LUV YA BLACK-N-GOLD

     Happy Valentine's Day from Mrs. Black-N-Gold! Our Pens are off today. Our Pirates are gearing up for spring training. Our Steelers are off plotting their offseason moves. Nothing left to do but celebrate Valentine's Day Black-N-Gold-style. And celebrate we should. It's a great time to be a fan of the Black-N-Gold. Our Pens have rebounded under new Coach Mike Sullivan and are pointing in the direction of the playoffs thanks to the phenomenal play of the "core 4", Sidney Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury, Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin. Our Pirates have taken us to the postseason for 3 straight years thanks to superstar Andrew McCutchen and superstars-to-be Gerrit Cole, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco. Our Steelers continue to post record-breaking numbers with once-in-a generation players Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown. Once the team returns to full strength and finally find themselves a shutdown corner, there will be no stopping them.

PENGUINS

Think about it. Don't you just love that our Pens have had "The Best Player in Hockey" not once but twice? The Pens weren't always the apple of the NHL's eye. For years they wallowed in mediocrity, at best. Countless players tried to pull them out of the hockey doldrums and out of the NHL basement, from Ken Schinkel and Syl Apps to Ron Stackhouse and Rick Kehoe to Peter Lee and Randy Carlyle. This team came back from the brink of bankruptcy. Twice. But a couple of players named Lemieux and Crosby, perhaps you've heard of them, helped ignite a love affair between the city and it's hockey team. Along the way, they've given us 3 Stanley Cups. Sure there was a rough patch in the relationship when Head Coach Mike Johnston was behind the bench. But Sid has jump- started our hearts once again with the help of Flower, Tanger, Geno et al and new man-in-charge, Sully. Now things are going smoothly with our favorite hockey team as they continue to woo us all the way to another Stanley Cup. Let's Go Pens!!!

PIRATES

Our Pirates have a long and rich history of making Pittsburgh proud. Players such as Honus Wagner, Pie Traynor, Ralph Kiner, Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell have all proudly represented our fair city on the baseball diamond. It was hard to love them during the lean years of the cocaine trials, the post-strike years and of course the 20 tumultuous seasons without a winning record. For the longest time this seemed like an unrequited love. But in the past 3 years something amazing has happened. The Pirates have loved us back. Manager Clint Hurdle, Cutch and company have rewarded our loyalty with 3 straight trips to the postseason. Now, like most patient partners, we'd like to take that next big step straight to the World Series. Let's Go Bucs!!!!!


STEELERS

For decades our Steelers were the ugly stepsister of the NFL, never coming close to the playoffs, nevermind a championship. Then our dreams came true in the 1970's when Coach Chuck Noll found us the team of our dreams, Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Mel Blount, Franco Harris and countless others. Everyone was crazy about the Super Steelers. Then the relationship grew stagnant for a while. But thanks to Bill Cowher and now Mike Tomlin, we've fallen in love all over again. What's not to love about our offense? All we need is for the defense to catch up and then we'll have the perfect pairing. Just what they'll need to get to the Super Bowl. Let's Go Steelers!!!!!!

Through it all, the ups and downs, we continue to love our favorite Black-N-Gold teams. We know that someday soon they'll reward us with rings, Stanley Cup, World Series and Super Bowl rings that its.