What to do? The Steelers play three or four Thursday, Monday or Sunday-night games each year, and they show up as the alternate televised game here in Chicago every once in a while, but that only represents half of a 16-game season if I’m lucky. I might be luckier if I lived more proximate to Pittsburgh, but I don’t. The most well-known option for non-resident fans is NFL Sunday Ticket from DirecTV, which has brought many dollars to many bar owners, but some of us can’t get a DirecTV hookup due to building restrictions or whatever else. Enter Sunday Ticket on the Go.

STotG is the multi-platform version of Sunday Ticket: it’s built to run on smartphones, tablets and “big browser”, a.k.a. your basic Chrome / IE / Firefox / Safari. DirecTV says STotG is strictly for households that can’t get DirecTV due to line-of-sight issues or restrictions on satellite dishes. I don’t know how they enforce this policy — is some offshore firm logging my IP and running test signups in my area to see if I’m cheating? — but our building isn’t cool with satellite dishes (I think), so I was golden to sign up, once I got over the sticker shock of $350. (Damn. And a major point below.) So, the review:

Interface(s): Pretty good. DirecTV did a phat job of fitting the application to the platform. I like to use my work laptop to watch the games, as I can either hook its HD output up to the TV for mucho size or sit it on my lap for sehr schön interactivity. (See this bitchin’ four-game screenshot.) Last week while in Jacksonville, I checked out a few games on the STotG Android phone app and the interface worked well there, too, in a way that wasn’t just a cut-and-paste of the web interface. I like the constantly updating scores, and particularly the inclusion of the RedZone channel — if I’m feeling information overload, I’ll just click that mug and overload is underloaded, or whatever the hell that should say. (RedZone is not a part of my cable package and not yet offered online, plus RedZone obviously wouldn’t include entire Steeler games, so it’s not much of a stand-alone option for now.) I do wish STotG would have highlights show up in chronological order when I click “Play All” highlights, and Twitter junkies like me would also like to see publicly shareable links to individual highlights. So DirecTV: get on that.

Performance: Eh, OK. The video looks good on my phone, but only so-so on the PC’s greater resolution. I like to hook up to my TV via the PC’s HD output, which came through decently but not as well as the broadcast from a game on HD cable. I’m not as good on video-format technology, but it looks like STotG is a 720p HD stream, and that naturally isn’t going to look as good as the 1080p feed coming from the cable box. I also had some account-logout failure in the 3rd quarter of the Houston game that made me miss the Steelers’ only TD, which sucked because that game didn’t exactly have many other highlights for Pittsburgh. There are also some video-quality issues when you try to do the four-games-at-once quadrant view, but they clear up once all four games have been tuned in for a few minutes.

Value: Sucks. Let’s do some seasonal math up in this bitch:

• Bar: 16 games * $20 tab per week (beers and food) = $320
• STotG: (Fees: $350 / 16 games) + (beer: $8 beer-snob two-week supply * 16/2) + ($4 two-week taquito supply * 16/2) = (Per game: $21.88 + $4 + $2 = $27.88) * 16 games = $446.08

That’s a pretty significant difference when you account for food and beer. Excluding those, you’re paying $21.88 per game for STotG — comparable to a bar, but in what crazy world does someone skip food and drink when watching football? That would be like Eric Cantor conversing with someone who isn’t pre-screened to agree with him. I could try to put a dollar value on not having to leave home to watch the game, but then that’s a lot of work for a post I’m not getting paid to write. The point is, dropping some cost-benefit analysis on this STotG offer comes up with a questionable result, particularly in light of available substitutes …

What I’m going to do instead of STotG next year: RedZone plus NFL Rewind equals Tha Shiznit. If NFL RedZone gets this streaming thing going, I plan to combine that with NFL Rewind and get my pro-football fix for a mere $30 plus whatever NFL RedZone charges, which will surely be less than $350.

This plan has some holes: the extent of most of my live Steeler-watching will be RedZone cutaways, and I’ll have to wait up to a day to get a full game on Rewind. But the pro-Rewind Slate dialogue between Tommy Craggs (who was a sports editor at The Daily Northwestern at the same time I was a city-desk editor) and Ta-Nehisi Coates (who worked at TIME Magazine while I was at TIME.com) convinced me that NFL Rewind is a life-changing opportunity to both enjoy the NFL on a new level and shamelessly name-drop journalists I’ve encountered in my career. And you can watch condensed games in 30 minutes? Sheeit, my primetime TV lineup is set for weeks. All for just 20 percent of 2011′s outlandish football-watching cost.

In conclusion: STotG is probably not worth the money. I shelled out for it this year, but having done some more research, I think RedZone + Rewind is the way to go for the 2012 season. Just in time for the Steelers’ many old dudes to wither and fall off the roster.

Shoulda had it – tough end to a roller-coaster season, but there’s always next fall. In the meantime, back to full-time hockey fandom.

Steelers 17, Packers 10. OH YEAH.

Steelers 21, Jets 17.

(And Packers 24, Bears 23.)

San Diego -8 At St. Louis
At Houston -4.5 Kansas City
At New England -2.5 Baltimore (it’d be nice if both lost)
New Orleans -4 At Tampa Bay
At Philadelphia -3 Atlanta
At NY Giants -10 Detroit
At Chicago -6.5 Seattle
At Green Bay 0 Miami
At Pittsburgh -13.5 Cleveland
NY Jets -3 At Denver
At San Francisco -6.5 Oakland
At Minnesota -1.5 Dallas
Indianapolis -3 At Washington
Tennessee -3 At Jacksonville

Pick for the 11 Points weekly game: New England. I’m 4-1 in these games so far. Word.

And as for Roethlisberger’s return: Yes, a starry-eyed, moralistic naïf side of me would have been pleased if the Steelers had traded him, so send me a sandwich board. But anyone who buys into the NFL’s veneer of higher purpose and selfless glory, instead of recognizing that the product is built for entertainment and not for inspiration, is taking a stance that’s always going to be a sad letdown. (It’s just like politics, except sports produce much more moral outrage among the public despite having no meaning or impact on society at large.) Despite my feelings on Roethlisberger the individual, which are exclusively negative and sketched out, I will be cheering for the Steelers’ team this Sunday. No matter how much we wish the opposite were true, and even though the occasional counter-example like Charlie Batch or Troy Polamalu pops up, believing that pro sports will reflect higher principles is a POV that’s been proven wrong again and again and again.

(That said, you’re an idiot if you explicitly defend Roethlisberger, which is common among the dumbest, homer-est ranks of Steeler fans. Those who call in to sports radio at 11 p.m. on a weeknight are a good example: While recently in town for work, I heard one jag call in and say the alleged victim couldn’t be trusted because she’s “a blue-collar girl”. That put the tally of positive vs. negative uses of “blue-collar” by Pittsburghers at 10^5,000 to 1.)

So go Steelers, and may you live up to the hype.

I declared it over prematurely a few weeks ago, but in the end I was right anyway. This post-Super Bowl = no playoffs pattern is a pretty bizarre one, but this is officially the third time the Steelers have pulled it off. (See also 2006 and 1980.)

The team felt out of Pittsburgh-style balance a lot this year – poor running performance in many games, and even stranger, poor defense. (Aaron Smith’s and Troy Polamalu’s injuries clearly played into that, but can’t explain all of the defense’s frequent fourth-quarter collapses.)

I’ll wait to see how things look in the off-season, but they have a lot of aging players these days, and that makes me nervous for 2010. Regardless, Pittsburgh sports don’t get much better than 2009, and now’s the time of year to become a full-time hockey fan again.

While slight, there’s still a shot for the playoffs. It’s pretty pathetic that the Super Bowl champs are one of those “Denver has to lose, then New York has to lose, and maybe Houston or Baltimore … and THEN we might get in” teams, yet that’s where we are. A dude can hope.

I’m obviously pulling for the Steelers next weekend, but shoutout to Miami’s two (!) Woodland Hills H.S. grads in the lineup — Jason Taylor and Lou Polite.

Well, that was officially horrible.

When I was 10 or so, I used to mail off baseball/football/hockey cards and player photos now and then in hopes that one would come back with an autograph. I have to wonder if kids still do this, but I hope so, because it’s a lot more successful than standing outside the players’ entryway in a giant cluster and waiting for someone to walk by. I sent a team photo of the 1989 Steelers to Rod, and lucky me, a few weeks later it showed back up at my house signed “Rod Woodson #26″. It was tacked to my wall for many years, so in my mind, Rod Woodson has always been a chill dude. That was true even though the nachos at Woodson’s All-Star Grille were nothing to write home about — I’d say he was more cut out for interceptions than the restaurateur life.

Pittsburgh loves you, 2009!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!