Steelers' home-field edge

DETROIT – From black-and-gold Ben Roethlisberger jerseys at Detroit Pistons games, to fawning newspaper columns, to proclamations from the local Hizzoner himself, Detroit may not have its team in the Super Bowl but it certainly has a team – the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Super Bowl has never been held in the hometown of one of the competing teams, and considering that the Detroit Lions have won just one playoff game since 1957, there really was no risk that would change this season at Ford Field.

So maybe that, coupled with decades of Lions futility and the retention of Matt Millen (21 victories in five seasons), explains it. Or maybe it is the sense that there is a real kinship between a couple of old, union, rust-belt towns.

Or perhaps it just stems from the belief that if your city is going to bear the brunt of endless trash talk just for hosting the game, you might as well jump on a bandwagon and enjoy it to the fullest.

Whatever it is, sorry Seattle, Detroit has gotten behind a single team like perhaps no other presumably neutral host city ever. And this isn't any 60-40 split, or just some man-on-the-street push.

Consider that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is trying to get this week declared "Jerome Bettis Week" in the city. Not a day, mind you, but the entire week. Ever heard of that happening before?

Consider that the Detroit media is in universal agreement that this is a temporary Steeler town.

"We're going with Pittsburgh," wrote Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press.. "We like Pittsburgh. We are Pittsburgh."

"98.99 percent of Detroit is rooting for the Steelers," wrote Bob Wojnarowski of the Detroit News. "The other 1.01 percent drink $6 cups of coffee."

Ever read something like that before?

Consider that terrible towels and Steelers jerseys have already started coloring up the city, just a 4½-hour drive from the 'Burgh. And while this is certainly an unscientific survey, we haven't personally seen or met a Seattle Seahawks fan in Michigan.

About the only thing anyone knows about the Seahawks is that this Matt Hasselbeck guy's sister-in-law is on "The View."

The ironic part is that Detroit, which is bracing for an onslaught of complaint columns from snarky, self-important sportswriters playing on the area's perception, is going full boat for the Steelers because of its perception of Seattle.

The thumbnail belief is that Pittsburgh, like Detroit, is a blue-collar, rough-around-the-edges, humble, strong, pro-union town. When the Ford Motor Company announced it was cutting 30,000 jobs last week, you could imagine the people of Pittsburgh looking at their shuttered steel mills and understanding the pain.

In Seattle, meanwhile, the belief was they just nodded at the stock market reaction and ordered another soy latte.

All of that is absurd, of course. It ignores all those Boeing factory workers, plays ignorant to the sizeable working class and diversity of Seattle, which isn't just a bunch of Fraser and Niles Cranes.

But then again, it isn't like Metro Detroit is just one big, poor factory town, either. Someone has been cashing all those auto profits for 100 years. If everyone was broke, then Michigan wouldn't rank first in total number of boat ownership and third in total golf courses (after California and Florida). Those are two particularly impressive numbers considering it is too cold here to use either of them five months a year.

But you won't hear that in the Detroit rip jobs and monologues in the run-up to Super Bowl XL.

So maybe there is something fair about a city perceived to be depressed, dangerous and dirty, making a preemptive strike and looking down on the team from the pretty, perky city that it believes would look down on them.

Plus not only does Seattle not have a hockey team, but it doesn't have Bettis. The biggest, most recognizable star and storyline in the big game grew up on Detroit's West Side and, in many ways, has never left. His family still lives here and he is even hosting a bowling tournament Thursday at his old lanes.

Bettis also owns part of a local construction company (who gets city contracts) and donated to Kilpatick's campaign fund (which explains the Bettis week). But still, political favors aside, you didn't see the mayor of Jacksonville taking sides last year. Or Houston the year before. Or so on.

The stereotypical politician plays to all sides. But not in Detroit, where choosing one side or the other, throwing down and keeping it real is always better than pandering.

Pittsburgh is seen as a brother. Seattle is seen as a bother, trying to sell a city of greasy spoons on overpriced foam in their coffee.

Those are all the stereotypes. No one likes them. But no one is going to change them or the rooting interests of the hometown.

You need steel to make cars, right?