CBS Boston: The NFL Lets The Steelers Do Whatever They Want

[Belsnickel]

(01-13-2016, 01:20 PM)JS-Steelerfan Wrote: They aren't any worse than most teams.  ANY NFL fan that thinks his team is comprised of Boy Scouts is delusional.  

I'm not saying you do, but I do think it's a natural thing for fans to demonize their most hated rivals more than they do their own team (or any other, for that matter).  

I don't deny that the Steelers have done some questionable things, but I also think that Bengals fans are a bit blind to the way their hatred blows things out of proportion (something I admit that Steeler fans do too with their own rivals).  

Something that I think a lot of people miss, as well, is that while no team is full of Boy Scouts, teams like the Steelers, who have a fairly consistent record of success in the Super Bowl era, will get even more attention thrown there way by fans of opposing teams because of that success. The rational thought process is "yeah, they get away with some things and they have some guys that do some shady things, but they are consistently good because of their ." But being a fan isn't rational. It comes from the word fanatic, which means someone with excessive and/or single minded zeal. Not a very rational thing, and so we chuck that out the window and go for the emotional reasoning.