I had a productive weekend lined up. Sure, said productivity would’ve forced me to miss the live broadcasts of Sunday’s American Football COnference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC) championship games, relegating me to a VCR zombie, but sometimes you just have to do what you must. As fate may have it, what I had to do was help my dad complete our move from a small town in northeastern N.C. back to the Triad. Inclement weather prevented us from doing so. Since we couldn’t be productive, we settled on the next best thing: watching the Pittsburgh Steelers host the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship, at a bar in Durham that plays host to the local Steelers fan club.

Growing up in N.C. in the eighties and early nineties, there wasn’t a “home team” in the NFL. As a football junkie in the making, I had to adopt surrogates. For some reason, and I don’t know why (or when, for that matter) the Steelers became one of those surrogates. To this day, even with the Panthers now in existence for a decade, I still hold a soft spot in my heart for that team from western Pennsylvania.

My dad and I slid into the bar about a half hour before kickoff. Early on, it was clear an invisible line rest across the center of the establishment. On the side where we sat, were the Steelers faithful, clad almost homogeneously in yellow and black. Opposite us were the New England fans.

The contrast between the two sets of fans was striking. I was one of the few among the Steelers crowd under the age of 40. Many were older. They grew up fans of one of the greatest dynasties in NFL history, a Pittsburgh team that won four Super Bowls in the seventies. I could tell that to a person, each of them had been there, deeply impassioned through both winning and losing seasons.

Conversely, none of the New England fans appeared close to 30. This did not retard their at least surface passion for the NFL’s current day dynasty. The Patriots fans were as loud as their older counterparts, if not more so. Whether or not they remain New England fans when they are no longer the most dominant team in pro football remains to be seen.

As alcohol was heavily consumed on both sides of the bar, the pre-game tension mounted. My dad advised me what to do, should a melee ensue amongst the fans. I asked him if he was serious, to which he grimly nodded. I followed up the question with an inquiry as to whether or not he’d previously experienced a bar fight. Another nod came as the response.

Enough intoxicated trash talking flowed in the bar to leave no doubt that if the game remained close enough throughout that punches between patrons loomed as a possibility. Unfortunately for my allegiance to the Steelers, but fortunately for my at least my short-term health, the game was never close.

New England scored the first ten points of the game, and never took their boots off the Steelers’ throats, leading 24-3 at half. Not that this deterred the yellow and black clad faithful. When Pittsburgh running back Jerome Bettis scored an early third quarter touchdown to cut the deficit to 24-10, hope sprung eternal.

Then Patriots running back Corey Dillon answered four minutes later, once again making it a twenty-one point game. For all intents and purposes, it was a dagger to Pittsburgh’s heart.

A Steelers fan in his late 50s stood near me. After Dillon’s touchdown, he muttered in shock “unbelievable, unbelievable,” then added a few expletives as adjectives to his disbelief. New England’s lead would never fall below 11 from that point on, as they went on to win, 41-27.

The fans of the vanquished left the bar, singing the mantra of “next year.” The Steelers do have a lot to potentially look forward to. Pittsburgh quarterback, and NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, Ben Roethlisberger, played respectably, throwing for 226 yards, with two touchdowns and as many interceptions.

This game marked his first loss in 15 games as a starting quarterback, an unprecedented run for a rookie. He at least has the solace of knowing it came at the hands of a defense that made the NFL’s premier passer, Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts, look even worse the week before. Likewise, Pittsburgh fans have the solace of knowing that Roethlisberger will likely continue his development, becoming one of the greatest quarterbacks in the game.

New England fans need no solace. Once again, the Patriots team turned in a complete game, utterly decimating their competition. They move on to Jacksonville, for a Feb. 6 showdown with the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX. While Philadelphia is making its first Super Bowl appearance since January of 1981 (a 27-10 loss at the hands of the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XV), this is the third trip to big game for the Patriots in the last four years.

They’ve gone home from those previous two with Super Bowl rings. Odds are they’ll collect a third piece of jewelry.