When Jacksonville Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence addressed the media on Wednesday ahead of Sunday’s game at Acrisure Stadium against the Pittsburgh Steelers, some of the words he chose while discussing playing the Steelers on the road ruffled some of the Pittsburgh faithful, to put it mildly. Insulting the Terrible Towel is akin to cursing a man’s mom to some people. It’s just not something that should be done.
There has been plenty of backlash on the Internet, so the whole situation has been discussed by a lot of people. The topic was broached on Thursday’s episode of the Rich Eisen Show, which led to a lot of discussion about the relative dimensions and overall characteristics of the Terrible Towel. That’s where Eisen himself cut in.
“Excuse me,” Eisen said. “They’re yellow towels that are not appropriate for drying off after a shower. I understand, but they’re not little to these folks in Pittsburgh… Looking for ‘What did you say about my towel?'”
The sea of yellow Terrible Towels at every home game (and road games, too) is an icon of the Steelers’ fan base that dates back to the mid-1970s. For those unfamiliar with the history, the towels came courtesy of former radio color analyst Myron Cope. He sought a way to stir up the crowd to help inspire the team and what began as a call for yellow dish towels morphed into the Terrible Towel.
While the Terrible Towel might be a small, yellow towel in physical characteristics, it’s become part of the franchise. So there are plenty of fans who are willing to stand up and take one for the towel. The Terrible Towel has its own mythos, almost akin to the Madden Curse, and teams that run afoul of it tend to rue the consequences.
Now, to be sure, Lawrence was not disrespecting the Terrible Towel at all to the level his own team’s mascot did 15 years ago when the latter used it to wipe certain areas of his body. The Jaguars would go on to lose that Week Five matchup and only won three more games the rest of this season. Lawrence talked with great respect about the history of Pittsburgh and how much he was looking forward to the game.
However, there will be fans who only hear the phrase “little yellow towel” and lose all sense of decor. As T.J. Jefferson, a native of Altoona, Pa., put it on the Eisen show, “Folks take the towel really seriously back at home.”
Even if no malice was meant by Lawrence’s comments — and I’m sure there wasn’t genuine malice unlike other players in the past — he certainly made himself public enemy No. 1 for when he takes the field on Sunday. There will be plenty of malice directed his way from the fans waving those “little yellow towels” from pregame until after the final whistle. To quote comedian Billy Gardell, who Eisen mentioned on the show, “You better read up ‘abaht’ that towel, jr.” If the fans have anything to do with it, Lawrence will certainly be learning about that sea of Terrible Towels.
You can watch the entire discussion below.
