Pittsburgh Steelers

The Pittsburgh NFL team first took to the field on September 20, 1933, losing 23-2 to the New York Giants. Through the 1930s the Pirates never finished higher than second place in their division, or with a record better than .500 (1936). Pittsburgh did make history in 1938 by signing Byron White, a future justice on the U.S. Supreme Court to what was at the time the biggest contract in NFL history, but he only played one year with the Pirates before signing with the Detroit Lions.

In 1941, the team was renamed the Steelers after the city's prominence as a steel-making center. But the team maintained a long history of futility for the next three decades.

During World War II, the Steelers experienced player shortages. They twice merged with other NFL franchises in order to field a team. During the 1943 season, they merged with the Philadelphia Eagles forming the "Phil-Pitt Eagles" and were known as the "Steagles". This team went 5-4-1. In 1944 they merged with the Chicago Cardinals and were known as "Card-Pitt" and derisively known as the "Car-Pitts" or "Carpets", as they finished the season winless.

The Steelers made the playoffs for the first time in 1947, tying for first place in the division at 8-4 with the Philadelphia Eagles. This forced a tie-breaking playoff game at Forbes Field, which the Steelers lost 21-0. That would be Pittsburgh's last playoff game for 25 years.

Their luck changed with the hiring of coach Chuck Noll. Noll's most remarkable talent was in his draft selections, taking Hall of Famers "Mean" Joe Greene in 1969, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount in 1970, Jack Ham in 1971, Franco Harris in 1972, and finally, in 1974,considered by many the best draft in NFL history, pulled off the incredible feat of selecting four Hall of Famers in one draft year, Mike Webster, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth and Jack Lambert. This group of players formed the base of one of the greatest teams in NFL history, making the playoffs eight seasons, and becoming the only team in NFL history to win four Super Bowls in six years.

The Steelers suffered a rash of injuries in the 1980 season and missed the playoffs with a 9-7 record. 1981 was no better, with an 8-8 showing. The team was then hit with the retirements of all their key players from the Super Bowl years. Mean Joe Greene retired after the 1981 season, Lynn Swann and Jack Ham after 1982, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount after 1983, and Jack Lambert after 1984.

In 1992, Chuck Noll retired and was succeeded by Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Bill Cowher, a native of the Pittsburgh suburb of Crafton. Cowher led the Steelers to the playoffs in each of his first six seasons as coach, a feat that had only previously been accomplished by legendary coach Paul Brown of the Cleveland Browns. Overall, Cowher has taken his team to the playoffs in 10 out of his 14 seasons, including appearances in Super Bowl XXX in at the end of the 1995 season, and the franchise's record-tying fifth Super Bowl win in Super Bowl XL over the National Football Conference champion Seattle Seahawks ten years later. With their Super Bowl XL victory, the Steelers became the third team to win five Super Bowls, and the first sixth-seeded playoff team to reach and win the Super Bowl since the NFL expanded to a 12-team postseason tournament in 1990.

Since the NFL merger in 1970, the Pittsburgh Steelers have compiled an overall record of 333-217-2, reached the playoffs 22 times, winning their division 17 times, playing in 13 AFC Championship Games, and winning 5 Super Bowls.

Logo and uniforms

The original Steelers logo, which is still primarily used on the helmets.

The newer Steelers logo, primarily used on the team's web site and other promotional materials.

The Steelers have used black and gold as their colors since the club's inception (excluding the 1943 season when they merged with the Philadelphia Eagles and formed the "Steagles"; the team's colors were green and white as a result of wearing the Eagles uniforms). Originally, the team wore solid gold helmets and black jerseys. Unlike most other cities, the colors are currently also used by the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team and the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, (also the colors of the flag for the City of Pittsburgh) making it the official team colors of every professional sports team in the city.

The Steelers logo was then introduced in 1962, and is based on the "Steelmark", originally designed for U.S. Steel, by Cleveland, Ohio based Republic Steel, and now owned by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). It consists of the word "Steelers" surrounded by three astroids (hypocycloids of four cusps). The original meanings behind the astroids were, "Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world" and later the colors came to represent the ingredients of steel, the yellow representing coal; the orange, ore; and the blue, steel scrap. [1] While the "Steelmark" logo only contains the word "Steel", the Steelers were given special permission to add "-ers".

The Steelers are the only NFL team that puts their logo on only one side of the helmet (the right side). Long time field and equipment manager Jack Hart was instructed to do this by Art Rooney. At first, it was a test to see how the logo appeared on their gold helmets, but its popularity led the team to leave it that way permanently. [2] A year after introducing the logo, they switched to black helmets to make it stand out more.

The Steelers have had the same basic look for their uniforms since 1936 (save for during the 1967 season when the team experimented with a "triangle" theme), and started to use the current uniform design in 1968. The design consists of gold pants and either black jerseys or white jerseys, except for the 1970 and 1971 seasons, when the Steelers wore white pants with their white jerseys. The helmet is solid black with a gold central stripe and small white uniform numbers on the forehead. In 1997 the team switched to rounded numbers instead of the traditional block numbers, and a Steelers logo patch was added to the left side of the jersey.

While teams in recent years have been occasionally wearing their white jerseys at home (or in the case of the Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins, and Miami Dolphins, wear white at home all the time), the Steelers are currently one of the few NFL teams (and the only one in the AFC North) that consistently wears its team colored jersey at home, always opting for black. This appears very unlikely to change in the future, although the Steelers did opt for white as the designated "home" team in Super Bowl XL as a result of their road success in the 2005 season, since Bill Cowher did say that "the game is not at Heinz Field, so this is an away game." In addition, there appear to be no plans to introduce an alternate gold jersey.

Franchise traditions

The "Terrible Towel" is a gimmick created by Myron Cope, a broadcaster, for the Steelers. Needing a way to excite the fans during a 1975 playoff game against the Baltimore Colts, Cope urged fans to take yellow dish towels to the game and wave them throughout.

Season-by-season records