Football is fading from public interest, as we're all now hearing.
The Steelers, specifically, are losing the faith of their fans because they've become a civic farce, a circus. Been hearing that one for weeks.
You know, I've got a hockey game to cover tonight, Penguins vs. Hurricanes at PPG Paints Arena. By the weekend, I'll be in Bradenton for the reporting of the Pirates' pitchers and catchers. But for right now, given the events of the weekend and with my mind still on the NFL, I'm in the mood for a little more football.
And, for this column, with all the misconceptions it seems are floating everywhere, the myth-busting format probably will work best ...
Tap to enlarge. - ROB ULLMAN / DKPSMyth: The NFL is in decline.
Reality: Uh, no.
Maybe it's for the purpose of playing literal political football, to further one ideology or the other, but people sure were quick to pounce on the initial word yesterday that CBS' overnight ratings for Super Bowl LIII were the lowest since Steelers-Cardinals a decade ago.
Three problems with that:
1. The fluctuation is minimal, as illustrated by this graphic of the past 20 Super Bowls:
2. More viewers than ever are watching via online streams. Between CBS and Yahoo! offering the Super Bowl for free on their respective apps, the game was watched on 7.5 million unique devices -- including my iPhone, I might add -- and that represented a dramatic increase of 20 percent from last year. In any given minute, 2.6 million people were watching streams. The latter figure is growing 31 percent year over year.
3. It's still by far the biggest event in our country.
Not sporting event. Anything event.
This Super Bowl will wind up the most watched thing on TV by a degree of tens of millions. And the NFL as a whole continues to dominate our lives like nothing else in America. In 2018, 46 of the top 50 programs on TV were NFL games.
Arguing that the NFL is uncool is tantamount to arguing that the Beatles weren't really successful musicians.
Myth: OK, but Pittsburgh is really turned off by the NFL these days.
Reality: According to information obtained yesterday by DKPittsburghSports.com, this Super Bowl drew a 40.4 rating in the Pittsburgh TV market among 25-54 year-olds -- the only demographic that matters to advertisers -- as well as a 74 share. The latter tabulates the percentage of households watching, meaning it was basically three-quarters of everyone in Western Pennsylvania.
That's not fading. That's phenomenal.
I mean, our collective lives literally stopped for 3.5 hours to watch a football game that didn't involve the Steelers!
Myth: Football players now aren't as awesome as they used to be.
Reality: This is obviously up to a personal perspective, but watch the NFL's brilliant 100th anniversary ad that ran at halftime of the Super Bowl -- yes, even if you've seen it already -- and try to get through that with a dry eye:
The all-time greatest, most competitive NFL players gathered for the #NFL100 gala. What could possibly go wrong? pic.twitter.com/pvE0fKuSye
— NFL (@NFL) February 4, 2019
Football hasn't changed anywhere near as much as the world has.
Also, football and football players remain awesome.
Myth: Pitt will never attract elite talent.
Reality: Watch the video up there again. Without doing a formal head count, I'll bet our city's largest university is more prominently represented than any.
Oh, and give all the credit in the world to the genius who scripted Aaron Donald rushing at Terry Bradshaw, then Larry Fitzgerald tipping the pass before Franco Harris scoops it up. Goosebumps galore.
Myth: The Patriots are the greatest franchise in NFL history.
Reality: I'm a big believer -- in all sports -- of respecting a league's entire history, as opposed to beginning at selective points. In baseball, we talk about the Yankees' 27 World Series championships as the gold standard. In hockey, we talk about the Canadiens' 23 Stanley Cup championships. And in football ... for some reason, we cut it off at the start of the Super Bowl era.
That's not right. The NFL was a very real entity before the AFL merger, and the Packers have won 13 total championships, including four Super Bowls. They're also the only team to have ever won three championships in a row, having achieved that twice, in 1929-31 and 1965-67.
No one else is even in this discussion.
And before anyone dismisses these championships as having been too long ago, think for a second how you'd feel if, a century from now, football historians looked back and dismissed the Chuck Noll Steelers for the same reason.
Sports change, but championships are forever.
Myth: The Patriots are the greatest team of the Super Bowl era.
Reality: Nope. They cheated. Busted multiple times, including having the integrity of two of their six championships cast into serious doubt.
Sports involve sportsmanship, at all levels, from the Olympics on down. Cheaters are punished, tangibly and intangibly. The Patriots were punished tangibly -- though not nearly enough -- so this should be the punished intangibly.
Myth: The Steelers couldn't have beaten either the Patriots or the Rams.
Reality: Come on. You watched it. You know.
Trouble was, the Steelers didn't deserve to make it that far.
Myth: At least the Patriots beat all the teams they're supposed to beat.
Reality: All five of New England's regular-season losses were to non-playoff teams. Including the Steelers.
Sorry, couldn't resist. The Oakland debacle will remain an unpardonable sin for the Steelers forever, but that sort of thing happens even to the champions.
Myth: The Steelers are a circus.
Reality: They are one clown. And when that clown is driven out of town, ideally on a unicycle, the whole mythological tent will come tumbling down.
Myth: But ... but ... it's not just Antonio Brown! It's the whole CULTURE!
Reality: Nonsense. Not a soul in the entirety of Steelers Nation can cite a single name on the 53-man roster beyond Brown when discussing the alleged CULTURE, and there's a reason for that. Because every issue has emanated from him, directly or indirectly.
The silly CULTURE concept has been concocted by people who don't like Mike Tomlin's coaching or don't like Tomlin himself, as a desperate way to connect all the malfeasance to someone other than the guy they occasionally applaud when he catches a touchdown pass. That's convenient.
And you know what bugs me about that the most?
It's that there are legitimate reasons to criticize Tomlin's coaching that, because of all the concocted stuff, get buried.
For example, I pounded the issue all season long regarding the lack of a video replay specialist on Tomlin's staff, and I asked the coach himself about that after a game in Cincinnati. That resulted mostly in crickets among the readership here. But at season's end, Art Rooney II openly acknowledged that shortcoming and stated that it would be addressed.
The more breath that gets wasted on pretend problems, the less that gets put into solving real ones.
Myth: Tomlin's most significant shortcoming as a coach has been a lack of discipline.
Reality: It's his choice of coordinators and assistants, and there isn't a close second. But if there were, it would be his game management of challenges and the clock.
Not being able to control a crazy person wouldn't even get an honorable mention.
Myth: The Steelers will cave to AB if they trade him to the 49ers.
Reality: Be serious. The team needs to do what's best for the team. If San Francisco offers the top trade return, then San Francisco it is. Being petty and/or vindictive isn't worth a fraction of a superior drafting position.
Myth: The Steelers are open to AB's return because (fill in the blank with some completely irrelevant occurrence on a given day).
Reality: He quit on the team before a must-win game. There's no recovery from that. He's gone.
Myth: The Steelers' offense will nosedive without AB.
Reality: It won't be the same. It can't be the same. But with JuJu Smith-Schuster as a bona fide No. 1, James Washington having begun to emerge late in his rookie season -- as most receivers do -- and a matured weapon in Vance McDonald ... eh, another receiver still won't hurt, but there'll be plenty of cap space for that. Or a high draft pick.
The offense is about Ben Roethlisberger. Never forget that.
Myth: Ben's part of the circus.
Reality: (jaw drops)
Myth: JuJu's part of the circus.
Reality: (passes out completely)
Myth: The Steelers don't have a star on defense.
Reality: That's fair in the context of actual stardom, but get this:
Most pressures by an interior defender over the last two regular seasons:
Aaron Donald - 197
Fletcher Cox - 146
Geno Atkins - 134
@CamHeyward - 121
Chris Jones - 112#HereWeGo
— PFF PIT Steelers (@PFF_Steelers) February 5, 2019
Cam Heyward's more than just a spectacular human being and the 20 sacks he's produced in that same span. He penetrates to the backfield with the best of them. Look at the names on that list.
Not suggesting more isn't needed. That'd be nuts. Just noting that there's already one exceptional player on that defense.
Myth: Baseball has the worst selection process for the Hall of Fame.
Reality: My God, no. And I'm not taking that stance because I'm one of the baseball voters but, rather, because football's is a joke.
Each year on Super Bowl weekend, 50 media members are essentially locked into a room until completing the process, one that's marred by protective cliques -- the New York guys, for example, won't vote for your guy until you vote for theirs -- and a journalistically dubious practice in which the beat writer for a given team is tasked with lobbying for a player he or she covered. And all of this happens in total secrecy.
Compare that to baseball, which takes all the bullets, but has almost all ballots revealed publicly and most voters -- including myself and John Perrotto -- writing full explanatory pieces as accompaniment.
Which is my long-winded way of saying that it's insane that Kevin Mawae was chosen ahead of Alan Faneca in the offensive line hierarchy. With all due respect to Mawae's 16 NFL seasons, they weren't close in achievement.
Thing is, no one has to explain a thing. They leave the room, wash their hands, and that's that.
Myth: Julian Edelman is headed to Canton.
Reality: It'll be a long, long line of receivers ahead of him. Most of them far better in every measurable way. Dude's been in the NFL for a decade and his 499 catches are half as many as Hines Ward's 1,000. By the time the election rolls around, we'll be far removed from the Monday morning hysteria following every Super Bowl MVP selection.
Wonderful player. Doesn't belong in Canton.
Myth: The Patriots are finally done. This has to be it.
Reality: Nope. Not until one or both of those guys leave. Cheaters and all, they're both inarguably the best ever in their respective roles.
