Stop giants fans from invading Fed Ex

[Godfather151981]

You're diluted.

You're predicting 33K away fans, and you're saying I'm diluted? Geeze...

[Godfather151981]

I was one of those who scalped ticket for Steelers game, and I felt damn good about it. I cleared $300 and didn't have to watch the disaster on the field, not to mention avoiding postgame traffic. I also felt good about sticking it to Snyder. Making a profit, after all, is only good capitalism, right Danny Boy? I also sold ticket for Cowboys game (also clearing $300). It was so easy that I'm going for $500 for the Giants game.

Making the safe assumption that your seats went to visitors, you should be ashamed of yourself. I firmly believe that the owners of seats that are consitantly filled with out-of-towners should loose their tickets. If you sell your tickets, what's wrong with asking someone to confirm their fandom? Certainly it's possible that the person could be lying or whatever, but...if we wanted to play all 16 of our games on the road we'd petition the league for that.

[str8jacket]

i hope its nothing but burgundy and gold

[Stugein]

Living outside of Philly all I can say is that if acting like their fans is the way we regain home-field advantage, I'd rather not have home-field advantage. It's actually kind of disarming sometimes..Eagles fans, on a day to day basis, are as a group some of the best, most knowledgeable football fans. Great bunch to talk football with. However on game day it seems that they all think it's their civic duty to get wasted and engage in criminal behavior. No, thank you.

I'm sitting in a hotel in Pittsburgh right now. I've been here for a few days and I think I have why the fans are so much "hard core" than the local 'skins fan-base in D.C. - Football is "the thing" here. It's really all they have. I mean, it's seriously like some Friday Night Lights/Varsity Blues nonsense around here. College football is huge and to my surprise it's actually rivaled by high school football. Yes, high school. They televise high school games live on TV here. You see signs for local school teams around as much as you see 'skins signs in D.C. Old men in the bar arguing about how well the Beaver Falls Tigers are going to do this year. It's insane. I went to high school in Woodbridge, VA (Hylton) and do you know when I stopped giving a **** about high school football? About 5 minutes after the last game my graduating year. But these people? These people are die-hards. Just being here makes me want to sit in a parking lot and grill something while throwing a football to my kid. It's unreal.

And the Steelers? It's incredible. It's everywhere. Every business. Every other home. I did not enter a single public place this entire trip and fail to see someone with Steelers gear on. And game day was Thursday. Drive down your average neighborhood street in VA or MD and you'll see...one? Two houses, maybe with a 'skins flag or a sign? You know the Redskins shelf or display at Wal-Mart or Target? Here they have entire sections of the stores dedicated to Steelers. Every local business I went into had something personalized in it..an autographed terrible towel on the wall..a picture of the owner or the waitresses with a player. All the locals refer to all the players by first name, and everyone knows who they are talking about. That's the level of the connection here. That's how entwined the team is with the community. Not because of their charity work or some foundation where they donate a park, but because you get the distinct feeling that you can walk into a random diner and sit down next to Ben Roethlisberger and eat some pancakes while you enjoy your coffee just the same as you might sit next to the local mechanic; and nobody would think it out of the ordinary at all.

How does this happen? The big difference? I don't really know...my best guess is that the vast majority of people here are true locals. I've very few non-Steelers jerseys, hats, shirts, etc. since I got here on Thursday. The few I have seen have been Pitt, Penn State, or a random local school I didn't recognize. In the D.C. area we have a large transient population. We probably have more "out of towners" than any other major football market, due to our local economy (government, military, IT, etc.). If you could gather everyone in the D.C./VA/MD area and tell them all to separate into groups based on their fan affiliation, you'd get a very large group of Redskins fans, but then you'd get 31 other groups of people. If you did the same thing here in Pittsburgh you'd get a very large group of Steelers fans and a handful of nervous looking stragglers wondering where they put that Browns jersey they had hidden away a few years ago.

The culture here revolves around football. Does that make them better fans? No. But it does make it easier for them to come together as a community of fans. Hence how well they travel and how well they come together both locally and away from home. A combination of things compound our issues in D.C., all of which have been beaten to death. The stadium is too big. Danny prices the tickets out of the range of affordability for blue collar fans. Too many corporate/brokers holding season tickets. But all of that can be overcome by those people who live and breathe Redskins coming together and presenting a united fan community. The answer isn't to become criminal jackasses like Eagles fans do on Sundays. The answer is to instill that passion you have for the team in others. Cultivate it at every level. As the community goes, so goes the stadium atmosphere. It's not a quick fix, but at the end of the day the real answer is to make this town love football again like it used to.

:logo:

[andyburd]

Living outside of Philly all I can say is that if acting like their fans is the way we regain home-field advantage, I'd rather not have home-field advantage. It's actually kind of disarming sometimes..Eagles fans, on a day to day basis, are as a group some of the best, most knowledgeable football fans. Great bunch to talk football with. However on game day it seems that they all think it's their civic duty to get wasted and engage in criminal behavior. No, thank you.

I'm sitting in a hotel in Pittsburgh right now. I've been here for a few days and I think I have why the fans are so much "hard core" than the local 'skins fan-base in D.C. - Football is "the thing" here. It's really all they have. I mean, it's seriously like some Friday Night Lights/Varsity Blues nonsense around here. College football is huge and to my surprise it's actually rivaled by high school football. Yes, high school. They televise high school games live on TV here. You see signs for local school teams around as much as you see 'skins signs in D.C. Old men in the bar arguing about how well the Beaver Falls Tigers are going to do this year. It's insane. I went to high school in Woodbridge, VA (Hylton) and do you know when I stopped giving a **** about high school football? About 5 minutes after the last game my graduating year. But these people? These people are die-hards. Just being here makes me want to sit in a parking lot and grill something while throwing a football to my kid. It's unreal.

And the Steelers? It's incredible. It's everywhere. Every business. Every other home. I did not enter a single public place this entire trip and fail to see someone with Steelers gear on. And game day was Thursday. Drive down your average neighborhood street in VA or MD and you'll see...one? Two houses, maybe with a 'skins flag or a sign? You know the Redskins shelf or display at Wal-Mart or Target? Here they have entire sections of the stores dedicated to Steelers. Every local business I went into had something personalized in it..an autographed terrible towel on the wall..a picture of the owner or the waitresses with a player. All the locals refer to all the players by first name, and everyone knows who they are talking about. That's the level of the connection here. That's how entwined the team is with the community. Not because of their charity work or some foundation where they donate a park, but because you get the distinct feeling that you can walk into a random diner and sit down next to Ben Roethlisberger and eat some pancakes while you enjoy your coffee just the same as you might sit next to the local mechanic; and nobody would think it out of the ordinary at all.

How does this happen? The big difference? I don't really know...my best guess is that the vast majority of people here are true locals. I've very few non-Steelers jerseys, hats, shirts, etc. since I got here on Thursday. The few I have seen have been Pitt, Penn State, or a random local school I didn't recognize. In the D.C. area we have a large transient population. We probably have more "out of towners" than any other major football market, due to our local economy (government, military, IT, etc.). If you could gather everyone in the D.C./VA/MD area and tell them all to separate into groups based on their fan affiliation, you'd get a very large group of Redskins fans, but then you'd get 31 other groups of people. If you did the same thing here in Pittsburgh you'd get a very large group of Steelers fans and a handful of nervous looking stragglers wondering where they put that Browns jersey they had hidden away a few years ago.

The culture here revolves around football. Does that make them better fans? No. But it does make it easier for them to come together as a community of fans. Hence how well they travel and how well they come together both locally and away from home. A combination of things compound our issues in D.C., all of which have been beaten to death. The stadium is too big. Danny prices the tickets out of the range of affordability for blue collar fans. Too many corporate/brokers holding season tickets. But all of that can be overcome by those people who live and breathe Redskins coming together and presenting a united fan community. The answer isn't to become criminal jackasses like Eagles fans do on Sundays. The answer is to instill that passion you have for the team in others. Cultivate it at every level. As the community goes, so goes the stadium atmosphere. It's not a quick fix, but at the end of the day the real answer is to make this town love football again like it used to.

:logo:

Great perspective, and I'm sure it's true that Football is sacred in Pittsburgh, but not 30,000 Steeler fans in our stadium