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by Jonathan Clark This story was originally published in the Mexico edition of The Miami Herald on February 3, 2006. No one can accuse Mexico City resident Leon Giron, 26, of jumping on the Pittsburgh Steelers bandwagon. After all, he's been a Steelers fan for as long as he can remember. And he inherited his Pittsburgh affinity from his parents, who have followed the team for, well, as long as they can remember. "I grew up watching the games with my parents," he said. "Now, I watch all the Steelers games I can. I have (running back) Jerome Bettis and (wide receiver) Hines Ward game jerseys, I own a Steelers flag, and I buy DVDs and books about the team. I am a very loyal follower." And now that his favorite American football team has advanced to the Super Bowl for the first time since losing to Dallas 27-17 in 1996, Leon says it's "like a dream come true" for him and his family. "This run that the team is on right how, it can only conclude with a championship," he said. American football and the U.S.-based National Football League enjoy a dedicated and growing fan base in Mexico. Surveys conducted by the NFL say 20 million Mexicans, or almost 20 percent of the country's population, are fans of the league. NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said last year that Mexico now has the most professional football fans outside of the United States, and a game held in Mexico City last October between the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers - the first-ever NFL regular season game played on foreign soil - drew a league-record 103,467 fans to the capital's Aztec Stadium. NFL-related paraphernalia is popular among Mexicans as well. Team jackets, jerseys, t-shirts and caps are a common sight on city streets, and Mexico recently became the third country, along with the United States and Canada, where official NFL team-branded credit cards are available. Many of the most popular NFL teams in Mexico - the Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders and Chicago Bears - come from U.S. cities with large Mexican populations. But the team that seems to have the largest number of gear-wearing fans these days - the Pittsburgh Steelers - is one that wouldn't appear to be such an obvious match with Mexico. A LOYAL FOLLOWING At the Deporte Mania sporting goods store in downtown Mexico City, owner Andres Acosta said that Steelers jerseys have been outselling other NFL teams five-to-one in recent weeks. And he said that even during normal sales periods, the Steelers are one of his top three NFL sellers. "The Cowboys, Steelers and Raiders always sell the most jerseys," he said. "Those are definitely the teams with the most loyal fans." Geraldine Gonzalez, public relations manager for the NFL's operations in Mexico, agreed that the Steelers' following here is not simply a passing fancy for a team on a winning streak. "In the marketing studies that we have done, those teams that have traditionally alternated between number one and number two in popularity in Mexico are the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers," she said. So why is it that a team from a northern and not-especially-Hispanic city like Pittsburgh has such a loyal fan base in Mexico? According to Ivan Pirron, a columnist who covers the NFL for the national sports daily Record, it has a lot to do with a decades-old rivalry. "In the late '60s and early '70s, there was only one channel that broadcast football on TV, and they exclusively showed the Dallas Cowboys games," he said. "So of course, the Cowboys became the most popular team here. "Then, in the '70s, a rivalry between the Cowboys and the Steelers developed, especially after the teams met in the Super Bowl, and so people who didn't like the Cowboys started rooting for Pittsburgh." Soon, sports fans were aligning themselves exclusively with one team or the other. Those who liked Dallas hated Pittsburgh, and vice versa. Other television stations capitalized on the rivalry and began broadcasting Steelers games, and the team quickly developed a Mexican following to rival that of the Cowboys. Of course, it didn't hurt that the Steelers of the 1970s won six consecutive conference titles and four Super Bowl trophies. "We're talking about the Pittsburgh of the Iron Curtain defense, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris and Lynn Swann," Gonzalez said. "So we had two teams (Dallas and Pittsburgh) who were most visible on television at just the same time that they were experiencing their greatest success." GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS Karina Morales, 36, a teacher from Mexico City, is a football fan who grew up during the years of the burgeoning Cowboys-Steelers rivalry. "My brother liked Dallas, and I liked Pittsburgh," she said. "We always had competitions like that between us; I would listen to one radio station, so he'd listen to another." Morales' affection for the Steelers, however, was not simply a case of wanting to be contrary to her brother. She also liked the image projected by the Pittsburgh squad. "There was this idea that the good guys were Dallas, and the bad guys were Pittsburgh," she said. "I liked (Pittsburgh) because they wore black and they were from an industrial city." In fact, she grew to be such a Steelers fan that she cried the day legendary running back Franco Harris retired. Morales stopped following American football in the 1980s, but the recent success of her favorite childhood team has piqued her interest once again, and she said she will "definitely" be watching Feb. 5 when the Steelers take on the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL. Gonzalez is counting on sentimental Steelers fans like Karina and die-hards like Leon Giron to make Super Bowl XL's television audience the biggest in the event's history in Mexico. With both of the nation's major television networks, Televisa and TV Azteca, carrying the game live on "free" TV, and with an ESPN broadcast also available to cable subscribers, Gonzalez says she is "virtually certain" that this year's contest will surpass the 12 to 14 million viewers who tuned in to last year's game. Perron is also expecting Super Bowl XL to be a major event in Mexico. "We haven't had a 'Mexican team,' as you might say, in the Super Bowl since Dallas and Pittsburgh played each other 10 years ago," he said. "So, with the Steelers involved this year, it will be very good for the media, for the fans, and with all those people watching - really good for the advertisers."
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