Go Steelers!

This Sunday I'll be waving a terrible towel during Superbowl Forty-Three. A taller, slimmer version of the kid who cheered Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw perhaps, but I have yet to move on and slip my graying head above the Iron Curtain into focus on the more important things in life. Perhaps that's because the Pittsburgh Steelers organization is one of the best led enterprises in the world.

Management thinker, Max De Pree, champions the search for intimacy and covenant relationships among an organization's stakeholders as important for a leader, in his classic book Leadership Is An Art. Dan Rooney, the Steeler's owner and most senior decision maker, attracts employees and customers who believe in the organization with higher regularity than any other business leader I've studied or interacted with. Whether Dan thinks about it this way or not, he encourages autonomy among coaches, players, and even us fans. How do I know? Because there is never a moment when I worry that any of us will do something inconsistent with our collective soul.

When the Steelers have a disappointing season, and granted that's a rare occurrence, I never sit around counting minutes until Dan fires the head coach. He won't. Nor will he release the trap door on half of the players. On the other hand, I remember the good years when guys like D.J. Johnson, Plaxico Burress, and Bill Cowher, didn't have their contracts renewed. Johnson kicked a guy in the head and was ejected from a playoff game. Dan seemed to know we Steeler fans wouldn't want him back. Burress just carried himself as too much of a hot shot for us. Coach Cowher would have been renewed except for the part about overvaluing his role in the 2006 Superbowl win, when he asked for double pay. Although the Steelers are no more an army of saints than the patriots of 1776 (not Tom Brady and company), I honestly don't believe a guy with O.J. Simpson's character could play ten years for Dan Rooney and then kill his wife. (I'm speculating on Simpson's deed here, obviously).

The Pittsburgh Steelers are America's team if there ever was one. I'll count fan for fan with Dallas, New England, or any other powerhouse. One statistic I'd be interested in is comparing the fervency of the lifetime fans who began with those teams before Superbowl X with our old timers. Styles may change, but we still have the same soul I united with in 1975.

Our franchise is not exclusively Pittsburgh's either. Claims of the death of Pennsylvania's queen city are greatly exaggerated, but that's a different blog. I grow fatigued with the endless news accounts of the Steeler franchise being some gritty product of a dead steel town with one hard luck story after another. Hardly anyone on the team grew up around Pittsburgh, and I'll bet I can say that about half the fans as well. We're an cross-generational, multi-regional American story about how true leadership on the part of Dan Rooney and his family has created a uniquely successful American business--an entertainment enterprise that has thrived in great times and would weather the worst recession in style.

Those of you crying that tomorrow's game will be but a tiny bubble in the history of violent and useless theatrical activities fools call football are entitled to your view. Hold up your political, artistic, charitable, or entrepreneurial playmakers to the leadership style and integrity of Dan Rooney. And those of you who would compare Jerry Jones (owner of the Cowboys), or Al Davis (Raiders' boss)to Dan, well bring it on. Go Steelers!