Growing up in the suburbs of Erie, PA, there were basically three options for NFL team allegiance. Shall I support our closest geographical neighbors, the Buffalo Bills, a team that lost four straight Super Bowls in the early 90s and has done next to nothing since? How about the closest Pennsylvania team, a Super Bowl contender in the mid-90s when I was just becoming interested in professional sports? My mother grew up a casual Steelers fan and a young Bill Cowher was producing exciting results for a franchise experiencing a rebirth after some lean times. The third option was the Cleveland Browns, often the butt of jokes around the league. The beloved objects of my father’s affection for decades had some decent teams now and then, but were often just frustrating and disappointing for a championship-starved city.
Dad, who was born in Ohio and has forever been a Pittsburgh sports fan except for football (don’t ask…), had a great influence on me in many ways. Football loyalty was not one of them, as I grew up with a Terrible Towel in tow. He roped in my younger brother, but Mom and I bleed black and gold all the way. At the age of seven, my heart was broken when Pittsburgh lost to Dallas in Super Bowl XXX, but I forgave them and carried on, rewarded by experiencing a Super Bowl XL victory over Seattle my senior year of high school, and another while I was in college. Cleveland, meanwhile, inhabited the bottom of the league standings almost year after year, occasionally surfacing every once in awhile only to tumble the next year. Heck, they even left town for Baltimore in 1996 and exist now only after a league expansion in 1999.
Many of those first years for the new franchise were laughable; be reminded that the likes of Tim Couch, Jeff Garcia, Charlie Frye, Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn, among many others, have been the face of this team since then. They have two winning seasons since returning in 1999, making the playoffs in 2002 and missing them despite a 10-6 record in 2007. They are on their sixth head coach, Rob Chudzinski, since Chris Palmer took over the first year. Seven, if you count interim head coach Terry Robiskie, who briefly replaced a fired Butch Davis. Cleveland has lacked stability in team leadership, coaching, quarterbacking, etc., etc. Meanwhile, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin have led a steadfast effort in that same span that has resulted in four Super Bowl appearances, two rings to bring the franchise total to six, and an almost perennial contender in the AFC.
This is a rivalry that has roots dating well back into the pre-Super Bowl era. Geographical proximity, two annual meetings due to inter-divisional opposition and the genuine hatred between the two fan bases have always made it a rivalry, even though one team has significantly more success in the long-term and the short-term. In 2013, as they meet for the first time Sunday in Week 12, the Steelers (4-6) visit Cleveland (4-6) in a three-way tie for second (or last, depending on how you look at it) along with Baltimore, as each team looks up at first-place Cincinnati (7-4). Pittsburgh is on a two-game winning streak, with an opportunity to continue moving towards a potential wild card playoff berth if they can secure road wins at Cleveland and Baltimore in the next two weeks.
Recent history certainly favors the Steelers in the matchup, as Pittsburgh has beaten Cleveland an astonishing 24 of the 29 times the two teams have met since the 1999 expansion. That includes a 36-33 comeback victory over them in the playoffs in 2003, giving Browns fans even more reason to hate the Steelers, as their enemies soiled the only playoff appearance in the new franchise era. Browns fans also hate the Ravens, as they won the Super Bowl in 2000 just four years after Art Modell moved the team there. Baltimore, of course, also won February’s Super Bowl XLVII, while the Browns drafted and started a 28 year-old quarterback (Weeden), went 5-11, and fired team president Mike Holmgren, general manager Tom Heckert, and head coach Pat Shurmur.
It has not been pretty there, but some positive steps in the right direction have been taken in an up-and-down season to this point. After a rough 0-2 start and the surprising trade of franchise RB Trent Richardson to Indianapolis, the team turned things around a bit, going 3-2 before losing three straight and losing two quarterbacks to injury along the way. They now start Jason Campbell, who was not even on the roster at the start of the season. After an ugly and error-prone loss in Cincinnati last week, they have to face a Steelers team that is playing arguably its best football of the season.
When these two 4-6 teams meet for the first time this season, one will all but be officially eliminated from playoff contention. The other will very much be in the thick of the wild card race. It probably will not be pretty, but it will certainly be a rare meaningful game between these two rivals, which is what rivalries are all about, right? There have been few important meetings lately in a rivalry that has gotten a bit stale due to the struggles of one and the domination of the other. No matter what the situation in the standings, there ought to be some animosity, something at stake between these two cities. There certainly will be in my family.
