Pittsburgh Steelers fans waving Terrible Towels are turning out in greater numbers at Steelers road games. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)

PITTSBURGH -- Casey Hampton can hear the chant. It never fails.


If the Pittsburgh Steelers are leading late in the fourth quarter, the sound of "Here we go Steelers, here we go!" while thousands of Terrible Towels twirl will reverberate inside the veteran nose tackle's helmet.

"Our fans are going to stay until the end," said Hampton, who has watched the phenomenon since his rookie year in 2001. "They're going to ride with us. A lot of times, especially when you're winning at the end, when the home fans clear out, they'll still be doing their thing."

It happened Sunday, Nov. 4, in New York during Pittsburgh's 24-20 victory over the defending Super Bowl champion Giants. At a stadium typically swathed in blue, the roar for the Steelers grew so loud that at one point quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had to put his hands up to ask for quiet.

Coach Mike Tomlin wasn't joking when he said recently the self-appointed "Steeler Nation" is everywhere.


What is clear is the backing the Steelers and other NFL marquee teams receive when they don their visiting uniforms is growing.


The explosion in the secondary ticket market combined with the league's ever-expanding popularity and just plain old family ties means for teams such as the Steelers, Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys, home-field advantage isn't limited to game days in which the players wake up in their own beds.

The ubiquitous Terrible Towels mean the support that greets the Steelers on the road is a little more visible than most, but Pittsburgh isn't the hardest road ticket in the league, according to brokerage site StubHub.

Even with the Cowboys stumbling to a 3-5 start, watching them on the road will cost about $196 a ticket if you go through StubHub, according to spokesperson Joellen Ferrer. The Steelers are the second-most expensive at $190.


All five have a proud history littered with championships -- 20 Super Bowls and counting -- and dozens of hall of fame players, teams whose fandom is handed down from generation to generation or, in the case of Brad Stoller, from wife to husband.

Stoller 48, grew up in Indiana rooting for the Cowboys long before the Colts fled Baltimore for the Midwest. Dallas was at its "America's Team" zenith at the time, the franchise's mix of onfield success and steady stream of national television appearances making the Cowboys pretty easy to keep up with in a time when fans outside NFL markets were at the mercy of the local TV station to see what game would get beamed into their living rooms on a given week.

The combination of Jerry Jones' arrogance and his wife Amy's lifelong devotion to the Steelers led Stoller to switch allegiances. Now he runs a Steelers Fan Facebook page that features more than 98,000 likes from all over the globe.

When Pittsburgh beat the Bengals last month, Stoller estimates 40 percent of Paul Brown Stadium came dressed in some variation of black and gold. The lack of steady home presence for one of the league's underachieving franchises -- Cincinnati hasn't won a playoff game in 22 years-- allows Steeler fans to overwhelm the market.

Every game in Cincinnati follows a similar pattern. The Bengal fans arrive chanting "Who Dey." Then Cincinnati starts to falter.

"In the fourth quarter it gets real quiet before the Steelers start driving," Stoller said. "Then we start chanting 'We Dey.'"

The experience is worth the hit to the wallet, though Stoller allows there is one thing about going through StubHub that bothers him.


It's hardly a phenomenon unique to Cincinnati. Jacksonville, Kansas City and the New York Jets -- who have two combined Super Bowl titles among them -- struggle to keep home fans interested when things go south.



"It was amazing to go into the stadium and the majority of the Packers (fans) were there and to hear them yell, 'Go Pack Go!' louder than the home team fans was kind of fun," Williams said.

Now he sees the green-and-gold army invade Ford Field every winter and braces for a hostile environment in what's supposed to be friendly territory. Yet he's come to expect it. So has Hampton, who knows a sea of waving yellow hand towels await the Steelers when they travel to Cleveland in a few weeks.

"You know they're gonna be there," Hampton said. "I can't explain it. It's just always been that way. And you know, we'll take it."