Natural enemies
Now that the Steelers are no longer playing, Steeler Nation is left watching other teams battle in the playoffs (am I the only one who finds himself thinking “we could have beaten that team?”).
In discussing the playoffs with fellow Steelers fans, an interesting topic has come up. I have had disagreements with several fans over which teams it is okay for Steelers fans to support in the playoffs.
I always assumed that Steeler Nation was pretty united about who our enemies are. But now I see that that is not true.
For example, I said on my Facebook page that I was happy to see the Colts destroying the hated Baltimore Ravens in this past weekend’s playoff game. But to my surprise, quite a few fans came back at me and told me that they hated the Colts more than the Ravens.
Personally, I was shocked by this. How could any Steelers fan hate any team more than they hate the Ravens? Steelers and Ravens are like Superman and Lex Luthor, or Spiderman and the Green Goblin, or Casey Hampton and Nutrisystem; they’re natural enemies.
Not only did I think that it was inappropriate to hate any team more than the Ratbirds, I also questioned whether the Colts are even a natural enemy to the Steelers.
So I started assembling a list of the teams that I believe are natural rivals to our beloved Pittsburgh Steelers.
Firstly, I believe that all of the other teams in the AFC North are our natural enemies. Thus, the Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, and Cleveland Browns have to be on the list of the Steelers’ natural rivals. Among these division opponents, I believe that the Ravens have earned a spot at the top of the hate list.
The Ravens are brash and arrogant. They have historically had a very strong defense, just like the Steelers, so there is a natural rivalry each season to see which team has the best defense. The two teams play one another twice each season (sometimes more). Moreover, over the past decade (with a few notable exceptions), it has always been the Steelers and Ravens who have fought for AFC North supremacy. I’m not sure if there is any rivalry in football that is as physical as Steelers versus Ravens. When you add in the fact that the Ravens actually put out a bounty on Hines Ward, I don’t think that there is any question that the Baltimore Ravens are enemy #1.
Public enemy #1
After the AFC North opponents, I think most Steelers fans will agree that the New England Patriots are a natural enemy of the Steelers. The Steelers and Patriots may not be in the same division, but they have had some classic battles in the playoffs. Too often, it was the Patriots who knocked the Steelers out of the AFC Championship picture. Twice they did it right in our own stadium. Belichick’s cheatin’ ways probably cost the Steelers a Super Bowl trophy.
In truth, the Patriots may rank higher on the “hate list” than the Bengals or Browns. Personally, I rank them at #2 behind the Ravens. After all, which team prevented the Steelers from being the team of the decade? And they didn’t even do it fair and square. I hate them!
Next on the hate list is the Dallas Cowboys. Like the Patriots, I rank the Cowboys higher on my hate list than either the Bengals or Browns. The Cowboys are like the anti-Steelers. They are glitzy and glamorous while the Steelers are blue collar and down to Earth. The Cowboys have the title of “America’s team”, even though everyone knows that the Steelers are really America’s team.
No two teams have met more often in the Super Bowl than the Steelers and Cowboys. The Steelers have won twice, while the Cowboys won once. Of course the Steelers would have actually won all 3 times if it hadn’t been for a certain former quarterback whose name shall not be mentioned. His untimely interceptions cost the Steelers yet another Lombardi Trophy.
The historic nature of the Steelers-Cowboys rivalry puts them high on my hate list, even though we don’t play them very often. Moreover, the Cowboys are the team that is most likely to match the Steelers’ total of 6 Super Bowl championship. More than anything else, that is reason for Steeler Nation to want the Cowboys to lose every game they play. We all want the Steeler to stand alone in their number of Super Bowl championships for a very long time. Frankly, I hope the Cowboys will still be stuck at 5 Lombardi Trophies in the year 4078.
Upon further review, maybe I hate the Cowboys more than I hate the Patriots. They’re at least tied. Maybe one is 2A and the other is 2B. Regardless, I hate them both.
Some would argue that the Raiders are a natural enemy of the Steelers. I tend to disagree. There was a time when this was clearly true. But Ken Stabler, Dave Casper, Otis Sistrunk, Art Shell, Ray Guy and Fred Biletnikoff are a distant memory. The Raiders have been so bad for so long that it’s hard to hate them. In fact, it’s hard to do anything but pity the poor Raiders fans who have had to deal with Al Davis for all of these years.
Several fans argued that the Colts are also a natural rival for the Steelers. I just don’t see it. We don’t play the Colts very often. We haven’t had many games of historic proportions against them (like Super Bowls or AFC Championship games). They’re not in our division. I just can’t count them as a natural rival. That doesn’t mean that you can’t hate them. You can hate any team you like. But I don’t think the majority of Steeler Nation feels that the Colts are in the same category as the teams that I listed above.
Some have even argued that the reason we should all hate the Colts is that they intentionally lost their last regular season game and prevented the Steelers from making the playoffs. Well if you use that logic, then do you hate the team that lost to the Jets in week 3? How about the team that lost to them in week 7? They each had as much to do with the Jets making the playoffs as the Colts did.
In my opinion, the only team that is responsible for the Steelers not making the playoffs is the Steelers. If they had won just one of the gimme games against the Chiefs, Raiders, or Browns, they’d be in the playoffs. So casting blame elsewhere is unfounded. So in my opinion, the Colts do not qualify as a natural rival to the Steelers.
So now that all of the natural enemies are officially out of the playoffs, the remaining teams are neutral territory for Steeler Nation. Feel free to pull for any team that you like. Besides, no matter which team wins, we all know that the Steelers probably could have beaten them.
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Agree with most but….
Cowboys are NOT the most likely to match 6 SB wins. They couldn’t be further from the SB and don’t see them changing soon.
It wasn’t all Neil’s fault with one of those int’s. WR missed hot read on blitz (he was in the game because of injury).
And the teams that lost to the Jets in the beginning and middle of the season didn’t play their backups for 3 quarters.
And maybe you should take your own advice and place the blame for Steeler losses on the Steelers when even thinking that “cheating” caused us to lose a chance at another title.
And hey, right now our bigest rivals are ourselves. LOL
1I’m pulling for the Jets, not only because I happen to live in NYC, but because they play football the way our beloved Stillers once did: Physical, punishing offense with opportunistic and pressure-driven defense.
Call me old school, I don’t really care. Teams that can consistently pound the ball between the hashmarks were built for the playoffs in January.
That’s great that we have a 4,000 yard passer and two 1,000 yard wideouts. Would have preferred a 1,500 yard runner and a trip to the postseason though.
2i would like to add Titans and Jaguars….rather we play them alot or not it is just they are always good games. I use to hate watching in the early 2000-2007 the Jag game because I liked them both. I still like the Jags but I dont see them being a playoff team like they were with Mark Brunell & Coach Tom C….Now the other hand the Titans never liked them. Didnt like them when they were the Oilers didnt like them when they played one yr in my hometown “Memphis”. Never liked Eddie George he sucked @ Ohio State and he sucked with the Titans. Now let me say this….I like Coach Fisher he is a good coach just dont like the Titans.
3As a Cowboy fan I thought this article
4was great.
I agree. I hate the Ravens with a passion. I rank Dallas then the Pats and then the other 2 losers. Are the Browns even considered a team anymore cause they barely show up on the field? There is no way Dallas will get 6 wins. The Steelers are America’s team…. I bleed Black and Gold… All day, everyday!
5Tony,
I certainly hope the Cowboys don’t win a Super Bowl any time soon. But they and the 49ers are the closest to our record of 6 Lombardi Trophies, so we have to be somewhat concerned about them.
I don’t really want to talk about the quarterback who is not to be named. So no comment there.
I actually do think it is a bit different to blame the Patriots for cheating. Heck, they were actually penalized by the NFL. But what do we care about penalties? They didn’t take away their wins and grant them to the teams that they cheated on, so what difference does it make.
Just as Mark McGuire’s records will always have an asterisk by them, so will the New England Patriots’. They may have won anyway even if they didn’t cheat, but we have no way of knowing that. Therefore, I hate them.
6Spacemonkey,
7I hurts hearing you say that the Jets play football the way the Steelers used to. I am hopeful that Mike Tomlin will reel Bruce Arians in a bit next year, and we’ll see a much more balanced attack.
Mike,
You are absolutely correct. How could I have forgotten the Titans and the Jaguars. We may not be in the same division as them anymore, but old AFC Central animosity still runs deep.
Steeler Nation hates the Titans and Jags.
8Brad,
9Thanks. I’m sure that you Cowboys fans hate the Steelers as much as Steelers fans hate the Cowboys.
I LOVE this!!! I live in South Texas and of course, all my friends are Cowboy fans. It was GREAT going to a party this past Sunday wearing a purple shirt and watching the cowgirls blow up. Luckily I have found a great gathering place of Steeler fans here.
10I agree 110% the lineup of the most hated teams is right on, exactly how I feel. There will be nothing worse for the teams we meet next season than the pissed off STEELERS (pissed @ themselves for putting themselves in this situation), so, we have something to prove to ourselves. And have no fear, they will get the job done.
11I don’t care if we throw for 2,000 yards or 20,000. I also don’t care if we run for 2500 or 1500 in a season. What I do care about is putting up points and giving up points.
Here is my list:
121. Rattirds
2a. Patriots(terrorists)
2b. Cowboys(Cowgirls)
3. Jaguars
4. Titans
5. Bengals(Bungholes) their fans kill me
6. There is no one else.(rest of league)
I would have to agree with your assessment. The team i hate the most would have to be the RATBIRDs, then those COWGIRLS and CHEATING PATRIOTS, followed by the BUNGHOLES, then the BROWNS. Great article.
13The Ravens have to be the most hated rival for any STEELERS fan. That should go without saying. Next would be 2(a) Patriots 2(b) Cowboys. Which should also not need an explanation. Now MY thought process on the playoff after this most difficult season was for the Colts, Patriots and Bengals all to lose because they rested their starters and ended our chances of sneaking in the playoffs (I know it was our own damn fault). So I find myself routing for those 3 teams to lose no matter who they are playing. Even if it was the Ravens as much as that killes me, but I knew they were not good enough to make an extended run at the Bowl. So now we have the Jets sorry a$$es playing the Colts. The very team they allowed to back into the playoffs. I would love for that decision to come back haunt them. I hope the Jets stomp a mudhole in that a$$………
14I disagree with your perceptions that old rivals go away. My paternal family was from Pittsburgh and I was born and grew up the hard way, 30 miles from down Cleveland. Cleveland is always the number one hated team of the Steeler Fan Base. Any long time Steeler fan will list the Raiders Second, reguardless of how they are today. They embarished us this year and a couple years back when they beat us with 98 total offensive yards…GEEZE. Third on my list are the Ravens, not because of their arrogance but because they are the OLD Browns. Forth are the Cowbows, because we hate the monicar Americas Team and the rivialry. I have to admit though, Steeler-Cowbows Superbowls are ammong the best games in SB History. Four hated arch rivils are enough, these are mine. Signed 49 year Steelers Fan. (excuse my spelling.
15Good Job but you have to include the Oakland Raiders since they were enemy #1 back in the first Steelers Dynasty!
16For those of you who made the argument that the Raiders still need to be on the list, I can agree with that. They’ve been so bad for so long, that it’s hard for me to hate them. But the DO belong on the list due to the historical rivalry. So do the Titans and Jags.
17A few quick points:
1) I have to disagree with the some of the coments regarding old time rivalries. I don’t doubt that Browns and Bengal fans hate the Steelers…but really…the Browns and Raiders are a complete joke and the Bengals have only made the playoffs twice in the past 2 decades.
I have a hard time hating a team that you can’t even take seriously.
2) I overwhelimgly agree with the (almost) consensus of the Ravens, Patriots, and Cowboys as the top three. For me, it is the Patriots (1st), Ravens (2nd), Cowboys (3rd). With Billick gone, I actually rooted for the Ravens to beat the Belicheat’s.
The Cowboys are always a special case for Pittsburgh fans. There is no NFC team I remotely hate as much as the Cowboys.
3) The Belicheats are a special case for me due not only from the impact their cheting may have had on the Steelers but also due to the general apethetic response from the various punditry. Most simply dismissed it as a Belichick-Mangini spat and lamented that the Pat’s didn’t need to cheat because they were so good.
4) I agree with Tony that it doesn’t make much sense to hate teams because they gave up on ‘meaningless’ games at the end of the year. As much as I was irritated at the Colts for waving the white flag in their game against the Jets, I only blame the Steelers for miissing the playoffs.
18In reading the comments and the orginal article, I would have to agree with alot of that. However, although the Ravens and rest of the AFC North should be ranked high on the list, i have too believe the Cowboys should rise close to the top. For ME, the disrespect that the Titans gave to the Steeler Nation by stompin’ on our TERRIBLE TOWEL, shot them straight to the top for me. The only thing I love more than a Steeler Victory is a Titan loss!
19Couldn’t agree more with your list… The playoffs have gone exactly as I hoped – Ravens knock off Patriots, get embarassed by Colts. Cowgirls get spanked by Vikes.
The complete lack of investigation into the Cheatriots still chaps my ass, not to mention that all the evidence was destroyed. There really should be an * next to those SB wins.
20IS ANYONE ELSE FURIOUS ABOUT THE STEELERS GETTING CLOSE TO HIRING EVEREST FOR SPECIAL TEAMS COACH!! THE MAN WAS A FAILURE AT SAN FRAN FOR GOD’S SAKE.
TOMLIN’S DECISIONS ARE GETTING JUST PLAIN STUPID AND RECKLESS.
21Tony,
There’s no need to shout. We’re all friends here.
Personally, I think it’s too soon to pass judgment on Everest. After all, situations often dictate results. Remember, Bill Belichick was a failure in Cleveland.
22
maybe he didn’t cheat there. LOL
23I know I’m not really adding anything that hasn’t already been said but the top three rivals are the Ratbirds, Cheatriots, and Cowgirls. I did find it weird that you left out the Titans and the Jaguars, but more so the Titans due to the fact that the used to be the Oilers and the intensity of the game for the most part hasn’t decreased. Here is another team that might be able to knock out either the Clowns or the Raiders as rivals and that is the Broncos. Even though recently we’ve gotten the best of them I can remember regular season and playoff games that were pretty hurtful losses. And finally I have to agree with tony that in a lot seasons our number one rival is the Pittsburgh Steelers. They tend to always pull us down when we least expect it.
24Benny,
You’re right. Forgetting the Titans and Jaguars was bad on my part.
Quite a few people suggested the Broncos on my Facebook page. I am not quite as sold on that one. Back in the 70′s, we did used to have some great battles against that Orange Crush Broncos. But I still don’t put them in the same category as many of the other teams.
A surprising number of people even said that the Browns are still enemy #1 and always will be. I just don’t see it that way.
25Agree with you analysis and rating of enemies, for the most part. Living, as I do, in So Texas, I can assure you that here in Cowboy Country the
26Steelers are hated. But for some reason I find it hard to return the hate, which I reserve for more worthy recipients: Ratbirds, Patsies, etc. Cowboys have become a really funny organization with that face-lifted-too-tight owner and Capatin Kangaroo as head coach. Neverthless, would love nothing more than to see Steelers invade Jerry’s World next Feb. and punk the girls!
I’m right there with you, wouldn’t change anything. Someone did make a good point in reminding us that the Ravens have the added blemish of being the real Browns. The team currently known as the Browns is an expansion team that had the misfortune of getting placed Cleveland; they’ve never done anything to us.
27Let’s not confuse who has been good recently with who are our permanent rivals. Yes, the Browns have sucked for a while and the Ravens have been our chief competition for the division for a while. But the Ravens are, what, 15 years old? There is no way they can be called a rival in the sense that the Browns are. (I know, the Ravens used to be the Browns, but they don’t wear those colors or play in Cleveland any more, they don’t have the Browns fans, there are new Browns now, and Pittsburgh and Baltimore as cities are not natural rivals like Pittsburgh and Cleveland are.) Does anyone doubt that, if the Ravens sucked for a few years, everyone would stop thinking of them as Steeler rivals? Of course that’s what would happen, and to me that means they are not true rivals, although they could become that over time. Meanwhile, the fact that people are still citing the Browns despite their suckign for so long demonstrates that the Browns are the opposite situation–a real rival regardless of competitiveness. And you can bet that if the Browns got good for a while, the hatred of Steeler fans for them would make however people feel about the Ravens seem puny.
28Steelers are not the most popular NFL team, Dallas gets the nod by quite a margin.. All you have to do is look at the merchandise sales Dallas #1 by far Steelers #2, but I will say Steeler fans travel well to away games. . Have you ever seen an Arizona Cardinal game? The team color is red and their stadium is almost all blue with Cowboy fans and that is why Dallas is called Americas Team by the media Dallas also has an NFL record for away game sale outs, that means all their away games sell out because they are so popular even in other cities. Dallas has won more Conference championship games than any other team 8. Dallas and Pittsburgh or the only teams since 1960 to win over 400 games. The bottom line is that Dallas is the most popular team and Pittsburgh #2, but Steeler fans can enjoy their record breaking six Super Bowl wins for now.
29Star-divide
The Nielsen Sports Media Exposure Index measured all 32 NFL teams during the 2009 regular season. Nielsen explain their ranking methodology as follows:
Teams in each category were assigned a score, with the top rank worth 100 points and each subsequent ranking assigned a lower weighted score based on its distance from the top. Final team rankings were calculated using the sum of scores across all four categories, and then indexed with the highest total equaling 100.
The Wall Street Journal notes that the survey confirms that the Cowboys are, in fact, “America’s Team.”
The Cowboys are on top in part because they’re popular to begin with. Nielsen counted the total number of viewers of a team’s national broadcasts from last season, rather than the average. So in most cases the more a team was picked to play in front of a national audience, the better it did. The Cowboys, who led the league last year with six national appearances, had a whopping 117 million viewers.
But it’s not just TV which led to the Cowboys being ranked number one. The Cowboys also profited from a tremendous amount of traffic directed at the official website, The Mothership as we puny internet bloggers like to call it. Dallascowboys.com drew nearly 50% more unique visitors per month than the official site of the second-place Steelers.
At the end of May this year, we looked at NFL Teams And Alternative Media. At the time, the Cowboys had 622,239 Facebook Fans. In the four months since, the number of Facebook Fans has more than doubled to 1,372,432. Pretty impressive.
The “Popularity” Index
The Nielsen Sports Media Exposure Index ranks the popularity of NFL teams based on each team’s local and national TV rankings, how often they’re mentioned on the Internet and how many visitors they attracted to their official websites in the 2009 regular season.
Rank Team Sum
1 Cowboys 100
2 Steelers 81
3 Giants 70
4 Bears 67
5
Packers 67
6 Vikings 67
7 Eagles 66
8 Colts 62
9 Saints 62
10 Patriots 58
11 Redskins 55
12 Broncos 51
13 Chargers 50
14
Bengals 48
15 Titans 47
16 Ravens 46
Rank Team Sum
17 Cardinals 46
18 Jets 42
19 Dolphins 40
20 Bills 38
21 Browns 37
22 Falcons 36
23 Panthers 36
24 Chiefs 34
25 Raiders 33
26 Lions 32
27 49ers 30
28 Texans 27
29 Seahawks 27
30 Jaguars 25
31 Buccaneers 25
32 Rams 22
Nielsen explains that the Cowboys have ranked first for the last two years.
30