Thursday Steeler links

The team gets the Washington Post treatment from Camille Powell. Not much to see, but it's hard to tire of reading "the Dominant Team in the AFC." Too bad the Colts and even the Chargers have been pretty dominant, too.

Re: injury report. What did Hines Ward do to his hip?

Troy Polamalu got a hand from the team for making the Pro Bowl. Alan Robinson of the AP reports that

Polamalu called his selection a testament to perseverance and patience _ namely, that of his teammates for patiently waiting out his underachieving 2003 season.

But we know the real reason:

''If you look at all the great warriors, starting biblically with Samson, he had long hair. The American Indians, the Samurais, the Greeks, the Chinese -- everybody had long hair. I don't know of anything that says you have to have your hair short.''

Of course that's Troy from this wire story on the long-hairs in pro sports.

There's another Alan Robinson story making the rounds. This one is on Myron Cope, who deserves as much attention as anyone cares to give him. Now that he's 75, they should put him on the endangered species list. We'll never see another like him. I read his autobiography - Double Yoi! I think it is called - last winter. If you mainly know him from the radio, you might be surprised to see that Cope is a great writer.

ESPN's John Clayton also reported that former Steeler Jim Haslett won't get fired at the end of the year. I couldn't be much of a fan of the Saints; if I lived in New Orleans it would be hard to get past the food and the music. That's no kind of hobby, following the soap opera of the Saints.

For USA Today, Skip Wood wrote the article I would write about the Patriots. Losing to Miami like that is like taking one cannonball through both sides of the ship. Bail, boys, bail. The Jets have a great chance to further sink that ship this weekend. New England faces a new kind of challenge here.

Rod Woodson retired. Were there any discussions of moving him to safety before he left the Steelers? I always thought he got pushed away too quickly. And for what? Lee Flowers? On the other hand, I also thought that Woodson's second act in San Francisco/Baltimore/Oakland did much to motivate the Steelers to hang onto Jerome Bettis. We all thought he was done a few years ago. In football more than baseball, these hall-of-famers can really surprise late in their careers, given the chance and good fortune to get healthy.

Ben Roethlisberger's name comes up in this story about the role scholarship limits are having in the recent success of the MAC. Didn't Roethlisberger sign with Miami because they were the first team to make an offer? I remember there being some kind of loyalty lesson to his career at Miami. I mean, I'm pretty sure he would not have been a JV player at Ohio State before scholarship limits. He would have been a starter there.

Finally, here's another Steelers team: meet the Sheffield Steelers Ice Hockey Club.