Written by Jonathan Knight

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So yes, the Pittsburgh Steelers have once again defeated our mongoloid Browns on the weedy, moth-eaten quagmire of Heinz Field.

If you’re noble enough to have the energy to care about these things anymore, that’s 15 Browns’ losses to the Steelers in their last 16 meetings, 21 in their last 23 and a hearty 4-28 record against Pittsburgh over the past 17 years.

The Browns haven’t beat the Steelers in consecutive seasons for more than a decade and haven’t swept a season series from the Steelers since the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped.

In case you’ve ever wondered if there’s such a thing as justifiable alcoholism, there you go.

Now that the dust has settled from Thursday night’s frustrating loss and the rectal bleeding has nearly stopped, you’re likely asking yourself why we even bother. Rooting for the Browns when they play the Steelers is like hoping the Washington Generals will beat the Harlem Globetrotters. And then stupidly getting upset when they don’t.

Let’s be honest: the Steelers own the Browns the way Facebook owns our right to privacy. Thus, what was once a fierce and bitter rivalry has now become something slightly less suspenseful than a UFC cage match between Chuck Norris and Teddy Ruxpin.

But take solace. The Browns may be the taint of our existence and the scourge of professional football devoid of talent, intelligence, guile, cunning, endurance, moral fiber, or any discernible value whatsoever, but our hallowed town is still superior to the Steel City for reasons too numerous to count.

Let’s whittle it down to 30 to help us through our most recent humiliation:

 

1. Cleveland’s athletes may suck spectacularly, but they don’t treat an unwilling woman’s vagina like a leaf-clogged gutter in a Category 3 hurricane.

2. While unfortunate, the “Mistake by the Lake” nickname is quaint and utterly harmless compared to Pittsburgh’s more telling moniker: “Hell With the Lid Off.”

3. The two greatest coaches in Steeler history both played for the Browns. The heart of the team during the Steel Curtain era went to Kent State. The best player of their current era is from Findlay. Clearly, when Pittsburgh needs talent, it comes to Ohio.

4. The Pirates.

5. 51-0. We will never forget.

6. Pittsburgh is held completely accountable for the release of both Terry Bradshaw onto the American public.

7. Naming a stadium after a condiment. Now it’s just a matter of time until we get Miracle Whip Park.

8. Either have a logo on your helmet or don’t. Slapping a sticker on the right side but not the left makes us feel like we’re watching a toddler running around with one sock on.

9. For all the talk about Pittsburgh being an old-fashioned, traditional town, the Steelers and Pirates spent their glory years playing on plastic grass in a stadium that came out of a box.

10. Pittsburgh once had an American Basketball Association franchise called the “Pipers.” Thus, literally translated, this rust belt, hard-ass city rooted for a a team named after flute players.

11. For as many horrible quarterbacks as the Browns have had over the years, they never put anybody on the field named “Bubby.”

12. The Heinz Field playing surface constantly looks like a septic tank is leaking just beneath it.

13. Because of the Big Mac, introduced in Pittsburgh in 1967, America is morbidly obese.

14. Adopting a corporate symbol as your team logo. Maybe next year the Browns should take a cue from the Steelers and put the FedEx logo on their helmets.

15. Pittsburgh’s bizarre obsession with black and yellow suggests a lack of imagination, smacks of fascist dress-code restrictions, and infers a citywide case of incurable colorblindness generally only seen as the result of a massive head injury.

16. Pittsburgh hosted the first-ever postseason night game in baseball history. So the next timeyou miss the exciting conclusion of a fantastic playoff game because you fell asleep just after midnight as the game went to the sixth inning, blame Pittsburgh.

17. Not surprisingly, Ted Stepien, the biggest train wreck in Cleveland sports history, came from Pittsburgh.

18. No one can either spell or pronounce “Monongahela.”

19. The letter “h” on the end of “Pittsburgh.” I mean, what the hell? Every other like-named American city dropped the meaningless “h” around 1832. This demonstrates Pittsburgh’s disdain for and/or ignorance of the English language and how it embraces superfluous silent consonants - a major problem in our society today.

20. Guess where Jerry Sandusky is from? You betcha. (And so is “Mr. McFeeley” from Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood. Coincidence? I think not.)

21. Pittsburgh is closer in population to Toledo than it is to Cleveland.

22. Former Indians’ letdown Ryan Garko is from Pittsburgh, likely sent into the Tribe’s clubhouse by his motherland as a saboteur to continually pop up to second and strike out with runners in scoring position.

23. Fun fact: biological warfare was invented in Pittsburgh in 1763 (ranking right up there with the creation of the Big Mac in terms of overall detriment to society). After Native American tribes surrounded and attacked Fort Pitt, at a negotiation summit tribal representatives were deliberately given blankets containing the smallpox virus. And it worked - many Indians around the fort caught smallpox and were subsequently defeated. You stay classy, Pittsburgh.

24. The original Night of the Living Dead movie was shot in and around Pittsburgh, which just seemed to George Romero like a natural environment for mindless, soulless, violent, zombie-like monsters. And when Christopher Nolan needed a backdrop for bleak, dank Gotham City to film the grim conclusion to his Batman trilogy last summer, he hopped on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and got off when he felt depressed.

25. Pittsburgh’s murder and violent-crime rate is twice the national average. Even they don’t like themselves.

26. Mark Cuban is a complete dick. Mark Cuban was born in Pittsburgh. Connect the dots between those two statements.

27. Three rivers? Really? Most big cities just need one.

28. The American Lung Association has concluded it’s healthier to eat a bowl of fiberglass than to take a deep breath within the Pittsburgh city limits.

29. Pittsburgh’s namesake, William Pitt, looks less like a great statesman and more like Melissa Etheridge.

30. Pittsburgh has been called the “Paris of Appalachia.” You can’t un-hear something like that. Sort of like being called the “Cadillac of Leprosy.”

 

All kidding aside, Cleveland and Pittsburgh have much in common, and beneath all the drunken back-and-forth bravado, I think there’s a natural two-way respect there.

Pittsburgh is an admirable city filled with good people. It’s brilliantly adapted its economy since the collapse of the American steel industry and its sports successes reflect the town’s overall work ethic, dedication, passion, and loyalty.

Painful as it may be for us to admit it, there’s a myriad of evidence out there that suggests all this is true.

And I agree. Pittsburgh truly is a fantastic city.

For me to poop on.

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