It’s official – The Pittsburgh Steelers are America’s favorite team and Super Bowls don’t suck
February 4, 2009 by William K. Wolfrum
What, you think a record number of people tuned in to see the Arizona Cardinals?
Sunday’s Super Bowl kept the officials scrambling to review hard-to-call plays on the field, so maybe it’s no surprise that the TV ratings needed a thorough look too.
After examining the numbers more closely, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday that NBC’s game actually delivered an average of 98.7 million total viewers, making it the most-watched Super Bowl ever and the No. 2 telecast of all time, behind only the 1983 series finale of “MASH” with 106 million.
Aside from giving more evidence that the U.S. has a love affair with the Pittsburgh Steelers – keep track of how many Steelers’ jerseys you see people wearing compared to other teams – the numbers prove another thing – that Super Bowls don’t suck.
Remember, for a long time, the NFL’s championship game tended to end in one-sided beat downs (see: Dallas 52, Buffalo 17).
The Steelers’ brilliant 27-23 victory over the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII was just the latest great season-ending game for the NFL. In fact, the last six Super Bowls have been decided by an average of just six points. Compare that to the six Super Bowls from 1985 to 1990, which featured five blowouts in six games and were decided by an average of more than 25 points.
Super Bowl XLIII was the latest in a line of games disproving that all Super Bowls are blowouts. And it was the latest proof that Pittsburgh is the center of the universe when it comes to professional football.
–WKW
no bias on that post.
Bill, Bill, Bill … Methinks all this “we’re really America’s team now” is but a sad attempt to assuage the shame that you’ve surely been carrying since Jan. 28, 1996, when your beloved Stillers were defeated by the hated Dallas Cowboys in the porny-sounding Super Bowl XXX.
The “1″ on the right side of P-Town’s 6-1 Super Bowl record must be driving you insane, and I wish I could say I understand — but I can’t. As a fan of one of the NFL’s legendary franchises (a franchise, I might add, that has *never* lost a Super Bowl), I shudder to imagine what it must be like to have to carry that SB-losing angst around all these years.
So, yeah, you go ahead & try to pretend that it’s fun being a fan of the team that dominated an entire decade, that boasts some of the game’s most memorable players & plays, & that has won more Super Bowls than any other franchise. But one thing you’ll *never* know is what it’s like to root for a team that has never lost a Super Bowl — yep, you’ll never know what it’s like to root for the Cleveland Browns.
Wait — what?