Super Bowl XL in Detroit, Michigan in 2006. Batman actor and native of Pittsburgh, Keaton was seen on television before the 2005 AFC Championship Game speaking to Pittsburgh television personality Paul Steigerwald and carrying a Terrible Towel. The Steelers and their fans were also featured in the Charlie Daniels Band's 1980 song, In America ("You just go lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steeler fan, and I think you're gonna finally understand."). Television has turned to the Steelers in 1980's "Fighting Back" a movie where Art Carney plays Art Rooney, and 1981's The Steeler and the Pittsburgh Kid. The Steelers of lore also have starring roles in several ESPN productions such as Matchup of the Millenium and Dream Bowl series, winning every championship, thus being considered the best team ever ('78 Steelers). In January, 2007, a company called SportSims, whose simulation is used every year by USAToday to predict the winner of the given year's Super Bowl, simulated all 40 Super Bowl champions (40 teams won the Super Bowl at the time) in a tournament, with the '78 Steelers defeating the '85 Bears 22-20 for the tournament title. "Mean" Joe Greene has appeared in the famous Coca-Cola ad where a child calls out to Greene and gives him his Coke. Greene then gives his game jersey to the kid. Two recent Chunky Soup commercials have also featured the Steelers. One had current Steelers and Max Starks' mother; the other starred Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who found himself facing the old Steel Curtain at the end of the spot. RivalsThe Pittsburgh Steelers have three primary rivals: their divisional rivals (Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Ravens, and Cincinnati Bengals). They also have rivalries with other teams that arose from postseason battles in the past. The most notable teams are the New England Patriots, Oakland Raiders, and the Dallas Cowboys. Divisional rivals
Historic rivals
Season-by-season recordsNote: W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties
* = Current Standing + = Due to a strike-shortened season in 1982, all teams were ranked by conference instead of division. Players of noteCurrent playersUpdated Steelers Depth Chart
Pro Football Hall of FamersInductees
Award Recipients
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