How appropriate is it that Super Bowl 43 is won by the team from the city where PA Turnpike 43 will end...someday...hopefully. Many will debate whether this was the best Super Bowl of all time, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. I would say it was, but then again I am partial because my team won. Although, I would have much rather seen that 20-7 score last until the game clock read all zeros instead of the roller coaster ending.
Congratulations goes to the team, staff, and especially Dan Rooney and Art Rooney II, both of whom I have had the chance to meet. Art II was the commencement speaker at my college graduation which is also the summer home of the now six-time Super Bowl Champion Steelers. They were only four-time champions when I attended and lived in the dorm named after the family.
The win gave the team that was the "first to win three" and "first to win four" the title of "first to win six." Not only that, but Mike Tomlin becomes the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl and did it sooner than his predecessors Bill Cowher and the great Chuck Noll who delivered two-thirds of the total.
Unfortunately, we were denied a chance for a "Turnpike Bowl" when the Cardinals defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship. I congratulate them for a great game and also Head Coach Ken Whisenhunt and Assistant Head Coach Russ Grimm (both former Steelers coaches) for what they have done with that organization. I would have rooted for Arizona if they were playing anyone but Pittsburgh.
Only four months removed from that celebration, the Penguins stepped up to the challenge. The 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs saw them take on their rivals from the other end of the Turnpike, the Flyers, then the Washington Capitals, and the Carolina Hurricanes to win the Eastern Conference for the second year in a row. However, it was déjà vu all over again when they went on to face the Detroit Red Wings who knocked them out on home ice to win the Cup in 2008.
No one figured this team to make it into the playoffs, let alone to the Cup Finals, as they manged to fall five points out of the playoff hunt until a little-known coach by the name of Dan Bylsma was hired to right the ship. Some way, some how, he managed to unite the "young bucks" and the "old hands" for a common goal (no pun intended). While this year's series began the same way, with the Wings up 2-0, the end was much different. The Pens became the first visiting team to win a decisive Game 7 in one of the four North American major professional sports leagues since the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. It provided a little payback as the Pens hoisted the Stanley Cup at the Joe Louis Arena.
Pittsburgh became the first city to win a Super Bowl and Stanley Cup in the same calendar year, Dan Bylsma became the second rookie head coach to win a Cup, and the team was the first since the 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning to come from down two games to win the series. While this was playing out in Detroit, the Hershey Bears of the AHL were winning the Calder Cup in Winnipeg. To steal a line from "Badger" Bob Johnson, who led the Pens to their first Cup win, "It's [was] a great day for hockey [in the Commonwealth]!"
So in three-quarters of a year, Pennsylvania can lay claim to the 2008 World Series Champions, the 2008 Super Bowl Champions, and now the 2008-2009 Stanley Cup Champions. Going back a year, the 2008 Arena Bowl Champions in the Philadelphia Soul. So who is next in the Commonwealth?
