Pittsburgh: Rally Towel Fans with a Hockey Problem

Date: Friday, May 8, 2009

One part of NHL playoff season that can never be re-created, re-enacted, or duplicated, is the excitement of the rally towel waving, white t-shirt wearing Pittsburgh Penguins fans. Attending a playoff game in Pittsburgh will leave you seeing spots of white for days.  Each fan entering Mellon Arena receives a white t-shirt and a white rally towel. In Pittsburgh, waving a terrycloth towel at your favorite sports team in order to bring them good luck is most effective during playoff season.    

The white rally towels, not to be confused with the Terrible Towel used during Steeler’s playoff games, is a unifier for fans in every level of seats.  Whether to distract, hypnotize, or increase the decibel level of one’s voice, the towel proves to have many functions.        

I know what you’re thinking—you’ve seen Pittsburgh fans do this before.  Maybe you’ve picked up on a certain trend among the Steel City, Crosby-loving, black-and-gold wearing Pittsburgh fans: they love to wave towels at their favorite teams.  They believe it will bring good luck and believing in a team makes being a part of the towel-waving chaos worth it.     

The late Meyron Cope is given credit for bringing the towel-waving phenomenon to Pittsburgh sports fans.  It started during a Steelers 1975 playoff game against the Baltimore Colts in which Cope urged fans to take yellow dish towels to the game and wave them throughout.  Who would have guessed that the trend would still be alive today and reinvented to fit the arena?     

Symbolically, white has not necessarily been synonymous with fear, intimidation, or strength, but for Pittsburgh Penguins fans, white is the color that took the 2-0 series to 2-1 with an overtime goal by defenseman Kris Letang.  To Penguins fans, white is the color that unites them.  Such devotion to waving terrycloth for over seventy minutes straight could only be found in Pittsburgh: sports fans with a towel-waving problem. 

Don’t miss your chance to be a part of the “White Out” at Mellon Arena.  Expect nothing less than aching arms and hoarse voices as long as playoff season continues.