Four years ago yesterday —Feb. 5, 2006 —the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks, 21-10, to capture the long-awaited “one for the thumb.”  Anytime the team you love wins a championship, certain things will stick with you.  Here are some of my memories of Super Bowl XL.

 

On the Saturday night before Super Bowl XL, I did something people from Pittsburgh rarely do—I attended an NBA game.

 

I had bought the tickets over two months before, as a Christmas present for my dad and brother.  I didn’t realize the game was less than 24 hours before the Super Bowl; in fact, Super Bowl Sunday likely wasn’t even on my radar, considering the Steelers were 7-5 at the time and in real danger of falling out of the playoff picture. 

 

But in the seven weeks that followed, the Black and Gold did not once taste the bitter pill of defeat, storming into the Big Game winners of seven straight, including a Shakespearean victory in the second round of the playoffs over the Indianapolis Colts, who were only favored by double digits.  It was a playoff run for the ages.  It was going to be a Super Bowl for the ages. 

 

But hey, tickets are tickets.  So my dad, my brother and I set out for Cleveland to catch a rather meaningless February NBA game pitting LeBron James and the Cavs against Allen Iverson and the Philadelphia 76ers.

 

And on our trip, we ran into Steelers fans...everywhere.

 

Cleveland is about two hours from Pittsburgh, and the route is basically just one highway which starts out as I-76 and merges into I-80.  The latter road, if you follow it around Lake Erie and up to I-75, goes to Detroit. Naturally, we figured maybe we would see a few people heading up to the Super Bowl while we were driving.  And we were way off.

 

I think every third car was making the trek to the Promised Land, and I would have to guess only a lucky select few of those cars contained people who possessed Super Bowl tickets. It was like the world’s largest road trip.  You could tell right away if it was one of Those Cars, packed to full capacity with people and supplies, black and gold flags flapping in the breeze, horns honking, Terrible Towels or Steeler jerseys flashing at the window. The Pittsburgh fans were making a pilgrimage en masse, and Motown was Mecca.  Our car may have briefly considered bypassing Cleveland altogether, skipping the game and driving straight through to Detroit, just to see what would happen.  Anything was possible on the highway to heaven.

 

Nevertheless, we pressed on to Cleveland, only when we got there, it was more of the same.  At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we saw Steelers fans.  At dinner before the Cavs game, we saw Steelers fans. Walking through the city, we saw Steelers fans.  It almost felt like home, except for the giant, 110-foot banner of LeBron James.

 

Then we got into the game.  Keep in mind this was a relatively arbitrary game in February featuring two teams that were half-decent on their best day but nothing special. 

 

Yet when the Jumbotron flashed its first crowd shots, there was something in the backround—a guy with a Terrible Towel! A quick scan of the place revealed he had many friends.  There’s a guy in a Polamalu jersey.  A guy in the next section with a Steeler helmet on.  More Terrible Towels.  Somewhere, Art Rooney was smiling.

 

As we left the arena, someone started an impromptu “Here we go, Steelers...here we go!” chant.  It quickly caught on and spread through the corridor, much to the chagrin of the native Clevelanders. It was like Andy Dufresne defiantly turning up the volume while playing music over the PA system at Shawshank.  There was no tuning out the Steelers fans.  Not even at a random basketball game in February.

 

And that’s when we knew.

 

The Steelers were going to win the Super Bowl.

 

How could they lose when fans were driving to Detroit—with no tickets, no place to stay, nothing—just to say they were there?  How could they lose when their fans were turning Quicken Loans Arena into a Steelers tailgate party? How could they lose when they looked up into the stands at Ford Field and saw an overwhelming majority of black and gold? 

 

Yeah, I know it wasn’t the prettiest game.  Maybe the Steelers came out flat and played their worst game in two months.  Maybe Roethlisberger laid an egg while playing one of his worst playoff games as a pro.

 

Maybe the game itself was a boring, mistake-filled rugby match that will never end up on ESPN Classic.  Maybe if the Steelers weren’t bailed out by Willie Parker’s long run and the pass interference on Darrell Jackson—sold beautifully, by the way, by Chris Hope—then it’s a different ballgame. And maybe it wasn’t a dominating win (like the Denver game) or even an epic win (like the Indy game), but it was a win.  The most important win of all. 

 

When Antwan Randle-El threw that gorgeous bomb to Hines Ward—seriously, you know it had to be a bad Super Bowl when the single best pass of the game was thrown by a wide receiver—the outcome was no longer in doubt. For the first time in 25 years, when Bradshaw and Lambert and Greene and Franco began their quest for “one for the thumb,” the Pittsburgh Steelers were champs.  A whole new generation of Steelers fans had their moment, their experience.

 

We all remember it the same, yet we all remember it differently.  I can still see all those cars on the highway, all the goofy smiles on the people inside.  I can still hear those people chanting in the arena hallways. And maybe that’s the best part about your team winning a championship.  It’s not the things you remember—it’s the things you can’t forget.