How Pittsburgh — host of this year's NFL draft — became a sports mecca

The draft returns

The last and only other time Pittsburgh hosted the draft was in 1947. But the event was nothing like the public-facing extravaganza it is now. The owners and coaches of the 10 teams at the time gathered at the Fort Pitt Hotel downtown to make their picks. And that was that.

Back then, Pittsburgh had already started to establish itself as a sports town. In baseball, the Pirates had two World Series titles under their belt. The city is also where professional football got its start: The first documented instance of someone being paid to play a pro football game was in Pittsburgh in 1892. Some of the earliest pro hockey games happened in the 1890s in the city's Duquesne Gardens, a barn-turned-ice-rink, said Mark Fatla, a native and the author of Pittsburgh's Historic Ballparks.

But Pittsburgh was just getting started, and the city turned it up a notch in the 1970s. In addition to the Steel Curtain victories, the Pirates won two of their total five World Series in those years.

Pittsburgh Steelers defense (from left) Dwight White, Ernie Holmes, Jack Lambert and Jack Ham tackle Minnesota Vikings Dave Osborn during Super Bowl IX in New Orleans in 1975. The Steelers won 16-6. Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

That era, Fatla said, "captured the imagination of sports fans far beyond Pittsburgh."

From the steel mills to the football fields

But what cemented the city's champion legacy was that they kept winning. The Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team sealed back-to-back wins in the 1990s and again in the 2010s. In the 2000s, the Steelers won two more Super Bowls.

Fatla credits all that success to the city's blue-collar work ethic, forged in its steel mills since the 19th century. Pittsburgh later emerged as the world's top producer of steel.

The hard work it takes to manufacture steel shows up on the field, Fatla said.

"It's not always as flashy as some places and some teams," he said. "But it's very workman-like, very gritty, very much get the job done by whatever means you have to do it, within the rules."

The Steelers were founded on that industrious spirit. Team founder Art Rooney turned a horse race bet into big winnings — enough to keep the football team afloat financially. Franchise ownership has since been passed down the Rooney family line.

Jimmy Coen is the owner of the souvenir shop Yinzers in the Burgh, which sells Steelers and NFL draft merchandise. Jeff Swensen for NPR

Jeff Swensen for NPR

Jimmy Coen, owner of Yinzers in the Burgh, a souvenir shop that sells Pittsburgh sports merch, says the Rooney family has kept the team's standards high all these years.

"If you're gonna play for the Steelers, you're gonna be a winner," he said. "You're not gonna come into Pittsburgh and be lazy."

The steel industry started to collapse in the 1970s and 1980s due to foreign competition. With fewer jobs, thousands of Pittsburghers left. But Coen said sports brought those who stayed closer together.

"Things were rough in Pittsburgh," Coen said. "People were leaving. So that's all we had was the Steelers."

But Pittsburghers took their pride in their teams on the road.

"There is this whole Pittsburgh diaspora out there that still maintains this kind of emotional connection back to the city, and those people show up at games and other places wearing their Pittsburgh regalia," Fatla said.

A customer checks out a T-shirt at a Pittsburgh souvenir shop, Yinzers in the Burgh. Jeff Swensen for NPR

Jeff Swensen for NPR

Even people who have never lived in Pittsburgh flock to the black and gold, the colors of all three of the city's major professional teams.

Albert Martinez is traveling all the way from Houston to attend the draft. He inherited his love for the Steelers from his mother, who grew up in Monterrey, Mexico — a major steel manufacturing hub nicknamed the "Pittsburgh of Mexico." His mother felt a kinship with Pittsburgh, and would tune into Steelers games in the 1970s.

"I bleed black and yellow," Martinez said.

Acrisure Stadium is the site of the 2026 NFL draft. Jeff Swensen for NPR

Jeff Swensen for NPR

The future of Pittsburgh sports

Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O'Connor, a native, says the "City of Champions" reputation endures because different generations have seen different eras of winning teams.

For one generation, it was the 1970s Steelers teams. For Grigsby, it was the Steelers of the 2000s.

The most recent Pittsburgh championship was won by the Penguins in 2017. But, as Grigsby tells it, it won't be long before the city seizes another one.

"Confidence just comes from you already proving to yourself that you've already done something," he said. "We're just waiting for time to catch back up again. History repeats itself, that's how it goes."