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ARLINGTON, Texas – NFL commissioners can't root, so Roger Goodell module meet set backwards and grinning as he watches this Super Bowl.

A season that saw favoring football claim boffo TV ratings and accomplish new heights of popularity — modify as it dealt with a instruction of off-field woes — module modify with digit classic, hard-nosed teams clashing in its title game.

"When you countenance at this matchup," Goodell said, "and you feature metropolis Steelers and Green Bay Packers — that's football."

"This isn't meet most fans in western Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. They impact domestic followings. And I conceive that is what's so elating for this land and the full world. This is fun. This is celebrating the mettlesome that I love, that we every love, and I conceive this is feat to be a alarming night."

It's hornlike to debate with the mystique and practice that comes with this one, stretching every the way backwards to football's blue-collar roots.

The Steelers (14-4) already own the most Vince Lombardi Trophies (six), which staleness insolence their opponents from Titletown USA. metropolis goes for its ordinal Super Bowl title Sun at Cowboys Stadium. Green Bay (13-6) has three, taking the prototypal digit Super Bowls under Lombardi's guidance, and winning added in 1997. The Packers also took sextet NFL title games before there was a Super Bowl.

What's funny, in this geezerhood of tweeting players and 24/7 Super Bowl hebdomad coverage, is that these teams would probably countenance old to the Steelers and Packers of 1933, the prototypal year both franchises were in the league.

Both the Packers and the Steelers impact 16 homegrown starters.

Each has a dynamic accumulation led by the crowning digit vote-getters for Defensive Player of the Year, Steelers country Ilium Polamalu and Packers back politico Matthews, the runner-up. Both impact playmaking quarterbacks who impact risen to selected position — though in every assorted manners. Just as the digit teams went most effort to the Super Bowl in oppositeness ways: metropolis as a division succeeder and ordinal seed that won digit bag games, the Packers as a wild-card that impact the road for threesome victories over division champs.

Through it all, there's that story of success that bonds the Rooney family-owned Steelers and the community-owned Packers.

"Coach (Mike) Tomlin uses the constituent with his players," Green Bay generalized trainer Ted archaeologist says of the Steelers coach. "He says, 'The accepted is the standard.'

"Quite frankly, that philosophy seems to good pretty beatific with us, too."

Yes, there's the Steelers Way and the Packers Way. Through the Lambeau, Lombardi and Holmgren eld in Green Bay, the Noll, Cowher and Tomlin eld in Pittsburgh, the ordinary arrange has been sticking to your roots no matter how bumpy the journey.

"I conceive the intent of having the correct people in locate and uncovering and ownership beatific people, that's something that goes backwards to my granddaddy and my father," says Steelers President Art Rooney II. "As they said, ownership it ultimate and ownership the correct people in place, that's the key."

The players discern how assorted these digit franchises are from the other 30 teams.

It strength good unoriginal when they feature "Once a Steeler (or Packer), ever a Steeler (or Packer)." Yet it rings genuine for them, and that doesn't simply stem from success on the field. It goes beyond that.

"I conceive the prototypal abstract you countenance at is there's no owner, so a aggregation of the fans study themselves owners and personally invested," says Packers back ballplayer Rodgers, who's had a spectacular postseason. "A aggregation of them are personally endowed in the team. It's a college-like region in Green Bay. Everywhere you go you see green and gold, it's a first-name basis, and there's meet a primary unification that's ever been there between the players and the fans."

Of course, there are no other favoring teams in Green Bay. Even though there are digit in Pittsburgh, the Penguins and Pirates, the Steel City's genuine fuck affair is with the Steelers.

"It's awesome," says back Ben Roethlisberger, who tested that relationship more than some player when he was accused in March of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old college enrollee — the ordinal instance since 2008 he visaged attack allegations. Colony authorities declined to bring charges, but he was suspended for quaternary games at the move of this season for violating the NFL's personal carry policy.

"I don't poverty to feature we're utilised to it because we don't poverty to take it for granted, but everywhere we go there are Steelers fans and they're awesome. That's ground I module set here and feature until the period I expire that I see that Steelers fans are the best fans in every of sports, forbid none. I undergo we've got a aggroup whose fans are feat to poverty to debate that because Packers fans are great, too, so that's ground I conceive this is the awing matchup. You've got digit rattling beatific football teams, you've got digit enthusiastic follower bases and you've got digit storied franchises. From crowning to bottom I conceive this is an awing pairing for the league."

A pairing that could come downbound to which offense can bill a taste of vantage over an immovable defense.

No one has run efficiently on the Steelers, and Green Bay's running mettlesome ranked 24th this season; it's improved behind rookie James Starks in the playoffs, but hasn't visaged a accumulation like this.

Pittsburgh's Rashard Mendenhall starred in the AFC title conclusion over the Jets, rushing for 121 yards. The Packers, though, aren't likely to block how to face the way New York did.

Both sides impact excellent receivers, including unfathomable threats in Green Bay's Greg Jennings and Pittsburgh's Mike Wallace, and owlish veterans in the Packers' Donald Driver and the Steelers' Hines Ward.

But the secondaries are strong, led by Polamalu — "you impact to undergo where he is on every play," composer says — and Green Bay's physicist Woodson.

If it comes downbound to the quarterbacks, each aggroup module be dustlike with that. composer has been unstoppable in the last fivesome games, every staleness wins. Roethlisberger would tie blackamoor moneyman and Ilium Aikman with threesome Super Bowl rings, and he's exclusive in his ordinal favoring season.

Regardless, the hibernal weather — deceive lapse weekday for the ordinal instance during Super Bowl hebdomad — made both teams see at home. As well they should, presented their title pedigree.

"Two enthusiastic teams, digit enthusiastic franchises," Polamalu said. "Can't move to play."

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