by Aubrey Bruce
For New Pittsburgh Courier
“Come my children, cowards without fear. Admission is free, you pay at the door. You pick your own seat, but you sit on the floor. This is my story. One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys arose to fight. Back-to-back they faced one another. Drew their swords and shot one another. A deaf policeman heard the noise and came to kill the two dead boys.”
(Anonymous “folk” poem)
There are contradictions and contrasts that we are forced to deal with on a daily basis. Good against evil. Hot versus cold. Dr. Jekyll against Mr. Hyde. Light against dark. The above-mentioned poem is not just a contradiction but also is illusional as well as delusional.
An illusion is generally defined as: “a false idea or belief.”
A delusion is: “an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.”
I could go on and on, but at this point, I am reasonably certain that you get my drift. The Washington Football Team versus the Pittsburgh Football Club was a perfect example of unexpected and unexplained contradictions. Over the summer, the NFL’s Washington Redskins were prompted to rename its team because of political correctness issues and also ethnic sensitivity concerns centered around the dated term “Redskin” and its negative portrayal of the heritage and image of Native Americans. The new name of the team, as you know, is the Washington Football Team. Not a very creative or innovative name, but it will work in a pinch.
The new name almost promotes a semi-anonymous sentiment about the team, sort of like the semi-anonymous Pittsburgh Steelers that lost a late-afternoon, early-evening Monday game on Dec. 7 to the Washington Football Team, 23-17. For the Steelers, maybe being forced to play three games in 12 days coupled with having no valid “bye week” left them fighting unsuccessfully to mend, rejuvenate and restore tired minds, bodies and souls that for the moment may have had some cold water thrown on their competitive fires and in its wake, leaving smoldering ashes.
Take the offense of the Pittsburgh (not the Steelers) Football Club. For the past several games they have narrowly escaped defeat by the hairs of their chinny, chin, chin. The Club should have lost a few more games based on their bipolar offensive and defensive effort but the “God of Schizophrenic” performances was smiling kindly down upon the Black and Gold during their past winning streak.
“Big” Ben Roethlisberger
When the won-loss record of the Pittsburgh Steelers stood at 11-0, Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin said: “the only perfect thing about the team was their record.” I may be paraphrasing just a bit, but he also could have said that the team was 11-0 because the competition was “imperfect.” See, it wasn’t that the Steelers were so great. It was that the competition was less than.
Everyone crowed about the miraculous recovery of “Big” Ben Roethlisberger from an elbow injury as well as the subsequent surgery to repair his elbow in 2019. However, Alex Smith, the QB for the Washington Football Team, beat Roethlisberger and the Steelers in spite of him requiring “17 surgeries after breaking both his tibia and fibula” in a game two years ago.
During the 2020 season the Pittsburgh Steelers have been erratic on both sides of the ball and that is not illusional or delusional, that is factual. But boys and girls, please remember this. You and I plus the postman can sit at the bar for an entire evening partaking in various alcoholic beverages, but at the end of the night, someone has to square up the bar tab with the bartender.
The head games and fantasies are over. Time to pay the piper.
ALEX SMITH and the Washington Football Team pulled off the upset victory over the Steelers, Dec. 7, at Heinz Field. (Photos by Karl Roser/Pittsburgh Steelers)
About Post Author
