More Than Just a Yellow Dish Rag

By Mike Jones
Chartiers Valley Patch
Jan. 26, 2011

In the early 1990s when the Penguins were winning Cups and Pirates were still relevant, I tended to follow those teams rather than root for the downtrodden Pittsburgh Steelers.

They had won four Super Bowls a few years before I graced this Earth, but had fallen on tough times in the 1980s.

That all changed when Bill Cowher took the reins in 1992 and rejuvenated the team and catapulted it to a playoff berth against the Buffalo Bills. However, I still didn’t quite grasp what it meant to be a Steelers fan at the tender age of 9.

That is, until my mother handed me a yellow dish rag and told me to start waving it around.

“Are you crazy?” I asked her. “Why would I do that?"

It’s probably the same question people in Baltimore or New York or maybe even Green Bay ask themselves when they see those golden cloths twirling in the stands. But that was just about the time when I began to understand the lore of the Pittsburgh Steelers and The Terrible Towel.

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