Cowboys Nation?

Joel Ryan reports for E! Online that SB XL had the biggest audience since SB XXX.

Sunday's Super Bowl XL, pitting the Seahawks against the victorious Pittsburgh Steelers and featuring a muted halftime performance by the Stones, averaged an estimated 90.7 million viewers, ABC said Monday. That's up about 5 percent last year's big game, which typically is never quite as big as when the Dallas Cowboys are playing, which they weren't.

Per Nielsen Media Research, Super Bowl XL's performance is the best since 1996 when, as is the rule, the Cowoys played.

What do those two Super Bowls have in common ... hmmm ... Ryan says XXX had the biggest because the Cowboys were in it. Why then was this a big audience? Seattle? Or maybe it was the Rolling Stones? Hard to say what XXX and XL had in common, or what there was about XL that might explain why the audience was so large. Luck? Oh I know--bad officiating!

Another thing I don't get is this. At every Steelers road game, there is a massive Steelers crowd. This is often interpreted as the Steelers' "travelling fans." Who travelled, for example, to Denver to see the Steelers? On one week's notice? When airfares were about a grand a pop?

What folks don't seem to get is that Steelers fans can be found, in great numbers, everywhere. Those 15,000 Steelers fans who got into Mile High for the AFC Championship live, for the most part, in Colorado. And a good share of those non-ticket having Steelers fans partying outside and around the stadium last night? They live in Detroit.

I know that Western PA buys a lot of jerseys and shirts and so forth, but the Steelers did not lead all NFL teams in 2005 apparel sales for that reason alone. And did not do that on the strength of the January 2006 playoff games.

Are the Cowboys really America's Team? (Azibuck, you don't answer this one OK.)

...UPDATE: E! Online edited out that stuff about the Cowboys. I did not make that up, and I'm glad I bothered to blockquote the relevant part. Someone must have smacked Joal Ryan on the ear for that nonsense. I guess it is E! and what can we expect.