Cannon Firing Line
The Football Field
By Ellis G. Cannon
Publisher

Show up about six hours before a game, when the broadcast booth is dark and the engineers for the national radio broadcasts are setting up next door to where all the magic comes from on the Pittsburgh Steelers Football Network.

Show up before even those who have been planning a tailgate in the same spot of the parking lot for years are even on the Fort Duquesne Bridge.

Show up when the ushers aren't even there, before they start cooking or the teams have arrived.

Heck, just show up any time the Steelers aren't at Heinz Field, and you may get the drift, although perhaps nothing like it is on game day when you can feel the anticipation from all those above and they who will fill the building and making it what it is.

Which, is to say, a football field.

In this day of modern technology and cathedrals, Heinz Field stands out as just that - a football field. Not much more, not much less.

Feel free to contrast that with the palaces, understanding that while Dallas certainly stands alone, there are other buildings around league with what appear to be extras that aren't on Pittsburgh's North Shore.

Baltimore - to us the best of those buildings the Steelers travel to at least with any regularity - is one, so is Carolina and ditto that if you've even been in whatever Houston has in Reliance Stadium.

Heinz Field - particularly in the solitude that accompanies being there on game day hours before anyone else arrives - seems docile, even green enough. Of course, something happens there when it's inner Hulk is released every time the Steelers run onto the field. Then it becomes much more, something many other stadiums around league don't seem to capture.

There's almost a communal feeling that takes over the place at that point, something that takes a life of its own and if not breathing, then something that gives life to those playing or watching.

Maybe Heinz Field is breathing, maybe it is building memories and ghosts that allow it to feel slighted when a new, fancier facility enters the pantheon of NFL stadiums. Maybe it doesn't mind being built for a fraction of something like Dallas', which cost over a billion, an appropriate characterization when you consider Heinz Field was constructed for just over a quarter of that. Maybe this is its way of getting even.

It's the fans and players, of course, not just because that's what those fans and players do, but because that's all that's needed. Not many bells, not many whistles.

Just a lot of wins. The Steelers entered November with 36 wins in the preceding 45 games giving them a record of 5-2 headed into the second half of the schedule.

Maybe that's what you get when it's all about being a football field.

Ellis Cannon is the Publisher of the Pittsburgh Sports Report. His weeknight radio show, "Ellis Cannon's SportsLine Pittsburgh," airs on FM NewsTalk 105.7 FM from 6-8 p.m.