These Towels Are Cleaning Up

You watched Sunday’s game and you might have said to yourself, “Somebody must be making a fortune from all that cloth.” It seemed as though everyone in Ford Field was pulling for the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl and all seemed to be waving Terrible Towels, black-and-gold emblems of unwavering support for the Steelers.

The Wisconsin company that makes the towels shipped 700,000 in the two weeks leading up to Sunday’s game, mostly into Pittsburgh and Detroit. It printed more than 1 million this season, five times more than were sold in the 2004 season, and took initial orders of 500,000 for a championship edition within hours of the Steelers’ wrapping up their 21-10 victory, owner Gregg McArthur said Monday.

Four plants will crank them out 24 hours a day this week, McArthur said, and the new version will include the final score of Sunday’s game.

But proceeds from sales of the 25-by-16-inch towels, which carry a suggested retail price of $7 or $8, won’t be used by the Steelers to pursue a free agent to replace the retiring Jerome Bettis or to give Coach Bill Cowher a raise.

According to Tim Carey, the club’s merchandise director, “a lion’s share” of the proceeds will go to Allegheny Valley School, a nonprofit that, through more than 120 programs and facilities across Pennsylvania, provides homes and vital services to more than 900 children and adults with mental retardation.

Ten years ago, ownership of the Terrible Towel trademark was given to the school from now-retired Steeler broadcaster Myron Cope, who owned it after suggesting the towels’ introduction 30 years ago. Last year, royalties from sales of towels and other “Terrible Stuff,” also including pillows, gloves and earrings, benefited the school to the tune of more than $300,000.

“It has been a tremendous gift, and with the Steelers winning the Super Bowl it’s going to have an even greater impact,” Dorothy Hunter Gordon, the school’s chief development officer, said Monday. She said the windfall would be used to purchase new equipment, renovate facilities and expand programming.

Cope’s brainchild was born in 1975, when the announcer urged fans to bring yellow towels to a playoff game to create “color and motion” in the stands. Over the air he would say, “The Terrible Towel is poised to strike.”

The Steelers won the game against the Baltimore Colts en route to the second of their five Super Bowl titles, and Terrible Towels have been a fan staple ever since.

Some fans have owned theirs for 20 years or more, believing that the towel’s powers only grow stronger over time, Carey said, while others purchase new ones every year, believing that their powers run out at season’s end.

Either way, “It’s the item to own,” the club executive said.

Cope’s son, Danny, was born brain-damaged and has lived at Allegheny Valley School, which is based outside Pittsburgh in Coraopolis, Pa., since 1982. Now in his 30s, he cannot speak or otherwise function normally.

“Allegheny Valley School is the very best organization of its kind I know of, and I speak from experience,” Cope is quoted as saying in a news release distributed by the school. “For my late wife, Mildred, and me, Alleghany Valley School was a godsend. Danny is happy and is cared for with expertise, understanding and love.”