The Pittsburgh Steelers are out of Latrobe and back at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, also referred to as the South Side Facility. We are already into the regular season, where everything is magnified and, you know, actually counts. The team is working through the highs and lows and dramas that go through a typical Steelers season.
How are the rookies performing? What about the players that the team signed in free agency? Who is missing time with injuries, and when are they going to be back? What are the coaches saying about what they are going to do this season that might be different from how it was a year ago?
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: Will you be watching any of the Alliance of American Football games this weekend?
It’s been a while since the NFL had any kind of meaningful competition on its own turf. I’m not expecting the AAF to be that, but it does seem to be perhaps the first viable football league to have come around in some time, backed by some very important names such as Bill Polian and with a broadcast partnership with CBS and the NFL Network.
The league will play its first games ever today, and will feature two games, followed by another two tomorrow. Atlanta and Orlando face off tonight at 8PM, as do San Diego and San Antonio. On Sunday, it will be Memphis versus Birmingham and Salt Lake against Arizona.
As I recapped in a post yesterday, almost every single one of these teams will feature a Steelers presence in some capacity, with only Salt Lake, to the best of my knowledge, lacking any players who were ever a part of the organization.
Some of the more significant names include Terence Garvin, who was on the team for three years. The former linebacker is now with the Orlando Apollos, which means he will be facing the Atlanta Legends and Doran Grant, a 2015 fourth-round cornerback, tonight.
No AAF team has a bigger Steelers presence than the Birmingham Iron. I count eight former Steelers on their roster, including three defensive linemen, among them 2018 draft pick Joshua Frazier, who of course came out of Alabama.
Today’s games will be broadcast on CBS, while the Salt Lake versus Arizona game will feature on the NFL Network. The NFL Network will air two games every week for the rest of the year (one on Saturday, one on Sunday, in prime time), while CBS Sports Network (rather than CBS directly) will also air one game per week. B-R Live will have the other game weekly after Week Two, which will air on TNT.
