When most people get involved with the sport of football, they do so in grade school without necessarily aspiring to play professionally years later. From the Pop Warner level, to varsity football in high school, to college football, and eventually the NFL, very few players reach the professional level. Ohio State University estimated that 6.8 percent make it to the college level, and just 0.023 percent make it to the NFL. But not every player joins with any higher aspirations in mind. Young players join (or their parents sign them up) for the structure that team sports provide. You learn to work as a team and take instruction from an authority figure, but perhaps most importantly, you join a community in which you can form lifelong friendships.
Those bonds that are formed are present at every level of football. Former Steelers DL Chris Hoke talked about the brotherhood aspect of football, and says it was especially present in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ organization.
“The thing that’s great about football is, and I see this particularly with the Steelers now, even though all of us come from different backgrounds, all of us come from different walks of life and we come together,” Hoke said on BYU’s Cougar Sports Saturday on Apple podcasts. “Maybe at that time we’re all kind of in different places, but years later, as you come together, it’s a feeling of brotherhood…Maybe somebody was in a different place during that time. They’re in a different situation, working through different things. But now, as you look back on it and you gather together for events, you gather together for reunions, it’s like you’re a brother, and like you were one the whole time.”
Once you get beyond the high school level, where people are clustered together regionally with at least some of the same shared backgrounds, players truly can come from any walk of life. A player like Antonio Brown was once unhoused as a teenager, and ended up on the same college roster briefly as J.J. Watt, the son of a firefighter in suburban Wisconsin. Under normal circumstances these people may never cross paths, but on the field it is a meritocracy, and backgrounds are of little importance.
The Steelers have always been a family organization with the tone set by the Rooney’s. Tony Dungy spoke about the expectations being set from the moment you step into the team facility. He recalled being called into Art Rooney’s office to be told “You’re a Steeler now,” and all of the expectations that come along with that.
There is a very recent example of the type of brotherhood that can be forged on the gridiron in Pittsburgh. Troy Polamalu launched his The Resilience Bowl this year for the Neighborhood Resilience Project to raise funds and awareness for trauma-affected communities. Polamalu put out the bat signal to many of his former teammates, and they showed up in droves to support his event and the charity work for the city of Pittsburgh.
You can pan through some of the photos posted on the Steelers’ team website, but Ike Taylor, Arthur Moats, Heath Miller, Ben Roethlisberger, James Harrison, Hines Ward, Mike Tomlin, Jerome Bettis, Robert Golden, and many other current and former Steelers showed up to support. It is the perfect illustration of the brotherhood that was formed in Pittsburgh that lasts well beyond their years on the gridiron.
Even with the current Steelers, the rookie offensive linemen have already talked about wanting to turn the OL unit into a brotherhood. They were drafted from different regions of the country, and had no choice about which players would be on their eventual team, but many of these players will form bonds that last a lifetime.
