We’re not quite the City of Champions again, but we’re not the City of Chumps, either.
Not anymore, and thankfully not this coming week, as the eyes of the sports world descend upon Pittsburgh for the NFL Draft. It’s easier to be a good host when you’re not wearing a bag on your head for Pirates games.
We went to some pretty dark places over the past decade — some of the worst times we’ve seen as a sports town since the 1980s, when the Steelers dynasty faded, the Pirates fell apart, Pittsburgh became ground zero for Major League Baseball’s drug trials and the Penguins threw a season in order to draft Mario Lemieux.
The most popular question on sports talk radio over these past few years has been some form of, “Which Pittsburgh sports team is next to win a championship?”
Darned if I know, considering no Pittsburgh sports team has even won a playoff round since 2018, when the Penguins eliminated the Philadelphia Flyers in six games in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.
This is, in fact, the longest such drought we’ve had since before the Penguins were formed in 1967 (Sidney Crosby was minus-20 years old that year).
But things really are looking up, and shockingly so. We needed to redd up the place in a hurry, and we did: The Pirates went into the weekend fighting for first place in the NL Central, the Penguins are one of the NHL’s best surprise stories, and the widely respected Steelers usually make the playoffs, even if they haven’t come close to winning a playoff game in nearly a decade.
Hundreds of thousands of people — including Mel Kiper Jr. — are expected to visit the city over the three-day draft. Millions more across the planet will be watching on television. Visit Pittsburgh President and CEO Jerad Bachar told KDKA Radio his agency has counted 4 billion social media impressions regarding the draft (it must take a long time to count to 4 billion).
It’s the biggest sporting event the city has ever hosted. Thank goodness the company didn’t arrive this time last year because the place was an absolute mess.
If you could pick a day when things actually hit rock bottom, April 4, 2025, would work.
That was the day a man flew a plane over PNC Park lugging a banner that read, “Sell The Team Bob!” Fans were beyond irate with Pirates owner Bob Nutting (who was last seen signing autographs after this year’s home opener). They booed manager Derek Shelton during pregame introductions and chanted “Sell the team!” during a dreadful 9-4 loss to the New York Yankees.
Two days later, the Penguins were officially eliminated from the playoffs for the third straight year with a 3-1 loss to the pitiful Chicago Blackhawks.
“It was just one of those nights where we didn’t seem to have the energy,” then-coach Mike Sullivan said.
Didn’t have the energy? With a season on the line? That’s never a good sign.
Neither was this: The Steelers had just signed free-agent defensive backs Juan Thornhill and Darius Slay and were coming off one of the most humiliating losses in franchise history — a two-touchdown playoff defeat in Baltimore in which the arch-rival Ravens rushed for nearly 300 yards, and television analyst Kirk Herbstreit wondered aloud if the team was quitting on coach Mike Tomlin.
“I don’t see any fight, any pushback. Where the hell is the fight?” Herbstreit said. “This is the Pittsburgh Steelers. There’s nothing. They’re just going through the motions.”
That’s the way it felt with all three teams, to be honest, and even if the Steelers stayed on the treadmill for another year, going a ninth straight year without a playoff win, at least the energy feels different now. Tomlin did what team president Art Rooney II would not and fired himself hours after yet another humiliating playoff defeat — 30-6 to the Houston Texans, who would be blown out the next weekend in New England.
The Steelers have a new coach from right up the street (Greenfield) in Mike McCarthy. The Pirates have a new manager from right down the street in Don Kelly (born in Butler, raised in Mt. Lebanon) and two of the highest-profile young players in baseball in Paul Skenes and Konnor Griffin.
The Penguins, too, have been energized by a coaching change, with Dan Muse replacing Sullivan, and were readying for what should be a wildly entertaining playoff series against the hated Flyers as the weekend approached.
It’s not exactly Terry Bradshaw and Willie Stargell on the cover of Sports Illustrated after the Pirates and Steelers won championships in 1979, but it’ll do for now.