I wrote a Super Bowl post yesterday at my blog that included comments on the game itself.

I’ve been a Steelers fan since the mid-’70s, when, as a young boy growing up in Montreal, I fell in love with Bradshaw and Harris and Swann and Stallworth and the Steel Curtain. Even before I came to be a Canadiens fan in hockey, which is more or less mandatory in that city, they were my #1 team.

I finally made it to a game in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago. It was like a pilgrimage for me. It was an incredible experience, in a wonderful city for which I developed an immediate fondness, and I can’t wait to go back.

Today, once again, I am basking in the glow of the Steelers’ success at the end of a long and difficult season. Here are a few of my thoughts from right after the game:

Well… wow again. What a game. What a game. What a game. It really looked like the Cards had it, that on this day their offence, mainly Warner to Fitzgerald, was simply better than the Steelers’ defence. And perhaps it was. But then Big Ben and Santonio Holmes led the Steelers down the field on one of the most exciting game-winning drives I’ve ever seen, capped off by Holmes’s incredible TD catch. (Holmes for MVP? Yes. And so deserving.)

What a whirlwind of emotions, so many ups and downs throughout the game. But it was like the Steelers’ entire season — so many close games, so much tension, so much anxiety, so many last-minute, or last-second, game-winners.

And, honestly, I just can’t believe it. Still. I can’t. Not after Fitzgerald put the Cards up with just over two minutes to go. I thought that was it, and I was beginning the process of coming to terms with it, of coming to accept it, of moving on.

You know, it’s hard to be a sports fan, it’s hard to love a team. I know a lot of you know what I mean. You put a lot into it, as crazy as it may seem, and you connect emotionally with it in a deep and profound way, in a way that really matters to you, in a way that is meaningful to you on an intimately personal level. When your team loses, you take it hard, and it’s like a kick in the gut. But when it wins… when it wins… when it’s like today… when it’s the Super Bowl… and when, for me, it’s the Pittsburgh Steelers… it’s awesome.

Awesome.