So I had the pleasure of welcoming Steeler Nation to my current city of residence this past weekend (Dallas) and I have to say I was a bit shocked by how obnoxious some of our fans act on the road. I fully support the outward display of Steelers Pride and letting the presence of the Nation be felt throughout the city. I loved seeing all the Terrible Towels out and about on Friday and Saturday Night. However, it appears that some small but significant percentage of our fan base needs to learn that they are representing more than themselves when on the road. These people come to a city intent on "taking it over". To them this includes getting completely blitzed and becoming incredibly obnoxious to everyone around them. They think that just because they put down 1K or more to make the trip they are entitled to act any way they want. I had a very large "jaba-like" sweat pants wearing Pittsburgh guy piss his pants in our downtown Dallas fan club. This guy didn't even realize it and had to be told to clean up. I was pushing to have him kicked out but his buddies promised to take care of it. Also experienced a group of older women who were completely trashed and picking fights with people. Men should not hit women but these ladies were taking complete advantage of that. If they were men they would have been lit up by someone.
We need to do some policing within our own ranks to curb this problem. I was in NOLA 2 years ago for the Halloween game and this didn't seem to be as big of a problem then. The atmosphere in NOLA was great and while there was plenty of alcohol everyone was there to have a good time and were not so brazenly obnoxious. Maybe it's because it's Dallas and admittedly this place sucks for visitors, however when traveling for games we represent not only ourselves, but the Steeler Nation and the city of Pittsburgh too no matter what city it is. I found my self apologizing to people and embarrassed. I think this might be becoming a systemic problem that we need to address with some negative reinforcement when we see it going down.
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