Miami — The sun is blazing, and Steelers Nation is restive. It may be that the tribe members gathered at the newly rechristened Hard Rock Stadium in Miami aren’t used to getting serious sunburns in October — or it may be that they just aren’t used to losing, at least not to a bunch of second-raters like the 1–4 Dolphins with their dopey Jimmy Buffett fight song and their just-this-side-of-Scores “cheerleaders” and their communal “Hoo-ah!” after every first down. The visiting fans down in the high-dollar seats turn ugly in a hurry, with one couple — you know the couple, sitting on the seatbacks, feet in the seats, Oakley sunglasses, lots and lots of Coronas — cursing those “f***ing retards” on the field, that “f***ing overpaid p***y” Ben Roethlisberger, who has led the team to two Super Bowl victories but is wavering today with a bum meniscus in his left knee. Two bored rich old guys with the look of bored rich old guys come in halfway through the first quarter and do a Statler-and-Waldorf act until they disappear at halftime.
Two things become quickly obvious. One is that these dedicated Steelers fans, for the most part, don’t know the first thing about football, even as they lay out big money for away-game travel and high-dollar tickets. They shout encouragement (and, later, abuse) at the quarterback while the defense is on the field and get a little confused between punts and field goals. (Lots of Coronas, we’re talking about.) They loudly encourage linebacker Lawrence Timmons to “get the ball,” a strategy that probably has occurred to him. (Timmons answered that advice by — no kidding — simply puking on the field after a Dolphins touchdown.) The second undeniable fact about Steelers Nation is: They resent — and maybe even hate — the Pittsburgh Steelers. They hate the star players’ giant paydays (Roethlisberger’s theoretical pay ceiling is $108 million over five seasons, and his guaranteed payday is $65 million), they hate the offensive coordinator (the Steelers had the No. 3 offense in the NFL in 2015), and they intensely hate Mike Tomlin, the team’s stoic, unflashy, undemonstrative head coach, whom they charge with a lack of “passion” and a deficit of “intensity.”
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