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Super Bowl XLV: Steelers Vs. Packers Spreads To Towel-Waving

From the mothership, the manufacturer of that Pittsburgh Steelers icon the Terrible Towel is ready to test the average sports fan's capacity for indignation, which is not, I think, a bet I'd take: They're going to produce "Titletown Towels," just in time for the Green Bay Packers to have their own nuisance in Dallas for Super Bowl XLV. The Wisconsinite manufacturers, described as would-be "war profiteers" in the Journal-Sentinel article, are well within their fandom rights to do something like this, but if the Terrible Towel is their big-ticket item—well, I think it could well be in jeopardy, if some talk radio yeller or another catches wind. 

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I have to admit, though, that their defense would be good in any rational context—the manufacture of the towels helps employ disabled people, and revenue benefits a nonprofit organization that does similar work. But sports fandom isn't a rational business—if people can get pissed off about something, they will. (Insert Jay Cutler reference here.) It might be too late in the Super Bowl XLV cycle for people to find some other annoying thing to wave in front of the people sitting behind them, but rest assured that they'll be working on it throughout 2011.