Cleveland-Pittsburgh: Pre-Game "Action"

Hello and welcome to beautiful Pittsb...did we hire a new fact checker? Yes? Okay...welcome to beautiful Pittsburgh, where NFL Hits gets its first taste of White Chocolate, Gumbel and Collinsworth. (Yes, Cris would be the more urban of the two.)

The Cleveland-Pittsburgh matchup always tickles me for its "mud and the blood and the beer" atmosphere and one of my earliest football memories. Rich relatives from eastern OH and western PA visited one prepubescent fall many moons ago. Both uncles declared they needed to see The Game (CLE-PIT) and left the women folk (their wives and their wives' sisters) to abscond to the nearest bar. This was no small trick in a dry town, but they were resolute.

Looking at me and glancing over my shoulder to see the hen party they were fleeing, pity was taken on a young man and I was abducted. Mind you, I'd never been to a bar before. This was a wild new world, full of ginger ale and TV screens bigger than any I'd seen outside of a theme park.

In reality, this was a shitty pitch-black dive bar whose main advantage was being the closest one with the game on that would let a little kid in. What did I care, though?

Each uncle jostled the other throughout the game until Cleveland pulled it out at the end. Even that detail would be fuzzy if the winning uncle hadn't dropped his well-worn $2 Browns ballcap on my head at the end.

I remembered what I needed to, though: all good things this day came because of The Game, which was celebrated by Men. I've switched drinks and company since, but the truth remains.

As I grew older and more sophisticated about sports, I noticed those uncles weren't really much into sports. Perhaps they were casual fans of the respective teams, but they didn't seem to be hardcore by any stretch. How could these two men be the ones to deliver the truth?

Years later, I found that ratty old Browns hat while packing for college. I pulled it on for old time's sake and noticed the rancid smell of sweat, something I never associated with this man. I pulled the hat off to examine it further. Inside, I noticed one of my uncle's friends name written in marker. Who brings their friend's Browns hat cross-country for a family tr...

...and the last tumbler clicked. My uncles may be many things, but they are not to be underestimated. They knew the trip would be clogged with their wives and their wives' sisters cackling and formulated an escape plan worthy of Steve McQueen and Sir Richard Attenborough, packing the borrowed cap as a MacGuffin and grabbing the younger me as a human shield/"good experience for the kid". My Browns' hat off to you, sirs; well met, indeed.

I just missed the pre-game show (aw shucks); we'll jump right into game coverage in a moment.