Franco Harris, 1950-2022

Timing is everything. Two days from now is the 50th Anniversary of the play that made a rookie running back into an all-time football legend. The following day, he was scheduled to be honored for the achievement. But now, he won't be available for the celebration.

Franco Harris -- no middle name -- was born on March 7, 1950, at Fort Dix, a U.S. Army base in Wrightstown, Burlington County, New Jersey. His father, Cad Harris, was a soldier stationed in Italy during World War II. While there, he met Gina Parenti, married her, and took her back to America. So, like baseball star Roy Campanella, from nearby North Philadelphia and playing in nearby Brooklyn, Franco was half-African-American, and half-Italian.

He grew up in Mount Holly, the seat of Burlington County, not far from Philadelphia, and went to Rancocas Valley Regional High School. Other RV graduates of note include former Philadelphia Eagles receiver Irving Fryar, current Eagles linebacker Shaun Bradley, and Barbara Park, author of the Junie B. Jones series of children's books.

Franco went to Pennsylvania State University, to play football for head coach Joe Paterno, as would his younger brother, safety Pete Harris. Franco was mainly a blocker for All-American running back Lydell Mitchell, but still managed to rush for 2,002 yards, catch 28 passes for 352 yards, and score 25 touchdowns.

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He was taken with the 13th pick in the 1972 NFL Draft, by the Pittsburgh Steelers. They began play in 1933, with Art Rooney having founded them. But Art's love of football far exceeded his knowledge of it. In 1947, they finished in a 1st place tie in the NFL Eastern Division with the Philadelphia Eagles, and lost a playoff. To this day, the NFL does not recognize this as an official Playoff game.

Finally, after a 1-13 season in 1969, Art's sons, Dan and Art Jr., told dear old Dad to let them run the team from now on. And in just 3 seasons, they had built the team into AFC Central Division Champions. Coached by Chuck Noll, they had an offense led by quarterback Terry Bradshaw, and a defense known as the Steel Curtain, led by tackle "Mean" Joe Greene.

Harris was named NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year in 1972. That year, the owners of a local Italian restaurant, noting that he was half-black and half-Italian, came to Three Rivers Stadium in fatigues and battle helmets, calling themselves "Franco's Italian Army." Francisco Franco was still alive and in power in Spain when the fan club was founded, and while its  members were not openly political, neither did they seem to have a problem with a name associated with fascism.

Receiver Lynn Swan, who would be drafted 2 years later, and became Harris' roommate on roadtrips, said, "When he drafted Franco Harris, he gave the offense heart, he gave it discipline, he gave it desire, he gave it the ability to win a championship in Pittsburgh."

Al Davis ran the Oakland Raiders, and had built them into AFL Champions in 1967. But they lost Super Bowl II, then lost the 1968 AFC Championship Game to the New York Jets. By 1972, they were dominating the AFC Western Division, but hadn't won a Super Bowl yet.

And so, on Saturday afternoon, December 23, 1972, Davis' Silver and Black marched into Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh to face the Rooneys' Black and Gold. For a game with such an epic ending, it was not good theater most of the way. The 1st half ended scoreless. Roy Gerela kicked a field goal early in the 2nd half, but it remained 3-0 at the end of the 3rd quarter. Gerela kicked another field goal early in the 4th quarter, but the Steelers couldn't put the ball in the end zone, so it remained 6-0 as the clock wound down.

Daryle Lamonica, known as the Mad Bomber, struggled in the 1st half, and coach John Madden replaced him with Ken Stabler, the Alabama lefthander known as the Snake. With 1:17 to go, Stabler ran for 30 yards to get into the end zone. George Blanda, the Raiders' ageless backup quarterback and regular kicker, nailed the extra point, and the Raiders had a 7-6 lead.

The Steelers did not yet have a reputation as the kind of team that could win this kind of game. And Pittsburgh fans, who had seen the Pirates win the World Series the year before, were not used to glory from their football team. The 50,327 fans inside Three Rivers figured the game was lost.

Among them was Art Rooney. "The Chief" left his suite and got into an elevator, to go down to the locker room to congratulate the Raiders and console his team. So he never saw the play that changed the course of his team's history.

Bradshaw, who had been the top pick in the 1970 NFL Draft, had a difficult relationship, not just with Noll, but with the Pittsburgh fans. He hadn't yet lived up to their hopes. Now, he had gotten the Steelers to their own 40 yard line. But it was 4th and 10, and there were only 22 seconds left, and the Steelers had no time-outs left.

Noll's intended play was "66 Circle Option," intended for Barry Pearson, a rookie who had been on the Steelers' bench all season long without being sent into a game. Now, he was -- his 1st professional play.

But just as no battle plan survives the first shot, Noll's play didn't last. Raiders Tony Cline and Horace Jones bore down on Bradshaw, and "the Blonde Bomber" from Louisiana had to scramble. He just got a throw off before getting clobbered by Cline and knocked to Three Rivers' artificial turf.

The ball got to the Raiders' 33-yard line, and it looked like Steeler running back John "Frenchy" Fuqua was going to catch it. But Raider safety Jack Tatum did what he so often did to potential receivers: He leveled Fuqua.

Big mistake: As with so many dirty soccer players, Tatum should have gone for the ball, not the opposing player. He could have intercepted it. Instead, the ball bounced off him, and went backwards to the Raider 43. And it almost hit the ground.

And for 50 years, the Raiders and their fans have insisted that the ball hit Fuqua first, which, under the rules of the time, would have made every Pittsburgh player an ineligible receiver after that. And they have insisted that the ball did hit the ground.

It didn't. Harris saved it, and took off down the left sideline, and scored. It was 3:29 PM -- don't bet any Steeler fan old enough to remember.

Steeler radio announcer Jack Fleming said, with only slight exaggeration, "From out of nowhere came Franco Harris, riding a white stallion, heading up Franco's Italian Army, galloping into the sunset!"

Like Rooney, Bradshaw didn't see the play. He remembered being down on the ground, and hearing a tremendous roar going up: "I knew that this was a good sound. This was the sound of something good happening."

Fans came pouring onto the field, and had to be cleared, because there was still an extra point to kick, which Gerela did, and 5 seconds to play. The Raiders could do nothing with the ensuing kickoff, and the Steelers had won, 13-7.

Those '72 Raiders still insist they were robbed. It would take until the 1976 season for them to win a Super Bowl. But the Steelers didn't win immediately, either: This was the season in which the Miami Dolphins went undefeated. Eight days later, they came into Three Rivers -- at the time, home-field advantage for Conference Championships was on a rotating basis, not decided by record -- and beat the Steelers, on their way to winning Super Bowl VII.

But the catch became known as "The Immaculate Reception." What Art Rooney, a devout Irish Catholic, thought about that, only he knew. Others, noting that it was 2 days to Christmas, called it a Christmas Miracle.

Along with Alan Ameche's overtime plunge to win the 1958 NFL Championship Game for the Baltimore Colts, Bart Starr's quarterback sneak to win the 1967 Championship Game (the Ice Bowl), and Dwight Clark's "The Catch" from Joe Montana to win the 1981 NFC Championship Game, it ranks as perhaps the greatest play in NFL history.

The Steelers would win Super Bowls IX, X, XIII and XIV. Harris was named the Most Valuable Player for IX, Swann for X, and Bradshaw for XIII and XIV. The Raiders would win Super Bowls XI, XV and XVIII.

"During that era, each player brought their own little piece with them to make that wonderful decade happen," Harris said during his Hall of Fame speech in 1990. "Each player had their strengths and weaknesses, each their own thinking, each their own method, just each, each had their own. But then it was amazing, it all came together, and it stayed together to forge the greatest team of all times."

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Harris was named to the Pro Bowl in each of his 1st 9 seasons. He played for the Steelers until 1983, with 1 more season with the Seattle Seahawks. He finished his career with 12,120 rushing yards, 2nd all-time behind Jim Brown at that point. He also caught 307 passes for 2,287 yards, and retired with exactly 100 touchdowns.

He was named the NFL's Man of the Year for the 1976 season, and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the NFL's 1970s All-Decade Team, and the Steelers' 75th Anniversary All-Time Team and their Hall of Honor. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 83rd on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. In 2006, a statue of him catching the Immaculate Reception was unveiled on the concourse of Pittsburgh International Airport. In 2011, he was elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame -- that's for all citizens of the State, not just great athletes. He is easily New Jersey's greatest football player ever.

Harris and former Penn State teammate Lydell Mitchell founded a food-service company, to produce nutritious school meals. They used that company to buy the Parks Sausage Company, the 1st African-American-owned business to go public. In 2008, he served as one of Pennsylvania's Presidential Electors for Barack Obama.

The Steelers had announced that, this coming Sunday, with the Steelers scheduled to play the now-Las Vegas Raiders on NBC Sunday Night Football on Christmas Eve, 1 day after the 50th Anniversary of the Immaculate Reception, they were going to retire Franco Harris' Number 32.

But now, he won't be able to take part in the ceremony. He died today, December 21, 2022, in a statement issued by his son Dok. He was 72. He was also survived by his wife, the former Dana Dokmanovich.

How to Go to a University of Pittsburgh Football Game

The Pittsburgh Steelers aren't the only legendary football program in the Steel City. In fact, for a long time, until the 1970s, the football situation there was roughly the equivalent of basketball situation in North Carolina, Indiana, and, until recently, the San Francisco Bay Area: Great for high school and college, lousy for the professional ranks.

The University of Pittsburgh opened their season last Saturday, defeating Albany (the State University of New York at Albany) 33-7 at Heinz Field. This Saturday night at 8:00, they will play their biggest rivals there. No, not the "Backyard Brawl" against West Virginia. This one is intrastate: Penn State.

Before You Go. Pittsburgh is at roughly the same latitude as New York City, so roughly the same weather can be expected. As always, check out the newspaper website (the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) before you head out. They're predicting low 70s for the afternoon, high 50s for night.

Pittsburgh is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to adjust your timepieces.

Tickets. Unlike most college football teams, the Pittsburgh Panthers no longer have an on-campus football stadium. Certainly, it saves them money on construction and maintenance. But not owning their own stadium forfeits the one thing a football team owner (which, in this case, the University is) loves even more than money: Control. The Steelers, not the Panthers, have first dibs on scheduling football games and other events at Heinz Field.

Having "their" stadium not being on campus hurts the Panthers another way: It's harder for students to get there. Maybe not much harder, but harder enough that, last season, they averaged only about 33,000 fans per game. Only twice did they top 40,000 at the 68,400-seat Heinz Field. (So if you hear someone from Pittsburgh call it "a drinking town with a football problem," you know they're only talking about the NFL.) So, ordinarily, getting tickets shouldn't be a problem.

The Penn State game is different, though. This is the biggest rivalry in Western Pennsylvania, because it's not just intrastate, it's intraregion. This is bigger than Steelers-Browns, Steelers-Eagles (which isn't intradivision and thus doesn't matter as much), Steelers-Ravens, Pirates-Reds, Pirates-Phillies, Penguins-Flyers, Penguins-Blue Jackets or Penguins-Capitals. This is serious hate. The last time it was held at Heinz Field, 2016, it drew 69,983 -- sellout and standing room. Indeed, the Pitt ticket website is already saying it's sold out. You may need to "know a guy." Or even "know a guy who knows a guy."

For any other Pitt football home game, lower Level (100 sections) seats are already sold out for the season. Upper Level (500 sections) seats are $37 in midfield, $30 down the sidelines, and $27 in the end zone. If it helps, the West Stand gives you a view of downtown, whereas the East Stand doesn't.

Getting There. I'm not going to kid you here: There's only one way to do so, and that's by car. You do not want to fly, because you'll end up spending over a thousand bucks to go less than 400 miles, and Pittsburgh International Airport is out in Imperial, Pennsylvania, near Coraopolis and Aliquippa, so it's almost as close to West Virginia and Ohio as it is to downtown Pittsburgh.

The Amtrak schedule doesn't really work. The Pennsylvanian leaves Penn Station at 10:52 AM, and doesn't get to Pittsburgh's station of the same name until 7:59 PM, a minute before kickoff. And there's no overnight train that would leave at, say, 11 PM and arrive at 8 AM. And going back, the Pennsylvanian leaves at 7:30 AM and arrives back at 4:50 PM. And while New York to Pittsburgh is usually cheap by Amtrak standards, not this time: $261 round-trip.

Greyhound isn't much better, but at least you have options. There are 14 buses a day between Port Authority Bus Terminal and Pittsburgh, but it's a bit expensive considering the distance, $226 round-trip (though advanced purchase can get it down to $119). The Greyhound station is at 55 11th Street, across Liberty Avenue from the Amtrak station.

The only sensible way is by car – especially if there's more than one of you going and you can take turns driving. It's 373 miles from Times Square in Manhattan to downtown Pittsburgh.

From the City, you'll need to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. Take it to Exit 14, to Interstate 78. From elsewhere in New Jersey, taking Interstate 287 should get you to I-78.  Follow I-78 west all the way through New Jersey, to Phillipsburg, and across the Delaware River into Easton, Pennsylvania. Continue west on I-78 until reaching Harrisburg. There, you will merge onto I-81. Take Exit 52 to U.S. Route 11, which will soon take you onto I-76. This is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the nation’s first superhighway, opening in 1940.

You'll be on it for another 3 hours – Pennsylvania is huge compared to a lot of Northeastern States. The political consultant James Carville, who got Bob Casey Sr., father of current U.S. Senator Bob Casey Jr., elected Governor in 1986, says, "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in the middle." He wasn’t kidding: Between Philly and Pitt, it is very, very rural, hence the nickname "Pennsyltucky." It certainly explains the State's love of football: The Philadelphia Eagles, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penn State and high school ball.

You'll take the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Exit 57, the signs showing I-376 and U.S. 22 – the same Route 22 you might know from New Jersey, which I-78 was designed to replace – and the sign will say "Pittsburgh."

There will be several exits on I-376, the Penn-Lincoln Parkway, into the city of Pittsburgh. Most likely, if your hotel (which I hope you've reserved before you left) is downtown, you'll take Exit 71B, "Second Avenue."

From anywhere in New York City, allow 6½ hours for the actual driving, though from North Jersey you might need "only" 6. I recommend at least 2 rest stops, preferably after crossing over into Pennsylvania around Easton, and probably around either Harrisburg or Breezewood. So the whole thing, assuming nothing goes wrong, will probably take about 8 hours.

Once In the City. Pittsburgh has, by American standards, a long history. It was settled by the French as Fort Duquesne in 1717, and captured by the British in 1758, and renamed Fort Pitt, for Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder.

The General who captured it, John Forbes (for whom the Pirates' former park Forbes Field would be named), was a Scotsman, and he intended the town that grew around it to be named "Pittsburgh" -- pronounced "Pitts-burrah," like the Scottish capital Edinburgh. From 1891 to 1911, the H was dropped from the city's name, and this was reflected on the Pirates' uniforms, which sometimes read "PITTSBURG," as seen on the famous 1909 "T-206" baseball card of Honus Wagner. But the Germanic "Pittsburg" went back to the Scottish "Pittsburgh," while keeping the Germanic pronunciation. (There is, however, a town named Pittsburg, no H, in Kansas.)

With this long history, a great architectural diversity, and a dramatic skyline with lots of neat-looking skyscrapers, Pittsburgh looks like a much bigger city than it actually is. While the metropolitan area is home to 2.7 million people, the city proper has only 306,000, having lost over half its population since the nearby steel mills, coal mines, and other factories closed starting in the 1970s.

The reduction of blue-collar jobs led people to take comfort in their sports teams, especially in the 1970s. Either the Pirates or the Steelers made the Playoffs in every year of that decade, both of them did so in 4 of those 10 years, and the University of Pittsburgh had an undefeated National Championship season in 1976. The Pirates won 2 World Series in the decade, the Steelers 4 Super Bowls in 6 years.

Calendar year 1979, with spillover into January 1980, was an annus mirabilis, in which the "Steel Curtain" won Super Bowl XIII in January, the "Bucs" (or "Buccos," or "Lumber Company," or "Family") won the World Series in October, and the Steelers then went on to win Super Bowl XIV, with the Pirates' Willie Stargell and the Steelers' Terry Bradshaw being named Co-Sportsmen of the Year by Sports Illustrated and the city government advertising itself as the City of Champions.

(It was also at that time that, in order to ride the Pirates/Steelers bandwagon, the NHL's Penguins switched their colors from navy blue and yellow to black and gold, but it was several more years before they became a championship contender.)

While the loss of industry did mean a sharp, long-term decline, the financial, computer and health care industries opened new doors, and Pittsburgh is very much a now and tomorrow city. And they love their sports, having won 16 World Championships in 21 trips to their sports' finals (which gives them a .762 winning percentage in finals, the best of any city of at least 3 teams) -- and that doesn't count the 9 National Championships won by Pitt football, the Negro League Pennants won by the Homestead Grays (10) and the Pittsburgh Crawfords (4), or the 1968 ABA Championship won by the Pittsburgh Pipers.

Pittsburgh has numbered streets, moving east from Point State Park, where the Allegheny River to the north and the Monongahela River to the south rivers merge to become the Ohio River -- hence the name of the former Pittsburgh sports facility, Three Rivers Stadium. North-south streets start their numbers at the Monongahela, and increase going north.

There is a subway system in the city, and it's free within the downtown triangle. But outside that area, a one-zone ride is $2.50, and a two-zone ride is $3.75. A 75-cent surcharge is added during rush hour -- in other words, on your way into the Thursday and Friday night games, making the charge $3.25 instead of $2.50. These fares are the same for city buses, although they're not free within the downtown triangle.

The sales tax in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is 6 percent, and Allegheny County (including the City of Pittsburgh) pushes it to 7 percent. ZIP Codes for Pittsburgh start with the digits 15, and for the rest of Western Pennsylvania 16. The Area Code for the city is 412, and for the suburbs 724, with 878 overlaid for both. Pittsburgh does not have a "beltway." Duquesne Light Holdings is the city's electric company.

The old Pittsburgh Press, once the 2nd-largest newspaper in Pennsylvania behind the Philadelphia Inquirer, went out of business due to a strike in 1992, before the city's remaining daily, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, brought it back in online form in 2011. That strike gave Richard Mellon Scaife, the current head of the legendary Pittsburgh metals and banking family, a chance to turn a local suburban paper into the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, spouting his right-wing fanatic views. It may be that the P-G brought back the Press to give the city 2 liberals voices against the 1 nutjob voice.

The city's population was 88 percent white in 1950. By 2010, that had dropped to 65 percent. It's 26 percent black, 4.4 percent Asian, and, surprising me, only 2.3 percent Hispanic.

Compared to most big cities, Pittsburgh has had hardly any civil strife. There was the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, in which the U.S. Army suppressed a bunch of guys complaining about a tax on booze. And there was the Homestead Strike of 1892, where coal mine owners hired a private army to suppress organized labor. (UPDATE: There has since been the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.)

Pittsburgh is a very education-minded city, and a very science-minded city, including medicine, with research tying it all together. Duquesne University is downtown, while the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University (known as Carnegie Tech from its 1912 founding until 1967) are adjacent to each other in the Oakland neighborhood, east of downtown. Carlow University is also nearby, and there are also 5 separate campuses (campii?) of Penn State in the immediate Pittsburgh region.

The Pitt campus is dominated by the Cathedral of Learning, a 42-story, 535-foot Gothic Revival tower that opened in 1931 at 4200 Fifth Avenue at Bigelow Blvd., about 2 1/2 miles east of downtown. Several buses reach the site.

It is the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere, and the 4th-tallest in the world. In many pictures of Forbes Field, former home of the Pirates and Steelers, it can be seen looming over the 3rd base stands. Its main lobby was designed to look like the interior of a cathedral as well.

The University of Pittsburgh is the oldest continuously chartered institution of learning west of the Allegheny Mountains, founded in 1787, as Pittsburgh Academy. It was renamed the Western University of Pennsylvania, or WUP, in 1819; was nearly wiped out in Pittsburgh's Great Fire of 1845; absorbed the Western Pennsylvania Medical College in 1892; and was renamed the University of Pittsburgh in 1908.

UP is known for its law, social work and engineering schools, and for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and its adjoining medical school. There are satellite campuses, all in Western Pennsylvania, in Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown and Titusville. Pitt graduates include:

Baseball: Dick Hoblitzel, 1st baseman who won the 1915 and 1916 World Series with the Boston Red Sox; Cumberland "Cum" Posey, an early player in all-black pro baseball and basketball leagues who founded and owned the Negro Leagues' Pittsburgh Crawfords, and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame; George "Doc" Medich, a pitcher whose career included both New York teams and later a doctor.

Basketball: Chuck Hyatt, 3-time national Player of the Year in the late 1920s, before pro basketball really caught on, member of the Basketball Hall of Fame; and Steven Adams of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Track & Field: John Woodruff, Gold Medalist in the 800 meters at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; and Roger Kingdom, Olympic Gold Medalist in the 110-meter high hurdles at both Los Angeles in 1984 and Seoul in 1988.

Sportswriting: Murray Chass, Class of '60.

Literature: Hervey Allen, Class of 1915, author of Anthony Adverse; Gerald Stern '47, Sharon Flake '78, Michael Chabon '84, Chris Kuzneski '91, Terrance Hayes '97. (John Irving attended, but did not graduate.)

Entertainment: Actor Regis Toomey '21, composer Leo Robin '22, composer Herb Magidson '28, actor-singer-dancer Gene Kelly '33, disc jockey and Good Morning Vietnam basis Adrian Cronauer '59 (he just died in real life) Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood actor (Mr. McFeely) David Newell '73, actress Allison McAtee '01, Miss America 1999 Nicole Johnson '07. (Fred Rogers, a native of nearby Latrobe who taped Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood at WQED-Channel 13 in Pittsburgh, worked with the University for years, but got his degree from Dartmouth. Bill Cullen had to drop out of Pitt due to money issues, but went on to become one of the greatest hosts in the history of TV game shows.)

Business: Several members of the Mellon family, including right-wing publisher and scandalmonger Richard Mellon Scaife '57; Al Primo '58, TV news executive who created the "Eyewitness News" format used in many cities, including at WABC-Channel 7 in New York; and Pat Croce '77, entrepreneur, fitness advocate, and former owner of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers. (Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, is a Pittsburgh native, started at Pitt, but transferred to Indiana University, and got his degree there.)

Politics, for Pennsylvania unless otherwise stated: Andrew W. Mellon 1874, Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 and 1932, and probably the person most responsible for causing the Great Depression of the 1930s; Senator David A. Reed 1903, Governor and Senator James H. Duff 1907, Representative Elmer "Bud" Shuster '54; Governor and U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh '57, Representative John Murtha '61, the 1st Vietnam Veteran elected to Congress; Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah '62, currently the President Pro Tempore of the Senate; Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland '64; Wangari Maathai '66, who in 2004 became the 1st African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize; Mahmoud Jibril '80, 1st post-Gaddafi Prime Minister of Libya; Tshering Togbay '90, current Prime Minister of the Asian nation of Bhutan; Clayton Morris '99, co-anchor of Fox and Friends, a.k.a. the place where Donald Trump gets his morning briefing.

(The class dates for Thornburgh and Hatch are for their law degrees. Thornburgh got his undergraduate degree from Yale, and Hatch got his from Brigham Young University.)

Science: Nobel Prize-winning endochrinologist Philip Hench '20, television pioneer Vladimir Zworykin '26, U.S. Suregon General Jesse Steinfeld '45, MRI co-inventor Paul Lauterbur '62 (his PhD, undergrad at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland), Pentium chip architect Bob Colwell '77, Concussion film subject Bennet Omalu '04 (med school, undergrad in his native Nigeria).

Going In. Having the working name of Art Rooney Field during construction, the new Steeler and Panther stadium's naming rights were bought by Pittsburgh corporate leader H.J. Heinz & Company, and so it opened in 2001 with the name Heinz Field.

(UPDATE: In 2022, the naming rights ran out. Heinz Field was renamed Acrisure Stadium. Acrisure is a Michigan-based insurance company.)

From most of downtown, the complex that includes Heinz Field and the Pirates home of PNC Park is within a mile's walk, crossing the 6th Street Bridge, now the Roberto Clemente Bridge, over the Allegheny River, shortly before it joins with the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River.

There are local buses (including the Number 14) that go from downtown to the ballpark. The subway/light rail system's Blue Line has now been extended to Allegheny Station, at Reedsdale & North Shore Drive, across from the northwest corner of the stadium.

The stadium is bounded on the north side by Reedsdale Street, on the east side by Art Rooney Avenue, on the south and west sides by North Shore Drive. The official address is 100 Art Rooney Avenue. (Three Rivers Stadium's address, famously, was 600 Stadium Circle.) There are several nearby parking garages, most of them charging only $5.00.

At the southwestern corner of the stadium, there's a West Ramp. At the southeastern corner, there's an East Ramp. Together, they form Gate A. Gate B is at the northeast corner, and Gate C is at the northwest corner. Don't ask me why, I didn't design the place.

The Steelers hosted the AFC Championship Game in the stadium's 1st season, 2001 (losing it to the New England Patriots, and again in 2004 (losing to the Pats again), 2008 (beating the Baltimore Ravens) and 2010 (beating the Jets).

The field has always been natural grass, and is aligned north-to-south. (Well, northwest-to-southeast, anyway.) A 2007 ESPN.com article named Heinz Field the best stadium in the NFL, tied with Lambeau Field in Green Bay. On September 12, 2017, Thrillist had an article ranking all 31 NFL stadiums. Heinz Field came in 3rd, behind only Dallas (don't make me laugh) and Seattle (possibly):

No venue in the NFL better represents its city and team than Heinz. Its everyman, condiment-based moniker and 12,000-ton steel-reinforced construction is an ode to the “Stillers” and Pittsburgh’s smashmouth historical persona, while its aesthetic beauty and comfort embodies the modernity of both the city’s tech boom and the pass-happy offense...

The stadium has no artificial architectural noise enhancers, and its capacity of 68,400 ranks in the bottom half of NFL venues. No matter; the team’s current home sellout record (since 1972) is ensured in the raucous, towel-waving atmosphere. The sightlines -- 60 feet from the sideline to the first row, 25 feet in the end zones -- are superior.

On September 10, 2016, the renewal of the Pitt-Penn State rivalry, now labeled the Keystone Classic, set a Heinz Field attendance record of 69,983. Pitt won a thriller, 42-39. Heinz Field also hosted the 2011 NHL Winter Classic, in which the Pittsburgh Penguins lost 3-1 to the Washington Capitals. In 2017, it hosted an NHL Stadium Series game, in which the Penguins beat the Philadelphia Flyers 4-2. In the Summer of 2014, it hosted a soccer game, in which defending English champions Manchester City beat Italian giants AC Milan 5-1.

If you've never been to Pittsburgh, but Heinz Field still looks familiar to you, you may have seen it in the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, where it stood in for the home of the fictional Gotham Rogues. They got a little cute for the game they filmed there: Steeler legend Hines Ward played the kick returner, real-life Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl played the opposing team's kicker, and, in place of the Terrible Towel, they printed up and handed out thousands of "Rogue Rags."

Food. Pittsburgh is a city of many ethnicities, and most of them love to eat food that really isn't good for you: Irish, Italian, Polish, Greek, and African-Americans with Soul Food and Barbecue. Yes, I did mean to capitalize those last two. They deserve it.

Aramark, the successor organization to Harry M. Stevens, runs the concessions at Heinz Field. They have Goal Line Stand stands all over, with hot dogs (some "super dogs"), cheesesteak sandwiches (wrong side of Pennsylvania, guys), pizza, nachos, pretzels, popcorn and candy. The legendary sandwichmaking Primanti Brothers have a stand outside Section 110.

They also have Benkovitz Seafood (fish sandwiches, fish & chips) at 106; Quaker Steak and Lube (including wings and fries) at 112 and 136; Red Zone Express (hot dogs, pretzels and nachos) at 119, 129 and 425; Grid Iron Grill (various ethnic sausages) at 122, 132, 509 and 532; Nacho Zone at 227, 241, 522 and 535; and First Down Fries (garlic fries, also "super dogs") at 442.

Pub 33 Bar and Grill is on the lower level, in the southeast corner, named for the number on Rolling Rock bottles, not for any Steelers player who wore Number 33 (or for Honus Wagner of the Pirates, for that matter).

The number has many rumored sources: The Steelers having been founded in 1933, Prohibition having been repealed that year, the alleged proper Fahrenheit temperature to keep beer, the 33 degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Rolling Rock getting their brewing formula right on the 33rd try, 33 steps from their original brewery's floor to the brewmaster's office, and the 33 words in the beer's original pledge of quality that is still printed on the label of every bottle. In fact, the number 33 is from a racehorse that was owned by the brewery's owners, hence the racehorse pictured on the label -- but nobody seems to wonder about that picture!

Team History Displays. The Steelers have won 6 NFL Championships, and the 6 Vince Lombardi Trophies are on display in the Great Hall of Heinz Field. The Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Honor, including a display of their 2 retired numbers (Ernie Stautner's 70 and Mean Joe Greene's 75) is on the stadium concourse. A statue of the team's founding owner, Art Rooney, complete with his ever-present cigar and overcoat, is outside Gate A at the southwest entrance. But that's the Steelers, not the Panthers.

While Pitt Stadium had flags on the stadium's rim, displaying the 9 National Championships that the University claims, there is now a display on the Heinz Field concourse for them: 1915, 1916, 1918, 1929, 1931, 1934, 1936, 1937 and 1976. Some unofficial sources also credit them for 1910, 1917, 1925, 1927, 1933, 1938, 1980 and 1981; but these were not consensus choices, and so the school does not claim them as their own.

Pitt never played in a league until the Big East Conference was extended to football in 1991. They moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference for the 2013 season. They shared the Big East title with Boston College in 2004, and with Connecticut and West Virginia 2010. In addition, they've been awarded the Lambert Trophy as "the best college football team in the East" in 1936, 1937, 1955, 1976, 1979 and 1980.

Pitt has won 13 bowl games: The 1937 Rose Bowl, the 1975 Sun Bowl, the 1977 and 1981 Sugar Bowl, the 1977 and 1980 Gator Bowl, the 1979 Fiesta Bowl, the 1989 John Hancock Bowl, the 2001 Tangerine Bowl, the 2002 Insight Bowl, the 2009 Meineke Car Care Bowl, the 2011 BBVA Compass Bowl, and hte 2013 Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. (Since when is pizza served in a bowl?) That 1977 Sugar Bowl clinched them the 1976 National Championship and an undefeated season.

Pitt football has retired 10 uniform numbers: 1, Larry Fitzgerald, receiver, 2003; 13, Dan Marino, quarterback, 1982; 33, Tony Dorsett, running back, 1976; 42, Marshall "Biggie" Goldberg, running back and defensive back, 1938; 65, Joe Schmidt, linebacker, 1952; 73, Mark May, offensive tackle, 1980; 75, Jim "Jimbo" Covert, offensive tackle, 1983; 79, Bill Fralic, offensive tackle, 1984; 89, Mike Ditka, tight end, 1960; and 99, Hugh Green, defensive end, 1980. These retired numbers are shown on the Heinz Field concourse.

Dorsett is Pitt's only Heisman Trophy winner, having finished 4th in the voting the year before. Goldberg finished 3rd in 1937 and 2nd in 1938, Ditka finished 6th in 1960, Green 2nd in 1980 (the closest any defensive player has come to winning it in the post-1950 two-platoon era), Marino 4th in 1981, running back Craig "Ironhead" Heyward (a native of Passaic, New Jersey) 5th in 1987, and Fitzgerald 2nd in 2003.

Tony Dorsett

Green, playing in the same city at the same time (but not quite the same position) as the Steelers' Joe Greene, was naturally nicknamed "Mean Hugh Green." Goldberg won the 1947 NFL Championship with the Chicago Cardinals, Schmidt the 1953 and 1957 NFL Championships with the DEtroit Lions. May was one of the 1980s Washington Redskin "Hogs" that won 3 Super Bowls. Ditka not only played on the Chicago Bears' 1963 NFL Champions, but coached their Super Bowl winners in the 1985 season, including Covert.

Goldberg, Schmidt, Ditka, Dorsett, May, Green, Marino, Covert and Fralic and in the College Football Hall of Fame. So are 1910s end Hube Wagner, 1910s centers Robert Peck and Herb Stein, 1910s backs George McLaren and Tom Davies, 1920s end Joe Donchess, 1930s end Joe Skladany, 1930s tackle Averell Daniell, and 1990s guard Ruben Brown. Stein was a member of the 1925 Pottsville Maroons, claimants to the NFL Championship. Schmidt, Ditka, Dorsett and Marino are also in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Fitzgerald probably will be, and Goldberg and May probably should be.

Also in the College Football Hall of Fame are 4 of Pitt's head coaches: Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner, 1915 to 1923, winning 3 National Championships, having previously coached the Carlisle team that included Jim Thorpe, and winning another National Championship with Stanford in 1926, and the founder of the youth football organization that came to bear his name; Dr. John Bain "Jock" Sutherland, a native of Scotland and a practicing dentist in the off-season, who played on the 1915 and 1916 National Championship teams, and was head coach from 1924 to 1938, winning 5 National Championships; Clark Shaughnessy, 1943 to 1945, one of the popularizers of the T formation; and Johnny Majors, elected as a player at the University of Tennessee, coaching Pitt from 1973 to 1976, winning the National Championship, returning to Tennessee to coach them, and coaching Pitt again from 1993 to 1996.

There are 2 statues outside Heinz Field. One is of Steeler founding owner Art Rooney. The other is a generic Panther statue, honoring Pitt.

Separated by 134 miles of Allegheny Mountains, Pitt first played Penn State in 1893. The Nittany Lions dominated the rivalry at first, winning the 1st 6 games on the way to a 12-3 lead by 1918. But Pitt then went 20-1-2 through 1938. In spite of some good Pitt teams over that stretch, Penn State found another period of dominance at the beginning of the Joe Paterno era, winning 10 straight from 1966 to 1975.

Conference shifts (Pitt to the Big East, Penn State to the Big 10) meant no games from 1993 to 1996, starting again in 1997, and stopping again after 2000, with the rivalry resuming again in 2016. Overall, Penn State leads this rivalry, now known as the Keystone Classic, 53-43-4.

Also compromised due to conference affiliation changes is "The Backyard Brawl," the rivalry between Pitt and West Virginia University, separated by 79 miles of Interstate 79. First played in 1895, the Mountaineers started off dominant, going 5-1. But then it was 10-0-1 Pitt from 1904 to 1921. It was 23-2 Pitt from 1924 to 1951. It was 8-4 West Virginia from 1961 to 1972, but 9-1 Pitt from 1973 to 1982. It was 15-7-2 West Virginia from 1983 to 2006. West Virginia has won the last 3, but the game hasn't been played since 2011. Pitt leads the rivalry, 61-40-3. They are scheduled to meet again, starting in 2022.

When it is played at all, Pitt vs. Penn State is usually played at the beginning of the season; Pitt vs. West Virginia, usually on Thanksgiving weekend. There is no trophy for the annual winner of either game.

The Panthers-Mountaineers rivalry is mean! (How mean is it?) In 1994, the public-address announcer at Pitt Stadium announced, "There is no smoking allowed inside Pitt Stadium, and that includes corncob pipes!" He later announced, "There is a tractor in the parking lot with its lights on, West Virginia license plate EIEIO!" (As if great swaths of Pennsylvania aren't rural as hell, hence the term "Pennsyltucky.")

Stuff. Since the Steelers own and control Heinz Field, they control the merchandising. The Steelers Pro Shop is inside Gate B at the southeast corner, and it may contain some Pitt Panthers items. Otherwise, your best bet is to go back to the Pitt campus, to The Pitt Shop, inside The University Store On Fifth, at 4000 Fifth Avenue at Thackery Avenue.

In 2014, David Finoli published When Pitt Ruled the Gridiron: Jock Sutherland's Five-Time National Champions, 1929-1937. To cover the program as a whole, Sam Scuillo published The University of Pittsburgh Football Vault in 2008.

During the Game. As a visitor to Pitt football, your safety should not be an issue. Just don't do much praising of Penn State or West Virginia. Or insult the Steelers. Or, should you see one, show any disrespect to a Terrible Towel. Or make fun of the Pittsburgh accent, with their habit of saying the second-person-plural, which is "youse" in New York, as "yinz." They also tend to drop some consonants: "Downtown" becomes "Dowtow," and "South Side" becomes "Souside."

I have heard conflicting reports on how the shortened name "Pitt" is treated. On the one hand, I've heard that Panther fans don't like it, much as people in San Francisco hate being called "Frisco." On the other hand, the helmets usually say, "Pitt," and their old facility was named Pitt Stadium. So I don't know what to believe.

The Panther was adopted as the school's mascot in 1909. It was indigenous to the region, it was alliterative, and its light brown coat resembled the old gold which, along with blue, was the school's color. There are several panther statues on and near campus, including the aforementioned one outside Heinz Field. Another is outside the William Pitt Union, at 3959 Forbes Avenue, between the Cathedral of Learning and The University Store On Fifth.

Pitt has had a costumed Panther since the 1950s, but it was only in the 1990s that he was given an official name, Roc, in honor of a longtime University official who had played for Jock Sutherland, Steve "The Rock" Petro. For a reason I haven't been able to discover, the costumed mascot wears uniform number zero, 0, for basketball games; and double zero, 00, for football games.

The University of Pittsburgh Marching Band has been renowned for nearly 100 years. Since 1975, it has been fronted by blonde baton twirlers called the Golden Girls -- a name which may confuse people when Pitt goes to play ACC (and former Big East) opponent Miami. In 1986, they added a color guard named the Navy Ladies, in honor of the other half of the school colors.

Okay, they're not all blondes,

and their uniforms have as much navy as gold.

The band begins playing two hours before kickoff, with The Panther Prowl: The football team walks from a nearby hotel and must pass in front of the gate to Heinz Field. The band forms an arc in front of the gate, and plays the university fight songs for the team and fans as they proceed to the locker room. The band then moves to the riverside concourse to play the music for the day's halftime show.

After these concerts, the band proceeds to play several concerts to the various pregame groups, such as the student tailgate at Roberto Clemente Memorial Park, a group at Grille 36, and for the Pitt Band Alumni Council tailgate before lining up to parade back down North Shore Drive and into Heinz Field. The band then performs their traditional pregame show in the stadium.

The Pitt Band pregame is always announced by the Herald Trumpets. This is followed by a performance by the Pitt Drumline near the student section. After this, the entire band enters the field for the pregame show.

The band enters the field from two tunnels flanking the north endzone of Heinz Field. As the band enters, the two tunnels are engulfed in a white cloudy smoke to appear as though the band is emerging from the smoky entryway. The band forms a large block.

The entire pregame show consists of "Hail to Pitt," the "University of Pittsburgh Alma Mater, "The Star Spangled Banner," the "Victory Song," and "The Panther Song." During the latter two songs, the band moves from their block formation and ends in the "Script Pitt" formation, a takeoff on Ohio State's "Script Ohio," except Ohio State doesn't put "Ohio," script or otherwise, on its helmets, while Pitt has a script "Pitt" on theirs.

The chant, "Here we go, Steelers, here we go!" (Clap, clap!) is heard about 100 times at every Steelers game. You may also hear it at Pitt Panthers games. And at Pirate games. And at Penguin games. This overuse bothers some locals. But #HereWeGo has become the Steelers' official Twitter hashtag.

After the Game. There are attractions near Heinz Field, but most of these are museums, such as the one dedicated to native Pittsburgher Andy Warhol, and will be closed after the games. (The next bridge over from the Clemente is the Andy Warhol Bridge. As far as I know, Warhol never painted a portrait of a Steeler, or was even interested in football.)

Between PNC Park and Heinz Field, across from where Three Rivers Stadium used to be, is Jerome Bettis' Grille 36, named for the Steeler legend and his uniform number. It's at 393 North Shore Drive.

South of downtown, across the Monongahela River on the South Shore – or, as they say in Pittsburghese, the Sou'side – is Station Square, an indoor and outdoor shopping, dining and entertainment complex. This is a popular gathering place, although, as New Yorkers, you'll be hopelessly outnumbered. You might be better off returning to your hotel and getting a bite or a drink there. When I first visited Pittsburgh in 2000 (I saw the Pirates hit 4 homers at Three Rivers but lose to the Cards thanks to a steroid-aided mammoth blast by Mark McGwire), there was a restaurant with a Pittsburgh Sports Hall of Fame at Station Square, but as far as I can tell it is no longer there.

I searched the Internet for bars in the Pittsburgh area that cater to New Yorkers. Usually, I can at least find something that welcomes Giant or Jet fans on their gamedays, but I guess the Steelers are so ingrained in Western Pennsylvania culture that establishing an outpost for "foreign fans" is anathema to them. (Anathema? Didn't Rocky Graziano knock him out in Buffalo? No, wait, that was Quinella.)

The closest I could come was a suggestion that Carson City Saloon, at 1401 E. Carson Street, was a
Jet fans' hangout. Number 48 or 51 bus from downtown. When I did my piece for the Pirates in 2013, I was told by a Pittsburgh native that the Brillo Box was owned by a New Yorker, but, not having been to Pittsburgh since, I cannot confirm this. And one source I found to back it up calls it a "hipster" place. If you want to take your chances, it's at 4104 Penn Avenue at Main Street. Number 88 bus from downtown

Vento's Pizza is still open. If you, as they say, show the proper respsect, a Jet fan's money is as good as anyone else's. 420 North Highland Avenue, next to a Home Depot, about 4 1/2 miles east of downtown. Bus 71B.

If you visit Pittsburgh during the European soccer season, which we are now in, the city's leading soccer bar is Piper's Pub, at 1828 East Carson Street. No matter what club you support, you can almost certainly find its game on TV there. Bus 48. Unless you're a Liverpool fan, in which case you may prefer their outpost in the Steel City (Pittsburgh, not Sheffield): Cain's Saloon, at 3239 W. Liberty Avenue, 4 miles down the South Side. Red Line to Dormont Junction.

Sidelights. Pittsburgh is a great American city, including being a great American sports city, well beyond what its size would suggest.

UPDATE: On November 30, 2018, Thrillist published a list of "America's 25 Most Fun Cities," and Pittsburgh came in 24th. 

In between Heinz Field and PNC Park, home of the Pirates since 2001, is the Fort Duquense Bridge. In between Heinz Field and the Bridge is Stage AE, a music venue built roughly where Three Rivers Stadium stood, as the home of both the Pirates and the Steelers from 1970 to 2000, and also the Panthers in 2000. The Panthers played a few other games at Three Rivers, including some games against Penn State, as it had more modern TV facilities than Pitt Stadium.

Three Rivers, the center of the sports world in the 1970s

The 1st home of the Pirates, Recreation Park, was roughly on the site of Heinz Field. The Pirates played there from 1882 to 1890. Exposition Park, home of the Pirates from 1891 to 1909, and the Pitt Panthers from 1900 to 1908, was nearly on the site of PNC Park.

This was also the site of the 1st football game played by an openly professional player. Yale University star William "Pudge" Heffelfinger was paid $500 (about $12,800 in today's money) to play for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, and scored the game's only points in a 4-0 Allegheny win. (Under the scoring system of the time, a touchdown was 4 points.)

Three Rivers, set up for football in its last years

There are historical markers in the complex for both Exposition Park (as one of the sites, along with the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, of the 1st World Series) and Recreation Park (as the site of the first professional football game -- though the first all-professional game was in 1895 in nearby Latrobe).

* Senator John Heinz History Center, 1212 Smallman Street at 12th Street, a couple of minutes' walk from Union/Penn Station and Greyhound. It includes the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, open daily from 10 AM to 5 PM. (Senator Heinz, of the condiment-making family, was the 1st husband of Teresa Heinz Kerry, who nearly became First Lady in 2004.)

* Forbes Quadrangle, intersection of Forbes Avenue and Bouquet Street. This set of buildings, part of the University of Pittsburgh campus, was the site of Forbes Field, home of the Pirates from 1909 to 1970, the Steelers from 1933 to 1963, the Panthers from 1909 to 1924, and the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues from 1929 to 1950.

The Steelers never won a title there, and indeed only hosted 1 Playoff game, which they lost. But the Pirates won 3 World Series while playing there, and the Grays won 11 Pennants and the 1943, 1944 and 1948 Negro World Series.

Forbes Field was also the site of the 3rd of the 4 fights for the Heavyweight Championship of the World between Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott, on July 18, 1951. Walcott won, becoming, at the time, the oldest Heavyweight Champion ever: 37.

Included on the site is the last standing remnant of Forbes Field, part of the outfield wall, with ivy still growing on it. (Wrigley Field in Chicago wasn't the only park with ivy on its outfield wall.) Where the wall stops, you'll see a little brick path, and eventually you'll come to a plaque that shows where the ball hit by Mazeroski crossed over the fence to win the Series. A historical marker honoring Barney Dreyfuss is nearby.

Home plate has been preserved, in Wesley W. Posvar Hall, named for the longtime UP Chancellor. An urban legend says that, if it was in its exact original location, it would now be in a ladies' restroom; this isn't quite the case, but it’s still at roughly the same spot.

Pick up the Number 71 bus at 5th Avenue at Ross Street, and it will take you down 5th Avenue to Oakland Avenue. From there, it's a 2-minute walk to the Quadrangle and Posvar Hall.

The remaining outfield wall, still with ivy on it

* Petersen Events Center. The home arena for Pitt basketball, it was built on the site of Pitt Stadium, where they played their football games from 1925 to 1999, and where the Steelers played part-time starting in 1958 and full-time starting in 1964 until 1969. Part-time from 1970 to 1999, and full-time in 2000.

If you're a Giants fan, this is where they played the Steelers on September 20, 1964, and Giant quarterback Y.A. Tittle got clobbered by the Steelers' John Baker, resulting in that famous picture of Tittle kneeling, with blood streaming down his bald head, providing a symbolic end to the Giants' glory days of Frank Gifford, Sam Huff and quarterbacks Charlie Conerly and Tittle.

Pitt Stadium had real grass through 1969. When Three Rivers, with its horrid pea-green carpet, opened in 1970, the University switched Pitt over to the plastic stuff as well, and it was kept until the stadium closed.

In 1994, when the new Rutgers Stadium opened, the local newspaper, now known as The Home News Tribune, profiled all the other stadiums then in the Big East. It was not kind to the nearly 70-year-old Pitt Stadium: "Improvements are necessarily, preferably starting with a small nuclear device." 3719 Terrace Street, at Sutherland Drive.

From 1951 to 2002, before moving into Petersen, Pitt played basketball at Fitzgerald Field House. At 4,122 seats, it was very intimidating for visitors, but much too small for a major college basketball team, and most of their big-draw games had to be played at the Civic Arena. Building the Petersen Center allowed them a 12,508-seat on-campus arena. The old and new arenas are across Sutherland Drive from each other, a 5-minute walk from Forbes Quadrangle.

* Site of Greenlee Field. William Augustus "Gus" Greenlee was one of Pittsburgh's premier black businessmen -- but was both gangster and philanthropist. In 1932, he built Greenlee Field for the Negro League team he owned, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, named for another business he owned, the Crawford Grill.

Seating 7,500, it was the Craws' home from 1932 to 1938, when, for reasons beyond his control, he had to make changes that led to fans staying away, and he had to sell the team after the season, lasting 2 more years in other cities before folding. But, led by Hall-of-Famers Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson and James "Cool Papa" Bell, they won Pennants in 1935 and 1936.

Like Ebbets Field, it was on a Bedford Avenue. The Bedford Dwellings housing project is now on the site. 2501 Bedford Avenue, at Chauncey Drive (not Chauncey Street, like in Brooklyn), a mile and a half east of downtown. Bus 83.

* Site of Civic Arena, between Bedford Avenue, Fullerton Street, Centre Avenue and Washington Place. The official mailing address for "the Igloo" in its last few years was 66 Mario Lemieux Place. Built in 1961 for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, it had a retractable roof before additional seating made such retraction impossible. It hosted the American Hockey League's Pittsburgh Hornets from then until 1967, and then the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins until 2010. It was officially known as the Mellon Arena from 1999 to 2010, when the naming rights expired.

The Pittsburgh Pipers, later renamed the Condors, played there, and won the 1st ABA Championship in 1968, led by Brooklyn native Connie Hawkins, who was named to the ABA All-Time Team. Larry Holmes barely hung on to the Heavyweight Championship of the World there, getting off the canvas to knock Renaldo Snipes out on November 6, 1981.

The Beatles played there on September 14, 1964. Elvis Presley sang there on June 25 & 26, 1973 and December 31, 1976. It was demolished in 2011.

The new arena and the old one, briefly coexisting

* PPG Paints Arena. Originally the Consol Energy Center, the name of the Penguins' arena was changed today. Opening on August 18, 2010, for a concert by former Beatle Paul McCartney, it seats 18,087 for Penguins and other hockey games, including the 2013 NCAA Championships (a.k.a. the Frozen Four); and 19,000 for basketball, for college tournaments and, in the unlikely event the NBA returns to Pittsburgh, the pros.

The building and opening of this arena means that, for perhaps the first time in franchise history, the Penguins' long-term future in Pittsburgh is secure. 1001 5th Avenue.

Pittsburgh hasn't had anything resembling a major league basketball team since the Condors moved in 1973. The new version of the ABA is officially "semi-pro," and has a team called the Steel City Yellow Jackets, who began play in the 2014-15 season. They play on the campus of the Community College of Allegheny County, at a building called the "A Giving Heart Community Center." 808 Ridge Avenue, across (or, rather, under) the elevated highway from Heinz Field.

On May 12, 2014, the New York Times printed a story that shows NBA fandom by ZIP Code, according to Facebook likes. The PPG Paints Arena is 134 miles from Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena, but don't let that fool you into thinking that Pittsburghers toss aside their NFL-bred hatred of Cleveland to support the Cavaliers (even with the return of LeBron James): They seem to divide their fandom up among 4 "cool teams": The Chicago Bulls, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat. The Philadelphia 76ers, only 309 miles away? Forget it.

It's unlikely that Pittsburgh will ever seek out a new NBA team. If they did get one, the metro area would rank 22nd in population among NBA markets.

* Roberto Clemente Museum. A fan group tried to buy Honus Wagner's house in nearby Carnegie and turn it into a museum, but this is the only museum devoted to a single Pittsburgh athlete, who was viewed as a supporting player on the 1960 title and the driving force behind the one in 1971, prior to his tragic death in a plane crash off Puerto Rico, trying to bring relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year's Eve 1972.

Clemente wasn't the 1st Hispanic player in the major leagues (white Cuban Charles "Chick" Pedroes played 2 games for the Cubs in 1902), nor was he the 1st black Hispanic player (Minnie Minoso debuted with the Chicago White Sox in 1949). But he was the 1st to really take hold in the public imagination, to the point where later Hispanic stars wore Number 21 in his honor, and there is a movement to have the number retired throughout baseball as was done for Jackie Robinson (but it is not likely to succeed). 3339 Penn Avenue at 34th Street. Bus 87 to Herron Avenue.

Pittsburgh has never hosted an NCAA Final Four. Duquesne University reached the 2nd Final Four (not that it was called that back then) in 1940, and Pitt did so in 1941. No Western Pennsylvania school has done so since.

In fact, Pittsburgh has never been a big basketball city: The Pittsburgh Ironmen played in the NBA's 1st season, 1946-47, and only that season, and are best known now for having had Press Maravich, father of Pistol Pete, play for them. The ABA's Pittsburgh Pipers, later the Pittsburgh Condors, won that league's 1st title in 1967-68, but that was it. (Connie Hawkins led that team, and was named to the ABA All-Time Team.) The most successful Pittsburgh basketball team may well have been the Pittsburgh Pisces in The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.

* Duquesne Gardens. Pittsburgh's original sports arena opened in 1895, and had an unofficial limit of 8,000 spectators. It hosted minor-league hockey teams from the beginning until its closing in 1956, including the Hornets from 1936 to 1956. It hosted the Duquesne and Pitt basketball teams, and the Pittsburgh Ironmen in the NBA's 1st season, 1946-47.

Once bigger arenas like the old Madison Square Garden went up in the 1920s, seating more than twice as many people, the Duquesne Gardens was obsolete. Yet it hung on until 1956. 110 N. Craig Street, at 5th Avenue, near the Pitt campus. University housing is now on the site. Also accessible via the Number 71 bus.

Demolition beginning in 1956

The University of Pittsburgh is on the town's East Side. Penn State is 139 miles to the northeast in State College. West Virginia University, Pitt's other big rival, is 76 miles to the south in Morgantown. Greyhound provides service to State College, while Megabus does so to Morgantown.

* Highmark Stadium. As I said, Pittsburgh doesn't have a Major League Soccer team. The Pittsburgh Riverhounds play in the United Soccer League (USL), the 3rd tier of American soccer. Their home field is Highmark Stadium, and it seats a mere 3,500 fans, about the size of the average high school football stadium in New Jersey. But its placement on the south bank of the Monongahela, across from downtown, gives it a view every bit as good as the one from PNC Park. 510 W. Station Square Drive. Subway to Station Square.

No President has come from Pittsburgh, or from anywhere near it. The only President from Pennsylvania has been James Buchanan, and he was a lousy one, and he was from Lancaster, much closer to Philadelphia.

The most notable historic site in Pittsburgh is probably Point State Park, where the "three rivers" come together at the western edge of downtown. It includes the Fort Pitt Museum, telling the city's story from the days of New France Onward. 601 Commonwealth Place.

The U.S. Steel Tower, at 7th & Grant Avenues, is the tallest building in Pittsburgh, at 841 feet -- although there are 3 buildings in Philadelphia that surpass it for the title of tallest building in Pennsylvania. Built in 1970, it surpassed the 1932-built Gulf Tower, on the opposite corner from U.S. Steel.

There haven't been many TV shows set in Pittsburgh. They include My So-Called Life, Hope and Gloria, Queer as Folk, Man with a Plan, the World War II-era period piece Remember WENN, and This Is Us, which bounces around between 1980 and the present day.

Mr. Belvedere, starring Christopher Hewett as a butler to a family led by a sportswriter played by ballplayer-turned-broadcaster Bob Uecker, was set in nearby Beaver Falls, hometown of Jets legend Joe Namath, but it was filmed in Los Angeles. The most notable TV shows actually taped in Pittsburgh, at the PBS station WQED-Channel 13, were Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Fred Rogers was from Latrobe, and in spite of his show's success, he never moved the taping to New York or Hollywood. He notably had Steeler receiver Lynn Swann on his show, to show that even a big tough football player (or, at least, a graceful wide receiver) could love ballet (which explained how Swannie got such nice moves in the first place). A statue of Mr. Rogers, sponsored by TV Land, is near Heinz Field, as is one of Steeler founder-owner Art Rooney.

A lot of movies have been shot in Pittsburgh, due to its varied architecture. Many have had sports scenes. You may have seen the 1994 version of Angels in the Outfield, which involved the team then known as the California Angels. The original black-and-white version came out in 1951, and the downtrodden team they featured was the Pirates, and there's some nice shots of Forbes Field in it. Some nice shots of Janet Leigh, too. (Jamie Lee Curtis' mom -- no, unlike in some other films such as Psycho, Janet doesn't flash any skin in this one, but now you know why Tony Curtis married her, and where Jamie Lee inherited the goods.)

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh was a very silly, very Seventies movie, with Julius "Dr. J" Erving playing for the good guys and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar playing for the opposition. Sudden Death had Jean-Claude Van Damme trying to stop an assassination attempt at the Stanley Cup Finals. Both featured the old Civic Arena. Van Damme also filmed Timecop in Pittsburgh.

While most of The Dark Knight Rises was filmed in New York (with a few CGI bridges added to the skyline to create the atmosphere of the fictional Gotham City), and its 2 predecessors were filmed in Chicago, the football game scene was filmed at Heinz Field, with the fictional Gotham Rogues wearing Steeler black & gold. Don't worry, no actual stadiums were hurt during the filming of the bombing.

One of Tom Cruise's first big films was All the Right Moves, a high school football movie set in Pittsburgh. He returned to Pittsburgh to film Jack Reacher. A movie with more life in it, the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead, was filmed in Pittsburgh. Its sequel Dawn of the Dead was filmed at the Monroeville Mall in the eastern suburbs, and the concluding chapter Day of the Dead back in the city.

Gung Ho, with Michael Keaton, spoofed the decline of Pittsburgh industry. Flashdance, with Jennifer Beals, turned the declining Pittsburgh dream on its head. Boys On the Side seemed to wink at it. Groundhog Day starts in Pittsburgh before moving east to Punxsatawney. However, those aren't sports movies. (Although, with Jennifer Beals, Drew Barrymore and Andie MacDowell in them, there may be some heavy breathing.) PNC Park was used in the recent films She's Out of My League and Abduction.

In 1980, Fighting Back: The Rocky Bleier Story became a CBS movie of the week, starring Robert Urich as the running back who played for the Steelers after being wounded in combat in Vietnam. The same year, Mean Joe Greene played himself in Hey Kid, Catch!, based on his famous Coca-Cola commercial.

But the greatest movie shot in Western Pennsylvania was the 1977 hockey classic Slap Shot. Nancy Dowd wrote it about her brother Ned's experience with the Johnstown Jets, who played at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena. That arena, and minor-league arenas in New York State's Syracuse, Utica and Clinton, were used as filming locations, even though the film's Charlestown Chiefs were said to be in the Charlestown section of Boston. After the real Jets moved out, the replacement team was named the Johnstown Chiefs in honor of the crew led by player-coach Reggie Dunlop, played by Paul Newman.

The 4,000-seat arena, built in 1950, still stands, and is now home to a team called the Johnstown Tomahawks. 326 Napoleon Street in Johnstown, 67 miles east of Pittsburgh. It's a 15-minute walk from the Amtrak station, and the museum honoring the Johnstown Flood of 1889 is along the way.

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Pittsburgh is a terrific city that loves its sports, and Heinz Field is one of the best of the new football stadiums. If you give your team your all, and respect the Steelers and their fans as opponents, you'll be all right. Just don't do anything to a Terrible Towel.

How to Be a Rutgers Fan At Penn State

"Old Main," the Penn State administration building

This Saturday, coming off a Big Ten Conference victory against their closest rivals, fellow Big Ten newcomers Maryland, the football team at Rutgers University travels to "Happy Valley" to face their archest rivals, the Nittany Scum.

What separates these 2 teams is more than just 234 miles. It's class. It's good uniforms. It's academic distinction. It's classic architecture. And it's football success. Only one of these does not favor Rutgers. Guess which one.

Before You Go. The Penn State campus is at the same latitude as the Meadowlands Sports Complex, Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx, so roughly the same weather can be expected. Check out the newspaper website (the Centre Daily Times, as Penn State is in Centre County) before you head out. They're predicting low 40s for Saturday afternoon and low 30s for the night, with no precipitation for the entire weekend.

The campus is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to adjust your timepieces.

Tickets. The Nittany Lions have, both competitively and commercially, recovered from the Jerry Sandusky scandal, to the point that having a stadium seating over 100,000 is no safeguard against demand for tickets outstripping supply. You may have to go to sources other than the University to get them.

Seats in the lower level are $170 in midfield, $130 at the ends, and $85 in the end zone. In the 2nd level, they're $95 at midfield, $85 at the ends, and $75 in the end zone. In the 3rd deck end zone, they're $90. Visiting team fans are usually put in the north end zone, at $70 a seat.

Getting There. I'm not going to kid you here: There's only one way to do so, and that's by car. You do not want to fly, because State College is in the middle of nowhere, and doesn't have an airport taking regular flights from Newark, Kennedy or LaGuardia.

You do not want to take the train, because Amtrak doesn't go anywhere near State College, unless you count Lewistown or Huntingdon, both about 30 miles away, as "near."

You do not want to take the bus. Greyhound has a 6:05 AM bus leaving Port Authority Bus Terminal, but it won't arrive at State College until 12:50 PM -- which would be fine for a 3:30 or nighttime start, but not for a 12:00 noon start. The only other trip they offer is at 7:10 AM to 3:30 PM, which you could take the day before. There are 4 buses every day from State College to New York, the last of which leaves at 5:00 PM and arrives at 11:20, which would be fine for the noon kickoff, but not for anything later. It's (check these prices again as we get to within a week of gameday) $184 round-trip, but it could drop to as low as $138 on advanced-purchase.

Megabus offers a cheaper ($98 round-trip) alternative, but, again, the schedule doesn't work. They have a bus that leaves 34th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues at 8:40 AM and arrives at 1:40 PM, which won't work for a noon start. Or, you could go the night before, at 11:10 PM, but you'd arrive at 4:10 AM. Either way, it goes to the southwest corner of the Walmart parking lot at 1665 N. Atherton Street, over 2 miles from the campus.

The only sensible way is by car – especially if there's more than one of you going and you can take turns driving. It's 238 miles from Times Square in Midtown Manhattan to Old Main in State College, and 229 miles from Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway to Beaver Stadium.

Take any highway that will get you to Interstate 80: For most of you, this will be the New Jersey Turnpike (Exit 18E or 18W), the Garden State Parkway (Exit 159), or Interstate 287 (Exit 41). Follow I-80 West all the way through New Jersey, to Hardwick Township, and across the Delaware River into Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania.

Continue west on I-80 until reaching Exit 161 in Bellefonte. There, you will take Interstate 99 South to Exit 74, onto East Park Avenue. The stadium will soon be on your left. For the main campus, go a little further, turning left on Allen Road. Counting a rest stop, you should be on the road for about 4 1/2 hours, give or take half an hour either way for how well the traffic moves.

Once In the City. Pennsylvania was 1 of the Original 13 Colonies, and what's now named Independence Hall in Philadelphia is the birthplace of both the nation (the Declaration of Independence was ratified there on July 4, 1776) and its government (the Constitution of the United States was approved there on September 17, 1787). Pennsylvania was the 2nd State to ratify the Constitution, on December 12, 1787. (Also at Independence Hall, which then served as the State House. The State capital was moved to Lancaster in 1799 and Harrisburg in 1812, and it remains there.)

The political consultant James Carville, who got Bob Casey Sr., father of current U.S. Senator Bob Casey Jr., elected Governor in 1986, says, "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in the middle." He wasn't kidding: Between Philly and Pitt, it is very, very rural, hence the nickname "Pennsyltucky."

It certainly explains the State's love of football: The Philadelphia Eagles, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penn State and high school ball. It also explains why John McCain thought he could take the State back for the Republicans in 2008, why Mitt Romney thought he could do it in 2012, and (along with Russian interference) Donald Trump actually did it in 2016.

The State House in Harrsiburg

Compared to most big cities, especially Philadelphia, Pittsburgh has had hardly any civil strife. There was the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, in which the U.S. Army suppressed a bunch of guys complaining about a tax on booze. There was the Homestead Strike of 1892, where coal mine owners hired a private army to suppress organized labor. And there was the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018. In the rest of the State, there was Scranton Coal Riot of 1871, and a race riot in York in 1969.

 

The Pennsylvania State University -- almost never referred to as such, usually as simply "Penn State" -- is in State College, in Centre County, 193 miles northwest of Philadelphia, 149 miles southwest of Scramton, 180 miles west of Easton, 88 miles northwest of Harrisburg, and 140 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. In other words, it looks like a convenient location in the center of the State, but it's not really convenient at all. As with Syracuse in New York State, State College can be described as the kind of place where the Northeast begins to turn into the Midwest, and vice versa.

The town was founded in 1896, even though the University was founded in 1855, and is home to 42,000 permanent residents (not counting endormed students). The Centre Daily Times is the daily newspaper.

Nearby is Mount Nittany, named for the Algonquin word for "single mountain, and for which the Penn State teams, the Nittany Lions, are named. College Avenue divides street addresses into North and South, and Allen Street divides them into East and West.

Mount Nittany

Old Main, the University administration building and campus centerpiece (shown in the photo at the top), is on Pattee Mall between Pollock Road and College Avenue. A short walk to the north is the Paterno Library. Yes, they kept Joe's name on it. The area has no beltway.

The Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) runs buses, with a fare of $2.00, with all routes on the Penn State campus being free.

The sales tax in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is 6 percent. The Area Code for Central Pennsylvania is 814. The ZIP Code for State College is 16802, although most of Central Pennsylvania has them starting with the digits 17.

The name "Happy Valley" has nothing to do with the football success brought by Joe Paterno, although that certainly didn't hurt the name. It was given to the area during the Great Depression of the 1930s, as it was generally not hit hard financially, because of the presence of Pennsylvania State University. Though the term "Happy Valley" is generally synonymous with State College Borough, the region also includes the townships of College, Harris, Patton, and Ferguson.

Centre County, home to the main Penn State campus, is about 89 percent white, 5 percent Asian, 3 percent black and 3 percent Hispanic. The Asian percentage being that high is the only part of this that surprised me.

In addition to the main campus in University Park/State College, there are 19 "Commonwealth Campuses":

Eastern Pennsylvania: Abington, Berks (actually in Spring Township), Brandywine (Media), Harrisburg (Middletown), Hazelton, Lehigh Valley (Center Valley), Schuylkill (Schuylkill Haven), Wilkes-Barre (Lehman), Worthington Scranton (Dunmore) and York. 

Western Pennsylvania: Altoona (Logan Township), Beaver (Monaca), DuBois, Erie, Fayette (Uniontown), Greater Allegheny (McKeesport), Mont Alto, New Kensington and Shenango (Sharon).

Notable non-sports alumni of Penn State include: 

* Literature: Dale Brown (not the LSU basketball coach), John Pielmeier, Susan Miller.

* Business: Fisher-Price co-founder Herman Fisher, Slinky inventor Richard T. James, and America’s foremost current labor union leader, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

* Journalism: Margaret Carlson, Lara Spencer. Counting sports journalism, add Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, ESPN's Lisa Salters (who played basketball at PSU) and the YES Network's Kim Jones.

* Entertainment: Songwriter Mike Reid (an All-American football player); bandleader Fred Waring (his band was named "His Pennsylvanians"); actors John Aniston (Jennifer's father), Bruce Davison, Nathan Cook, Jonthan Frakes,Ty Burrell and Keegan-Michael Key; NCIS franchise creator and producer Donald Bellisario; director Adam McKay; and screenwriting twins Julius and Philip Epstein. (Baseball executive Theo Epstein is Philip’s grandson.)

* Politics: Senators Richard Schweiker and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire; Secretary of Defense William Perry; and Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by the George W. Bush Administration after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, exposed the Administration's reason for the Iraq War as a lie. Also, Hillary Clinton's father and brother, both named Hugh Rodham.

* Science: Erwin Wilhelm Muller, inventor of the field ion microscope; and Joel Myers, founder of AccuWeather; Jef Raskin, inventor of the Macintosh computer; and Guion Bluford, America's 1st black astronaut.

Going In. Beaver Stadium was named for James Addams Beaver (1837-1914), a Civil War hero who served as Governor of Pennsylvania from 1887 to 1891, and President of the University from 1906 to 1908. It began in 1909 as a 30,000-seat stadium named Beaver Field. In 1960, it was disassembled, and reassembled in its current location.

The stadium's original configuration, 1960-68

The official address is 127 Bryce Jordan Center. It is a mile east of the main campus, bounded by East Park Avenue on the north, Porter Road on the east, Curtin Road on the south, and University Drive on the west. Both the Blue and the Red bus goes there. If you drive in, parking is a whopping $40.

Capacity remained 30,000 through the undefeated season of 1968, the beginning of the Joe Paterno legend. So for the next year, it was boosted to 46,284, to 57,538 in 1972, to 83,770 in 1980, to 93,967 in 1991, and in 2001 to its current capacity of 106,572 and its status as "Saint Joseph Paterno Cathedral." This past October 21, their 42-13 win over Michigan was attended by a record crowd of 110,823. This makes Beaver Stadium the 4th-largest "city" in Pennsylvania, behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, slightly behind Allentown (118,032), and slightly ahead of Erie (101,786).

The field has always been natural grass -- whatever else can be said about Paterno, it is to his credit that he always insisted upon that -- and points northwest-to-southeast.

This past October 6, Thrillist compiled a list of their Best College Football Stadiums, the top 19 percent of college football, 25 out of 129. Beaver Stadium came in 10th, and the article's author buys into the Happy Valley line of bullshit: "Penn State has the kind of atmosphere that can turn a single visit into lifelong fandom... It's just pure college-football fun, no matter how old you are or where you went to school." Gag me.

Food. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are both cities of many ethnicities, and which tend to love to eat food that really isn't good for you. But, as I said, the interior of Pennsylvania is more country than city, and Penn State reflects this.

Beaver Stadium has concession stands all over the place, but the University website only shows location, and doesn't give specifics. I had to go to another website to find out that they offer Callahan's hot dogs, Auntie Anne pretzels, Kono pizza cones (a slice curled up and served as if it was an ice cream cone), chicken baskets (described as "every student's favorite food" -- maybe at Penn State, not at Rutgers or any other school I know of), and ice cream from the most iconic State College eats joint, Berkey's Creamery.

Team History Displays. The press box and luxury suites at Beaver Stadium have a display honoring their 14 undefeated seasons: 1894, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1920, 1921, 1947, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1982, 1986, 1994 and 2005. Contrary to what you might believe (even with his hair being perpetually jet-black, the guy always looked like an old man), the 1st 7 of these were achieved before Joe Paterno arrived on campus.

Penn State has been awarded the Lambert Trophy, given to "the best college football team in the East," a record 30 times: In 1947, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2013 and 2016. The Lions' entry into the Big Ten has not altered their eligibility for it.

Penn State has been to 47 bowl games, winning 28. These games include the 1969, 1970, 1974 and 2006 Orange Bowls; the 1972 and 1975 Cotton Bowls; the 1977, 1980, 1981, 1987, 1992 and 1997 Fiesta Bowls; the 1983 Sugar Bowl; and the 1995 Rose Bowl. Penn State is 1 of 6 schools to have won all 5 major bowls, achieving it in 2010. The others: Notre Dame in 1989, Ohio State in 1998, Miami in 2001, Texas in 2004 and Oklahoma in 2010.

Penn State claims to have won the National Championship in 1887, 1894, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1920, 1921, 1947, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1977, 1981 and 1994. In 1968, '69 and '73, they were undefeated, and they claim to have been unfairly denied. Maybe in 1994, they had a case.

But see for yourself. In 1968, they didn't play a single ranked team until they got to the Orange Bowl, played Number 6 Kansas, and barely won, 15-14. In 1969, they played just 1 ranked team, Number 17 West Virginia, before getting to the Orange Bowl again, again playing Number 6, this time Missouri, and only winning 10-3. For the record, they had enjoyed the trip to Miami so much the season before that they chose it again, before Michigan upset then-Number 1 Ohio State, thus setting up Texas vs. Arkansas as Number 1 vs. Number 2. Paterno argued that Missouri had beaten Michigan, which had beaten Ohio State, so Missouri had to be one of the best teams in the country. Had he waited, he could have accepted a bid to the Cotton Bowl to play Texas and truly settled it. Instead, Notre Dame was invited, and Texas beat them.

In 1973, Penn State didn't play a ranked team until the end of the regular season, with Pittsburgh only being ranked Number 20, and again had their hands full in the Orange Bowl, only winning 16-9 against Number 13 Louisiana State.

When Number 2 Penn State beat Number 1 Georgia 27-23 in the 1983 Sugar Bowl, to give them the 1982 National Championship, the cover of Sports Illustrated read, "No. 1 AT LAST!" Except Penn State wasn't undefeated that time, having gotten clobbered earlier in the year by Alabama (albeit in Birmingham), which wasn't that good a team in Bear Bryant's final year. Penn State was 11-1, while Southern Methodist University (SMU) was undefeated at 11-0-1, with their "Pony Express" backfield of Eric Dickerson and Craig James. They should have been named National Champions.

Regardless, there was no doubt in the 1986 season: A few days after Paterno was named SI's Sportsman of the Year, Number 2 Penn State won a 14-10 thriller over Number 1 Miami in the Fiesta Bowl, and won a National Championship that, barring any future revelations of rule violations, is completely legit.

Not being in a league until joining the Big Ten as its 11th team in 1992 really hurt Penn State's National Championship hopes -- although, when they won the Big Ten in 1994, they were undefeated, and still didn't get the National Championship. They've since won the Big Ten again in 2005, 2008, and, signaling the completion of their comeback (competitively, if not morally) from the Sandusky scandal, in 2016.

Paterno didn't believe in retiring uniform numbers, not even for "the best football player I ever coached," the only Penn State player who has ever won the Heisman Trophy, running back John Cappelletti in 1973.

Cappelletti -- no relation to Gino Cappelletti, the former receiver and broadcaster known in New England as "Mr. Patriot" -- famously dedicated his Heisman acceptance speech to his 11-year-old brother Joey, who had leukemia, and died in 1976. John went on to play for the Los Angeles Rams from 1974 to 1978, missed the 1979 season due to injury, and played for the San Diego Chargers from 1980 to 1983. In 2013, the 40th Anniversary of his honor, Paterno's successor as head coach, Bill O'Brien, made Cappelletti's Number 22 the 1st, and still only, retired number in Nittany Lion football history.

John and Joey Cappelletti, 1973.

Penn State had numbers on their helmets at the time.

College Football Hall of Famers from Penn State include running backs Cappelletti, Lydell Mitchell and Curt Warner; tight end Ted Kwalick, defensive end Dave Robinson, defensive tackle Mike Reid, and 3 of the players that have gotten the school nicknamed "Linebacker U": Dennis Onkotz, Jack Ham and Shane Conlan. There are 6 Nittany Lions in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Robinson, Ham, Ham's Pittsburgh Steeler teammate Franco Harris, running back Lenny Moore, and guards Mike Michalske and Mike Munchak.

Joe Paterno was born in Brooklyn on December 21, 1926, graduated from Brooklyn Preparatory School in 1944, served in the U.S. Army for the remainder of World War II, played quarterback at Ivy League school Brown University from 1946 to 1949, arrived at Penn State as an assistant coach under Rip Engle in 1950, and became head coach in 1966.

He prided himself on what he called a "grand experiment," known as "Success with Honor." His players had a higher graduation rate than most Division I-A schools, and for most of his tenure, there were no scandals. It was a bit galling, however, that he recruited so heavily in neighboring States, including taking several New Jersey players away from consideration by Rutgers, including Franco Harris and Kenny Jackson.

A statue of him was dedicated outside the east stand of Beaver Stadium on November 2, 2001. It called him "Joseph Vincent Paterno: Educator, Coach, Humanitarian." His final record, without any punishments against it, was 409-136-3, including 24-12-1 in bowl games, making him the winningest coach in Division I-A/Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) history. His winning percentage was .749 -- or an average of 9-3, every year for 46 years.

As we now know, Paterno not only covered up many crimes committed by his players, which he discovered was a lot harder to do in the Internet Age, but he did the minimum that he was legally required to do once he found out about the offenses committed by his friend and former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, once considered to be the favorite to be his eventual successor: He told his immediate superior, the athletic director. But he didn't tell the police.

On November 5, 2011, 10 years to the week after the statue was dedicated, Sandusky was arrested on what once would quaintly have been called "morals charges." Just 3 days later, with that part of the public that was not buying into the Paterno legend demanding to know why he didn't do more, the University finally stood up to the man who had been, in practice, the most powerful man on campus, and fired Joe Paterno. A few hundred people rioted in protest. Let them live with that for as long as they can.

We now know that Paterno already had lung cancer, and wouldn't have lasted much longer as coach anyway. But the scandal may have made him give up on life, and he died on January 22, 2012, at age 85. His statue was removed the following July 22, with the new University administration considering it a roadblock to the healing process. But it was done overnight, not with TV cameras rolling, so as not to embarrass the Paterno family. It was one last concession to Ol' Ratface.

The Penn State All Sports Museum is located in Beaver Stadium's south stand. The lower level is dedicated to outdoor sports, the upper level to indoor sports. Opening in 2002, it includes Cappelletti's Heisman, and tributes to cheerleaders, mascots and the Blue Band.

Despite not having conference rivals until the 1990s, Penn State does have regional rivalries. The rearrangement of conference alignments has made irregular matchups out of some of these.

Most notable is with their closest rival, the University of Pittsburgh. After a 16-year gap, it was renewed in 2016 with a furious Penn State comeback that fell just short, as the Panthers held on 42-39 at Heinz Field. Penn State won 33-14 this year, and lead 50-43-4. They will play again in Pittsburgh next year, but are not scheduled to play after that.

They haven't played New York State school Syracuse since 2013, and only 3 times since 1991, leading it 43-23-5. They haven't played West Virginia since 1992, leading 48-9-2.

Penn State has a regional rivalry with neighboring Maryland. Actually, "rivalry" may be too strong a word: As with Rutgers, the Nittany Lions utterly dominate, 37-2-1. They first played each other in 1917, then only sporadically until 1960. Maryland won in 1961, and then never again until it was called off in 1993, with Penn State joining the Big Ten. Maryland (as with Rutgers) did so in 2014, and beat Penn State. But the Lions have won the last 2 against the Terrapins. They will meet again on Thanksgiving Saturday in College Park.

As for Rutgers, it's not a real rivalry. They first played each other on November 9, 1918, at old Beaver Field, and Rutgers, including Paul Robeson, won 26-3. They didn't play each other again until 1950, then came another hiatus from 1956 to 1976. Then, following their undefeated season in 1976, Rutgers wanted "big-time football," and began playing Penn State again in 1977. They didn't beat Penn State again until September 24, 1988, at Beaver Stadium, 21-16.

The October 3, 1992 game at Giants Stadium brought 72,203 fans, which remains a record for a Rutgers "home" game, but, again, the Penn State fans easily outnumbered the Scarlet faithful, and the Nittany Lions beat the Scarlet Knights 38-24. Penn State now leads the series 25-2.

Being neighboring States and major college football powers, you would think Penn State and Ohio State would have a great rivalry. But they only met 7 times between 1912 and 1992. They've been met as Big Ten opponents every year since, and Ohio State leads, 18-14, including 5 of the last 6, the last a 39-38 thriller in Columbus this season.

Since 1993, Penn State has played fellow "land-grant" school Michigan State for the Land Grant Trophy, the only trophy for any of the Nittany Lions' rivalry games. They played for it last Saturday, with Michigan State winning, and taking a 16-15-1 lead, although Penn State still leads 14-8 since the trophy was introduced.

UPDATE: Through the 2019 season, Penn State leads Rutgers 28-2, Maryland 40-2-1, Pitt 53-43-4; and trail Ohio State 19-14, and Michigan State 17-16-1.

Stuff. There is no big team store at Beaver Stadium. The Student Book Store is at 330 East College Avenue, across from Old Main. Lions Pride is 5 blocks to the west, at 112 East College Avenue.

In 2007, before the scandal, the DVD History of Penn State Football was released. In 2009, also before, Ken Rappoport and Barry Wikner published Penn State Football: The Complete Illustrated History. In 2012, after it was all over except for the removal of the statue, Bill Moushey and Robert Dvorchak published Game Over: Jerry Sandusky, Penn State, and the Culture of Silence -- which, it's worth pointing out, has Paterno on the cover, not Sandusky.

Terri Frei of the Denver Post wrote Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming: Texas vs. Arkansas in Dixie's Last Stand, about the 1969 Texas-Arkansas Game. Among the things it discusses is how the rest of the country looked down on Northeastern college football, and how Penn State's undefeated 1969 team had a case for the National Championship, but it went to Texas instead. 

During the Game. Despite their willingness to riot on behalf of their "Godfather," Joe Paterno, Penn State fans will probably not endanger your safety. Avoid the subject of the Sandusky scandal, and you probably won't see anything like the nastiness that sometimes comes with Phillies-Mets, Eagles-Giants, Flyers-Anybody (especially Flyers-Penguins) or Steelers-Browns.

Since 2005, students have camped out overnight in front of Beaver Stadium before home games. This is a copy of "Krzyzewskiville" at Duke basketball, and was named Paternoville. Since the scandal, it's been called Nittanyville.

Before the game, Penn State's Blue Band enters the field, plays "Hail to the Lion," and then the Drum Major high-steps to the 50-yard-line, where he does "The Flip." Legend states that if he lands the flip, Penn State will win.

He then performs another flip while running towards the end zone. After he stands back up, he and the Nittany Lion mascot, who is holding his baton, take 5 high-steps toward each other, meeting 5 yards deep in the end zone. The Lion and Drum Major both place both hands on the baton in alternating order (in the same manner children choosing teams with a baseball bat would) and then throw the baton into the ground. They then salute each other, embrace arms, and then both excitedly run towards the student section, where they are cheered enthusiastically. All the while, the Blue Band makes the "PSU" formation, then "LIONS," and plays "Fight On, State."

As if the school hasn't stolen enough people and things from New Jersey, the P.A. system will play Bon Jovi's song "Livin' On a Prayer." As far as I'm concerned, they can keep that one. Playing it in Piscataway hasn't done Rutgers any good.

One of Penn State's most familiar features is their uniforms. Funny thing, but in a special 1982 College Football Preview issue, Sports Illustrated called "Penn State's all-white road togs" the worst uniforms in college football, saying they looked like high school uniforms. But in their 1993 preview issue, they called the home uniforms, like the Yankees' main color a blue so dark it appears black to some eyes, the best uniforms in college football.

The helmets remain with white helmets with a center dark blue stripe, and no logo whatsoever, though they experimented with numbers on the sides from 1966, Paterno's 1st season as head coach, until 1974.

In 2012, to show respect to those players who stuck with the program after the scandal -- it was one of those rare instances where the NCAA let players transfer from one major college to another without having to sit out a season -- they began to put the players' names on the back. But in 2015, with all of the players in question having used up their eligibility, they went back to nameless jerseys.

Similarly, the mascot, the Nittany Lion, is very plain, with no name, no jersey, just a blue and white scarf, and looks like it was put together by a high school home economics class. He does, however, do one-handed push-ups, one for every point every time Penn State scores. This means that if Penn State scores 4 touchdowns, he'll have to do 7 push-ups, then 14 making for 21, then 21 making 42, then 28 making 70 push-ups over the course of a 3-hour game. A 5th would make 35, and now we're talking triple digits. If Penn State is playing Rutgers, well, let's hope he didn't skip Arm Day at the gym. He has been elected to the Mascot Hall of Fame.

A small section behind the end zone are all given white and blue shirts supplied the Pennsylvania State University Lion Ambassadors to create an "S" in the student section. The "S-Zone" was moved from the 20 yard line to its current location at the beginning of the 2011 football season, as the student section was shifted over to between the 10 yard lines.

In 2005, the fans began doing "Whiteout Games," with fans wearing white T-shirts, similar to the NHL's Winnipeg Jets.

The main fan chant is "We are... Penn State!" When "Kernkraft 400" by Zombie Nation is played after a big play, the crowd jumps around, waves rally towels, and does the chant. They call it Zombie Nation, even though zombies are creatures that, unlike Penn State fans, possess the awareness that they need to look for brains.

If you wanted me to be objective, well, I could only be so for so long, and it was an obvious joke.

After the Game. Didn't say anything dumb regarding Paterno and Sandusky? Then you're probably home free -- or, at least, to your car or the Greyhound station free -- without having to worry about fan violence.

Hungry after the game? Well, now, you've got a minor problem, because Beaver Stadium is surrounded by little other than parking lots and other athletic facilities. You'll have to go west down Curtin Road. However, half a mile down that road is the most famous eatery in State College -- indeed, in all of Pennsylvania between the 2 big cities at either end.

It's the Berkey Creamery, inside the Rodney A. Erickson Food Science Building, on Curtin at the corner of Bigler Road. In addition to over 100 flavors of ice cream, it's also noted for its cheese. It should be noted for both, as they take advantage of 200 Holstein cows milked twice daily. Just like it's always "Time to make the donuts" at Dunkin Donuts, it's always time to get fresh milk and turn it into various dairy products.

Speaking of Dunkin, if you can't wait until you get back to Jersey or The City to get your fix, they've got 'em in the main campus area at 200 West College Street, and east of the main campus area and the sports complex at 1831 East College Street. Prefer Starbucks? 232 West College Street, 141 South Garner Street, and in the Hetzel Union Building (a.k.a. The HUB) at Pollock Road and McAllister Street.

Other notable State College joints include the Lion's Den at 118 South Garner Street, Sharkies at 110 Sowers Street, The Tavern at 220 East College Avenue, Spats Cafe & Speakeasy at 142 East College Avenue, The Darkhorse Tavern at 127 East Calder Way, The Corner Room at 100 West College Avenue, and Ye Olde College Diner at 126 West College Avenue. All of these are within a 5-minute walk of College Avenue.

Jersey Mike's has a store at 128 South Allen Street. If it seems strange to have a Jersey Mike's at Penn State, recall that Pennsylvania has a town named Jersey Shore, and New Jersey, near the Shore, has a Penn State Forest.

If you visit State College during the European soccer season, which we are now in, the town's leading soccer bar is the WestSide Stadium Bar & Grill, at 1301 W. College Avenue.

Sidelights. The site of Old Beaver Field, where Penn State played football from 1909 to 1959, is now occupied by the Nittany Lion Inn and the Nittany Parking Deck, at 200 W. Park Avenue.

The 15,261-seat Bryce Jordan Center, Penn State's basketball arena, is to the south of Beaver Stadium, across Curtin Road.

The 5,570-seat Medlar Field at Lubrano Park is to the east of Beaver Stadium, across Porter Road. Since 2006, it has been home to both Penn State baseball and the State College Spikes of the short-season Class A New York-Penn League. Anthony Lubrano is a Penn State graduate who contributed $2.5 million to the ballpark's construction, and Charles Medlar was Penn State's baseball coach from 1963 to 1981 and a longtime athletic trainer.

The Spikes represent yet another defection from the Garden State to the Keystone State due to the Penn State influence: From 1994 to 2005, it was based in Augusta, Sussex County, and known as the New Jersey Cardinals. Since coming to Happy Valley, they've won Pennants in 2014 and 2016.

Medlar Field, with Beaver Stadium in the background

Penn State's former arena, Rec Hall, is on North Atherton Street at Curtin Road. It was built in 1929, and its exterior shows a distinct resemblance to the University of Pennsylvania's gym, The Palestra. But Penn State is no Ivy League school, and there's no stained-glass windows inside Rec Hall.

At just 6,846 seats, it was just fine for Penn State basketball, which has never been all that successful, until joining the Big Ten. Then, it became clear that a bigger hoops hall was needed, and the Jordan Center opened in 1996.

Penn State has a hockey team, and they play at Pegula Ice Arena, at 250 University Drive, opposite the Bryce Jordan Center. Terry Pegula, owner of the Buffalo Bills and Sabres, is a Penn State graduate, and he and his wife Kim gave the money necessary to build the 5,782-seat arena, which opened in 2012.

To the east, Penn State is 193 miles from Philadelphia, 167 from Baltimore, 219 from Washington and 236 from New York. To the west, it's 137 miles from Pittsburgh, 200 from Buffalo, 240 from Cleveland and 298 from Toronto. A 2014 Facebook survey showed that 30 percent of baseball fans in the State College area support the Pittsburgh Pirates, 25 percent the Phillies, and 15 percent the Yankees.

A subsequent survey showed that the basketball fandom didn't favor the Philadelphia 76ers, but rather the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat -- so, as you might have very easily guessed, Penn State fans are front-runners. Most likely, those Heat fans became Cleveland Cavaliers fans when LeBron James went "home."

Other surveys showed that the Pittsburgh Steelers had more fans in the area than the Philadelphia Eagles, but hockey fandom tilted the other way, with more Philadelphia Flyer fans than Pittsburgh Penguin fans. But that was before the Penguins won the 2016 and '17 Stanley Cups, so an update may be in order.

Once upon a time, Central Pennsylvania was home to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which coach Glenn "Pop" Warner and running back Jim Thorpe led to upsets of Harvard (18-15) in 1911 and Army (27-6) at West Point in 1912. Ironically, in 1918, the Army bought the school, land and buildings, and it's now the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center. 950 Soldiers Drive, in Carlisle, 105 miles southeast of Beaver Stadium.

Elvis Presley gave 12 concerts in Pennsylvania, 9 in Philadelphia and 3 in Pittsburgh, never playing Penn State. It's not that he was against playing college arenas: Of the 391 non-casino shows he did from 1970 to 1977, 48 were in arenas on college campuses. Maybe Rec Hall was too small for him by that point.

The Penn State campus includes the Palmer Museum of Art and the Zoller Gallery, next-door to each other, and the Matson Museum of Anthropology, all on Curtin Road. The Matson Museum is next-door to the Nittany Lion Inn, and fronted by the Nittany Lion Shrine, a statue of a mountain lion.

Only 1 President has ever come from Pennsylvania, and he might be the worst one of all: James Buchanan, whose Administration began with the Panic of 1857 and ended with the secession of several Southern States. (Whether Buchanan was gay has been debated since even before he became President, but the evidence is flimsy.)

His home, Wheatland, still stands at 1120 Marietta Avenue in Lancaster, and he's buried about a mile away in Greenwood Cemetery. But Lancaster, the heart of "Pennsylvania Dutch Country," is 125 miles southeast of State College.

Other Presidents with Pennsylvania connections? Before Washington, D.C. was ready, Philadelphia was the nation's capital, from 1790 to 1800. Then serving in the federal government were George Washington, John Adams and his son John Quincy, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. Donald Trump (if you want to count him) went to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Outside Philly, Washington camped at Valley Forge, and Monroe was serving under him. Washington also had an earlier connection to Pittsburgh, serving as an officer in the British Army in the French and Indian War.

Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Address at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, about 110 miles southeast of State College. Dwight D. Eisenhower retired to a house at Gettsyburg National Military Park.

Although lots of TV shows and movies have been set and/or filmed in Pennsylvania, those at Penn State are next to nil. While the school occasionally gets mentioned, the only one I can think of actually set there is Boy Meets World: After graduating from their suburb-of-Philadelphia high school, Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) and Topanga Lawrence (Danielle Fishel) went to Penn State.

The greatest movie shot in Western Pennsylvania was the 1977 hockey classic Slap Shot. Nancy Dowd wrote it about her brother Ned's experience with the Johnstown Jets, who played at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena. That arena, and minor-league arenas in New York State's Syracuse, Utica and Clinton, were used as filming locations, even though the film's Charlestown Chiefs were said to be in the Charlestown section of Boston. After the real Jets moved out, the replacement team was named the Johnstown Chiefs in honor of the crew led by player-coach Reggie Dunlop, played by Paul Newman.

The 4,000-seat arena, built in 1950, still stands, and is now home to a team called the Johnstown Tomahawks. 326 Napoleon Street in Johnstown, 86 miles southwest of State College. It's a 15-minute walk from the Amtrak station, and the museum honoring the Johnstown Flood of 1889 is along the way.

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Penn State is one of the iconic college football programs, and they're happy to tell you that in Happy Valley. They're also still happy to defend Joe Paterno. Competitively, they have rebounded, so they really don't need to act as though what happened between 1966 and 2011 -- and especially from 1994 to 2009 -- ever happened.

Who knows, maybe this is the year that Rutgers Finally beats... I'm sorry, I couldn't type that with a straight face.