PITTSBURGH — Inside Acrisure Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz took the stage last Tuesday to an embrace from one of the team’s former safeties, Will Allen, as supporters waved signs reading “COACH” behind them.
Four days later, not far from the Steelers training camp facility in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, former Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, an ex-teammate of Allen, was deriding Walz as not “a real football coach” onstage at a rally for former President Donald Trump.
“He could never guard me,” Brown added.
As Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris hurry through the fourth quarter of the presidential campaign, the split-screen between Allen and Brown in western Pennsylvania put on display one of the more notable plays being run by both campaigns — their efforts to court and promote former players for the area’s beloved Steelers on the trail.
The endorsements have helped boost overarching themes the campaigns would like to project.
For Harris, who has the backing of a handful of former Steelers — including multiple members of the famed “Steel Curtain” defense the team employed during its run of four Super Bowl championships in the 1970s — the endorsements have been rolled out as part of efforts to appeal to men and bolster the party’s football-related messaging, which has been leaned on more this cycle with Walz, a former high school football coach, on the presidential ticket.
For Trump, the endorsements of renegade Steelers like Brown and former running back Le’Veon Bell, two more recent members of the franchise, offer further evidence of the former president’s improved position with Black men and with celebrities who feel emboldened to express their support for him publicly.
On top of that, both campaigns are hoping to benefit from their association with what is the strongest brand in western Pennsylvania.
“The Steelers are largely a cultural identity for the whole region,” said state Rep. Nick Pisciottano, a Democrat from Allegheny County. “It’s very much tied to the identity of folks who live or hail from western Pennsylvania.”
The political battle over the Steelers further intensified on Sunday, when Trump attended the team’s prime-time game against the New York Jets. In conjunction, the Democratic National Committee put up billboards near the stadium hitting Trump’s economic record in the state.
Meanwhile, Harris rolled out her list of endorsements from former Steelers, which included defensive lineman “Mean” Joe Greene, running back Jerome Bettis, and the family of late running back Franco Harris. Former cornerback Mel Blount and Allen have also come out publicly for Harris.
Trump was joined onstage in Latrobe not just by Brown and Bell but former wide receiver Mike Wallace, all memorable players to a younger generation of fans. Jack Lambert, a Hall-of-Fame linebacker from the 1970s iteration of the team, has also been posting on social media in support of Trump for months.
The message from both sides’ Steelers supporters couldn’t be more different. At his rally with Walz, Allen derided Project 2025 — the conservative policy blueprint that many former Trump administration officials contributed to but that the former president has disavowed — and what he described as Trump’s plans “to cut taxes for all their friends.”
“They care about working people, they care about our seniors, they care about our children,” Allen said of Harris and Walz. “They’re fighting for us all. They’re going to move our country forward.”
In Latrobe, Brown lambasted Walz as “Tampon Tim” while Bell donned a T-shirt that read “Trump or the Tramp?”
“I know the media is going to call me crazy,” Brown, who was also promoting a cryptocurrency called “MAGA Memecoin,” said. “Me and Trump crazy for having me speaking here. But I want to make this clear. We are not. They are.”
Brown has a checkered legal history and has built an online persona in recent years around his “CTESPN” brand, a play on claims that his often erratic behavior is the result of suffering from the degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which can develop after repeated concussions or brain injuries, though can only be diagnosed after death.
Earlier this month, Brown engaged directly with Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Donald Trump Jr. on X, awarding the latter his “Cracker of the Day” moniker and joking about serving as Vance’s running mate in 2028. Brown told The Daily Mail on Sunday at a pro-Trump voter registration drive outside of Acrisure Stadium that he would take a job in a Trump administration.
