Marksonland

This weekend a bunch of guys from my high school (most of whom still live in Pittsburgh) flew to Phoenix for three days of golf, drinks, etc. The reason? The Steelers, of course. More specifically, this Sunday the Pittsburgh Steelers take on the Arizona Cardinals in Phoenix, and we'll be in the stadium to check it out.

It always amazes me the passion that the Steelers bring out from the city of Pittsburgh. Everywhere we go in Phoenix, it that we run into people wearing the black and gold. These are other fanatics that have made the cross country trek to watch the game live. Living in San Francisco, it seems like the 49'ers are popular, but certainly not the focal point of folks lives for 16 weeks of the year. Maybe they were in the 80's when they were winning Super Bowls regularly. The difference is that in Pittsburgh, the fans are equally passionate regardless of whether the team is wining or losing and the city is always buzzing about them.

One more quick note: the Arizona Cardinals pay at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Yes, that's the same University of Phoenix that is an online only university and has those ubiquitous banner ads on every site you know. In a brilliant move of marketing, they bought the naming rights to the stadium here. In other words, they have no campus, not to mention sports teams, but they do have a stadium. Too funny.

Crappy camera phone picture of some of the fellow class of 85 gang (frequent commenter Dave in the middle) below: