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Steelers-Packers: Now that’s a Super Bowl

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If everything works out for them in Super Bowl XLV, the Green Bay Packers will hit the wall.

Specifically, they want to adorn the wall of their meeting room at Lambeau Field, where grainy photos of every Packers championship team now hang; pictures that include players such as Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Herb Adderley and Brett Favre.

A space has already been cleared for this season’s team.

“I thought it would be a cool thing for us to see every day in the meeting room,” said quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who lobbied for the blank space. The idea was “to be able to think about the entire season, what we’re really playing for, by having that empty picture up on the wall.”

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The Pittsburgh Steelers don’t need four walls to remind them of their rich history.

Four fingers will do.

That’s how many are left bare when all the Steelers’ Super Bowl rings are counted. They have a record six, and their fans have nicknamed the latest quest, “Stairway to Seven.”

“Pittsburgh and Green Bay, that just sounds like a Super Bowl,” marveled John Madden, reverence in his voice. “That’s a damn football game.”

As the NFL braces for the possibility of a player lockout — the first potential interruption in play since 1987 — it’s simultaneously gearing up for a Super Bowl of epic proportions. A matchup worthy of the 60-yard-long, high-definition video board suspended over the Cowboys Stadium field, and hot enough to thaw the weeklong ice storm that practically paralyzed Dallas.

In many ways, the Steelers and Packers are remarkably similar. They both have elite quarterbacks and top-five defenses. They represent two of the NFL’s smaller cities — smallest, in the case of the Packers — yet have huge national followings, fans that will either be wearing cheese wedges on their heads or swinging Terrible Towels above them Sunday. The Packers and Steelers are, without question, two of the league’s bedrock franchises.

Asked if the Steelers — and not the Dallas Cowboys — have the nickname “America’s Team,” Pittsburgh defensive end Brett Keisel agreed.

“We have more Super Bowls than anyone, and if you’re going off championships, maybe we are America’s Team,” he said. “We consider ourselves America’s Team. We love Steeler Nation. That’s a big part of what and who we are.”

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The Steelers are the crown jewel of a city that has won 11 professional sports championships in 40 years.

“It’s amazing,” Steelers President Art Rooney II said with a smile and a shrug. “We’re lucky.”

Packers Coach Mike McCarthy — a Pittsburgher, by the way — feels lucky to simply be walking the hallowed halls in Green Bay that memorialize many of the game’s legends.

“When you walk in our building every day and you have pictures of Curly Lambeau, Vince Lombardi, Mike Holmgren — our history is among us all the time,” he said. “It creates a standard and expectation that fits right along with our visions.”

Now, it’s Rodgers’ turn. He picked up his first playoff victory this postseason and, over the past two years, has made the Packers look very smart for parting ways with Favre when they did.

It’s also Roethlisberger’s turn. He already has two Super Bowl rings and can join the likes of Tom Brady and Troy Aikman by winning a third. The Steelers’ quarterback already has as many titles as his boyhood idol, Denver’s John Elway — the reason Roethlisberger wears No. 7.

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Roethlisberger will be without Maurkice Pouncey, his outstanding rookie center who suffered a high ankle sprain early in the AFC championship game against the New York Jets. Doug Legursky, a second-year player, finished the game.

“The NFL is made up of lots of players like him — guys who somehow got an opportunity and seized it,” Pittsburgh Coach Mike Tomlin said. “We’re completely confident that he will seize this opportunity and play well. That’s why we’re not changing what we do.”

Moving the ball on the Packers, particularly through the air, is no simple task. Outside linebacker Clay Matthews is as good or better than any pass rusher in the league, and Green Bay has outstanding playmakers at cornerback in Tramon Williams and Charles Woodson, the one-time NFL defensive player of the year.

Winning that award this year was the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu, the incredibly disruptive and unpredictable safety whose range is unrivaled.

Super Bowl experience is on Pittsburgh’s side. Ten of the Steelers were on both the 2005 and 2008 teams that won rings, and 25 Steelers — 14 of them starters — have won it all at least once.

Only three members of the Packers have been on Super Bowl rosters, and only one of those players, running back John Kuhn, actually has a ring — earned as a member of Pittsburgh’s practice squad.

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“Maybe later in life when we’re all old, maybe we’ll sit around and reflect a little bit,” Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin said. “Like we get an opportunity to watch guys like Franco [Harris], Mel Blount and some of those other guys. We want to enjoy similar stories.”

Stories that will be written Sunday.

sam.farmer@latimes.com

twitter.com/latimesfarmer

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