I am a passionate football fan. Outside of football, I'd classify myself as a spirited realist, someone whose passion often fuels her toward seemingly unrealistic destinations. But I'm realistic enough to know when passion, like love, is not all you need.
That thinking goes out the window on game day. For me, watching a Pittsburgh Steelers game is cardio. It requires a vocal warm-up. And in the final seconds of a close game, I believe I can control the outcome through a precise mixture of cheering, vigorous pointing and, if I'm at home, pillow throwing. When the Steelers play, I become my most irrational self. I will go to great lengths to watch games with people to whom the outcome means as much as it means to me.
That's how I came to spend Christmas Day in Pittsburgh with Ravens fans.
It started with a text from a friend on April 14, the day the NFL released its 2016 schedule. "You see the schedule?" he texted. "Steelers-Ravens on Christmas! You in?"
I stared at my phone for a few extra beats. Christmas Day? Really? I couldn't remember the last time Christmas fell on a Sunday, and it had been a while since the NFL scheduled games on Dec. 25. The Steelers had never played on Christmas, but on that day this year, we were scheduled to play our most heated division rivals in Pittsburgh. I googled the schedule to make sure my friend wasn't joking, and then replied without pause.
I didn't think about the logistics of getting to Pittsburgh on Christmas, a day I planned to spend in London, Ontario, with my boyfriend, Billy, and his family, or how I would convince Billy, a football agnostic in a family of football agnostics and Christmas devotees, that this was a great idea. I didn't think about how we would secure tickets or how my decision would impact other people's plans. I didn't think about the fact that the Steelers had dropped the past three games to Baltimore or that Travis, the friend who'd sent the text, was a rabid Ravens fan, the same friend to whom I'd lost too many Steelers-Ravens bets to over the past few years.
I thought about all of those things later, a lot. But in that moment, I just said yes. Then I turned on my brain and worked backward from there.
My first thought was of my mom, Joy, the most passionate Steelers fan I know. I inherited the CRFF (crazy football fan) gene from her. When it comes to football, my dad is Xs and Os, but my mom is XOXOs. Despite both being born and raised 30 miles from Three Rivers, my dad, Fred, regularly utters perplexing, unforgivable phrases such as "we didn't deserve that win today" and "the best team won, it just wasn't us." In 2009, I took my dad to watch the Steelers play the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII, and he didn't even paint his face. I flew my mom to the next Steelers Super Bowl in Dallas, and she packed two fully coordinated black-and-gold outfits -- for every day. If I was going to this game, she was coming with me.
My friend Kristi, a Pittsburgh native who lives in Arizona and once baked a Terrible Towel cake on Myron Cope's birthday, also texted that she was in for the game. The last time I attended a Ravens-Steelers game in Pittsburgh, in 2013, I was with Kristi and my mom. That morning, I woke up feeling like it was Christmas. What would the morning of this game feel like?
But slowly, reality bit. My niece and sister each gave birth to baby girls in June and October, respectively, and my mom had to admit her allegiance has its boundaries. There was no way she was leaving two new grandbabies to fly to Pittsburgh to watch a football game on Christmas. Then in November, Kristi and her husband changed their holiday (game day) plans, leaving me as the only Steelers fan in our Christmas Day crew.
Of course I knew Billy would wear black and gold and cheer for "our" team because he understands how much this silly game means to me. He hadn't hesitated in figuring out a way to shift his family's Christmas plans so we could drive six hours each way to Pittsburgh. He even bought Steelers socks and a black-and-gold toque. But how far would he go in his support? Would he twirl a Terrible Towel? Smack talk our Ravens fan friends? Put up with the person I become on game day? What if watching the game with him was like watching a game with my dad? I didn't need that kind of reality on Christmas.
Then I remembered I was already going to the game with the biggest fan I knew. He was just cheering for the other team, and that was okay with me. I'd learned that lesson a decade earlier.
In 2006, I attended my first Super Bowl game, Steelers-Seahawks in Detroit, and I couldn't wait to walk into the stadium and be overwhelmed by how well Steeler Nation was represented. Instead, I spent four hours surrounded by men and women dressed in neutral colors. They weren't Steelers fans. They weren't Seahawks fans. They didn't appreciate that I kept "waving that damn towel." They'd received tickets from a corporate sponsor and "just wanted to see a good game." It was a stadium filled with Freds. I couldn't understand how these people were allowed to attend this game. Shouldn't they have had to pass a passion test before entering a stadium housing the biggest game of the year?
Sorry, sir. Read the sign. No umbrellas. No liquids. No impartiality. Return those items to your car.
My fondest memories of that game include a Seattle fan named Jeff with whom I bonded over a mutual disgust of the lack of fans at the game, or more accurately, the lack of access fans have to Super Bowl tickets. We considered ourselves lucky, and then smack talked and placed side bets throughout the game. When the Steelers won, my new friend paid up on our final bet and waved my Terrible Towel for a photo. After the game, I asked him if he'd do it all again -- the $600 ticket, the standby flight, the hotel room two hours away, sitting next to me -- knowing his team would fall 11 points short. "In a heartbeat," he told me. "I'd pay $2,000."
That is my kind of passion. Win or lose, it's about the journey. As sports fans, despite our most deeply held beliefs, the ugly truth is that we have little control over the outcome of any game. We can only control the experience we have during it and the way in which we react to the final score.
On the drive to Pittsburgh on Christmas morning, Billy and I talked about whether I would be able to live up to my promise that this day would be about the experience, about spending time with him and our friends and attending a once-in-a-decade game, and not about the destination -- especially if we were driving toward Loserville and a merry band of Ravens fans were ready to rub my face in a loss. He was not driving six hours to Pittsburgh to make the return trip with a grumpy girlfriend.
I thought about Seattle Jeff and that game in Detroit. I thought about my mom and how, moments before the game in Dallas, we realized that despite having had the most incredible weekend, we could not control the ending to our Super Bowl story. The Steelers lost that game to the Packers, yet I have nothing but positive memories about our time together in Dallas.
I thought about Jeff and my mom again late in the third quarter of Sunday's game, when C.J. Mosley intercepted a pass from Ben Roethlisberger and ran it back to Pittsburgh's 11-yard line, which shifted the momentum meter strongly in Baltimore's favor. "Can I really do this?" I thought, as I watched my Baltimore friends high-five one another and mock me by waving invisible Terrible Towels in my face.
"Yes," I told Billy. "I can do this. Win or lose, this is going to be the best day ever."
Then Le'Veon Bell scored and I lost my cool. I heckled my friends, high-fived every Steelers fan I could reach and then waved my towel so hard I knocked over my Baltimore friend's beer and nearly fell into the row of fans in front of me. "Sorry, Travis," I said. "Maybe I'm getting a little over excited."
"No way," he said. "Where would the world be without passion? Passion is everything. Wave your damn towel. I'll just burn it later, after the Ravens win."
Now, I can't say with certainty that my passionate cheering or my friend's premature gloating is to credit (or to blame, depending on your allegiance) for what happened next: the Miracle on Art Rooney Ave, Antonio Brown's Immaculate Extension, the greatest gift this side of Franco Harris' unforgettable catch. But I also can't say it's not.
That moment convinced me a stadium of passionate Steelers fans filled with the Christmas spirit is more powerful than the crush of the Ravens' D.