If you want to know more about two of the NFL’s smallest-market yet most successful franchises, talk to the fans.
Let 80-year-old Jim Becker of Racine, Wisconsin, who saw his first Green Bay game “a couple of weeks before Pearl Harbor,” tell you how he used to sell blood for $10-$15 a pint to pay for his season tickets.
Or Denny DeLuca, 57, a chef from Carnegie, Pennsylvania, can tell you how a steel beam from Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium — that, for 30 years, DeLuca adorned with a magic-marker timeline of NFL milestones — came to be part of his basement.
Though teams such as the Cleveland Browns and the Detroit Lions could make their cases had they ever made the Big Game, Super Bowls don’t get much more blue-collar than this.