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Brooke Pryor, ESPN Staff Writer
AS HALFTIME DREW to a close of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ pivotal Week 10 game at the Washington Commanders, the public address system at Northwest Stadium crackled to life with a directive to fans: cheer on the home team by waving the burgundy towels.
And though the team distributed north of 40,000 rally towels to fans as they entered the stadium on Nov. 10, Commanders fans were quickly engulfed by a pulsing yellow wave as visiting Steelers fans instinctually raised their own towels and vigorously twirled them as they’d done so many times before.
“All you saw were Terrible Towels,” said Steelers fan Ryan Gray, who attended the game with a friend. “You did not see their burgundy towels at all. It was nothing but Terrible Towels. I just don’t know why you would poke the bear.
“There’s no more deliberate challenge than them saying over the PA system, ‘Hey, we handed out towels before the game, let’s see those towels.’ And then you blink and you see a sea of yellow towels twirling.”
Opposing teams have long tried to mitigate Steelers fans and their towel takeovers, but so far, nothing’s worked. And while the anti-Terrible Towel phenomenon isn’t a new one, the frequency this season has been unusual. In five road games through Week 11, four home teams distributed rally towels or flags.
The Steelers are 4-0 in those games and their lone road loss was against a towel-less Colts crowd. The Cleveland Browns passed out rally towels for their Salute to Service game earlier this month, so they aren’t likely to distribute more Thursday night against the Steelers (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video).
“Fans are very passionate about their AFC North teams,” longtime defensive captain Cam Heyward said, acknowledging it could be difficult for Steelers fans to take over Huntington Bank Field. “But I think it’s always fun when you see our team working towards a win and you just see those Terrible Towels in enemy territory.”
While a longtime season ticket holder’s suggestion spurred the Commanders to deliberately pass out burgundy towels for the Week 10 game, the Falcons and Broncos had planned to give away their items to commemorate the home opener well before opponents were announced. The Las Vegas Raiders declined to comment on their rally towel strategy.
And though most of the franchises distributing their own towels this year said they weren’t trying to replicate the Terrible Towel, Steelers fans couldn’t help but notice the similarities.
“Often imitated but never duplicated,” Gray said. “And I think what a lot of NFL teams do when we play them is they try to steal some of that magic that I think the Terrible Towels bring.”
MYRON COPE DIDN’T set out to create a lasting symbol of the franchise when he issued a call to Steelers fans to bring dish towels to the 1975 divisional game against the Baltimore Colts.
He was simply following his boss’ orders in an effort to boost TV ratings.
“[WTAE station manager Ted Atkins] said, ‘I need a gimmick,'” retired Steelers executive Joe Gordon recalled. “And Myron said, ‘I’m not a gimmick guy.’ And Ted Atkins said to him, ‘Well, your contract’s up in three months.’ And Cope said, ‘Well, I guess I’m a gimmick guy.'”
So Cope, who was a Pittsburgh television and radio sportscaster in addition to his role as the Steelers’ radio color commentator, drew inspiration from the white handkerchiefs waved by Miami Dolphins’ fans earlier in the decade and urged Steelers fans to bring dish towels of any color to Three Rivers Stadium during broadcasts for two weeks leading up to the game.
The fans responded to Cope’s call, and as he recounted to NFL Films, more than 30,000 arrived with dish towels and wash rags.
While fans were quick to embrace Cope’s idea, it was somewhat slow to catch on among Steelers players. Gordon, who was close friends with Cope, remembers most being initially indifferent. Linebacker Andy Russell, though, came up to Cope in the locker room after one practice prior to the game and told the sportscaster that the Steelers weren’t a gimmick team.
But the Steelers not only won that game, they won it thanks in large part to Russell’s improbable 93-yard fumble recovery touchdown.
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“Cope saw [Russell] in the dressing room [after the win] and said ‘Now you’re a gimmick guy because a Terrible Towel sped you on your way to that touchdown,” Gordon said.
The rest, of course, was history. The Steelers went on to win their second consecutive Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl X and won two more Super Bowls that decade to establish the standard for one of the league’s most decorated franchises. In the process, the Terrible Towel became a unifying franchise symbol.
“It’s hard to manufacture those types of traditions, particularly from a team level where it’s like, ‘OK, we want you to do this, and we want it to be a new tradition,'” John Clark, professor of sport management and marketing at Robert Morris University, said.
“It has to be more organic than that. Since Myron was kind of viewed, I think, more as a fan than he was necessarily just a sportscaster, that added some authenticity to it. And once people kind of glommed onto it, that made it a really powerful tradition. So it’s hard to copy that.”
The team declined to disclose exactly how many are sold annually, but more than 50 official editions are available through the Steelers’ pro shop, most for $14.95. Since Cope gave the licensing rights of the towel to the Allegheny Valley School in 1996, the school, which houses and provides services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including Cope’s son Danny, has received more than $8 million in royalties from sales of officially licensed Terrible merchandise.
“It was a stroke of genius,” Gordon said of Cope’s invention, “because it just fit in with the overall situation that had existed with the unbelievable enthusiasm of Steelers followers. It was almost natural once it became a more formal way of cheerleading.
“It was a gimmick, and most gimmicks only have a short shelf life. But in this case, it’s become a permanent part of the Steelers’ identity.”
BORN WITH A rare syndrome that caused deafness at birth, Hayden Shock couldn’t hear the roar of fellow Steelers fans in the crowd at Northwest Stadium during the Week 10 win against the Commanders.
But he knew Steelers nation was well-represented as he looked around.
“When the fans wave their Terrible Towels, it’s a visual effect of cheering for me,” Shock, 32, wrote in a message. “I know it sounds silly, but I always get goosebumps when I see the Terrible Towel on TV or during the game.
“I feel like we are giving the players good energy to play the game! I can understand how loud it can be; seeing the Terrible Towels waving tells me that fans were screaming and cheering for the player. I am a very visual person. It means so much to me.”
The Terrible Towels and the energy that comes with waving them does spur the Steelers on the field.
“When Steeler nation comes out and makes a lot of noise and waves the towels, it essentially feels like a home game,” rookie cornerback Beanie Bishop said. “It kind of knocks the quarterbacks off.”
The NFL is a copycat league, and so are its marketing departments. And while most teams aren’t trying to directly replicate the Terrible Towels, their success in creating visual noise and energy in-stadium and on TV spurred teams across the league to distribute their own rally towels — or in the case of the Falcons, a white Rise Up flag — for big occasions, particularly for season-openers and primetime games.
But the visual created by the towels twirling doesn’t just boost the television presentation. It also benefits fans in the stands by acting as de facto closed captions during hard-to-see big plays in hostile stadiums.
“The Packers have the cheese heads, but you put that on your head and you can see it, but there’s not that visual representation of like, ‘Oh, they’re the ones [cheering],” said Gray, who went to the Broncos game in Denver in addition to the Commanders game.
“In an away stadium, you could get misled if [Steelers tight end] Pat Freiermuth caught a ball for a controversial gain and you were hearing ‘Muuuuth’ or ‘Boooo.’ And you’re like, what is it? Are they saying ‘Muuuuth’ or are they saying ‘Boooo?’ And then you see Terrible Towels, you’re going to be like, they’re probably saying ‘Muuuuth.'”
WHEN STEELERS COACH Mike Tomlin surveyed the crowd as he emerged from the visitors’ tunnel at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas earlier this year, his eyes went wide and he mouthed, “Wow.”
Though the Raiders draped a gray rally towel on every single seat prior to kickoff, fervent Steelers fans, who occupied many of those spots, brought their own yellow towels and waved them to greet him.
The Steelers dominated that afternoon, winning 32-13, and afterward, Tomlin credited their success to the advantage created by the rowdy Steelers fans.
“The first thing that needs to be said, taken aback by the support we got from our fans, Steeler Nation,” Tomlin said. “Continually, man, they show up. I just thought it was awesome; the environment for a road venue was special. It was special to be a part of.”
And while conventional wisdom might suggest that atmosphere is created by fans who travel well, the reality is many Steelers fans in away crowds aren’t necessarily traveling in from Pittsburgh. The diaspora created by the closing of Pittsburgh steel mills in the 1980s created a far-flung fanbase.
Having a Terrible Towel was one of the easiest and simplest ways to hold on to their roots.
“It’s actually quite difficult to get people to go to the games in the city [they’ve relocated] to because [they’re] much more loyal to the team that you grew up and that [their] family’s loyal to,” said Candy Lee, a professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. “So that this 50-year-old tradition cannot be trumped by whatever new towel is going to appear there.”
And because the Steelers’ success of the 1970s led to regular nationally televised games, the fan base expanded even more, creating a new group of people who wanted to feel a connection to the team, the city and other fans.
That’s the case for Missouri native Tracy Bowden, who lives in Denver and attended the Week 2 Steelers-Broncos game. The Broncos passed out orange towels for that game, continuing their tradition of distributing rally towels at every home opener since 2012 regardless of the opponent. Those towels, she noticed, didn’t do much to dilute the eruptions of yellow throughout the Steelers’ 13-6 win.
“The towel became an engrained tradition of the city,” Bowden said. “And people who look in, who watch the Steelers from TV and other cities want to feel a part of that. So you buy the Terrible Towels because they are recognized everywhere.
“Anyone can afford a Terrible Towel. You might not be able to afford a jersey, but you can get a towel.”
WHILE AT LEAST two instances of rally towel and flag giveaways for Steelers games were coincidences this season, the Commanders specifically passed out their own burgundy towels to coincide with the Steelers’ arrival.
Though it’s been done before, this iteration of the idea came from long-time Commanders season ticket-holder Chris Gellner who, tired of seeing opponents take over his team’s stadium, messaged team minority owner Mark Ein on Instagram with a suggestion.
“Our colors are so close that, just add a burgundy towel and the whole stadium’s going to look like burgundy and gold,” Gellner said. “In 2008 when the Steelers came, it was just embarrassing. It was demoralizing how many of their fans came.”
Ein not only responded to Gellner’s message, but took the idea to the rest of the ownership group. Shortly before the Week 10 game, Ein called Gellner to tell him his idea was a go.
“The idea wasn’t to create our own version of a Terrible Towel that you see every game unless that’s what our fans want,” Ein told ESPN. “It was more a one-off. But in general, you try to see what’s working across other teams, across other sports, across other things in the world. We’re constantly observing and studying and learning and trying to either come up with our own ideas or borrow other people’s really good ones, and that inspiration can come from anywhere.”
The towel distribution — and the game — didn’t go exactly as Gellner and Commanders’ ownership hoped, but Ein doesn’t regret trying it.
“I’m glad we did it,” he said. “I think the fact that it came from a fan is something that we’re really proud of, and I think a lot of fans really appreciated that we’re listening. … As the game was getting really close in the fourth quarter, more and more people were waving them, and they were actually asking for more towels.
“It’s impressive how much a part of the Steelers’ experience that it’s become in 50 years of doing that. It’s part of their rituals, and it’s clearly embedded into their fan experience.”
So, can anything be done to thwart a Terrible Towel takeover?
“I don’t think there really is, unless someone wants to outlaw bringing in Terrible Towels,” Clark said. “But that I think would be kind of silly.”