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.
The Trump campaign had built up its relationship with Brown in recent months. Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump campaign official who helped organize Brown’s appearance at Saturday’s rally, said the campaign had sent him merchandise earlier this year after he had shown support online.
“This is new to us, having athletes and celebrities who are still popular,” Bruesewitz said. “I mean, Brown is the Pittsburgh Steelers’ [second] all-time leading receiver. It’s not like he was the backup punter, right? He is one of the greatest players on one of the greatest franchises in history, and he’s with us, and he wants to help us, and he’s actively working to help us, and that’s cool.”
Bruesewitz said he sees the Brown endorsement as further evidence that there has been a change in the social acceptability in being a Trump supporter. The former president has landed support from rappers Kodak Black, Sexxy Red and Waka Flaka Flame, while other current and former NFL stars including Maxx Crosby of the Las Vegas Raiders and the New York Giants’ Lawrence Taylor have backed Trump too.
“I think the resistance is dead,” Bruesewitz said. “You don’t have the hatred you had, the animosity you had, the cancel culture that you had, if a celebrity was for us in the past. And that gives celebrities the ability to actually speak their mind and be honest with themselves, politically.”
But Brown has been generating controversy in his post-Steeler career. Last year, he had an arrest warrant issued in Florida over unpaid child support. He pled no contest in 2020 in a battery case stemming from an altercation with a moving company. He’s settled lawsuits with a former trainer who accused him of sexual assault and a man who claimed his child was almost hit by furniture Brown allegedly tossed from a balcony.
“Former Pittsburgh Steelers are split on the Presidential election,” Ryan Clark, an ESPN personality and former Steelers safety, posted on X. “One side has Mean Joe Greene, Jerome Bettis, and the family of Franco Harris supported her… and the other has Leveon Bell & Antonio Brown. Different class of folks for sure.” (Brown responded that Troy Polamalu, who lined up next to Clark for years, “carried the secondary.”)
The Trump campaign and its allies brushed off any concerns about Brown appearing on the trail with him given his past.
“That fan base loves him, that community loves him, he loves that community,” Bruesewitz said. “I think it was a no-brainer to put him out there. Nobody’s perfect.”
Dave McCormick, the GOP Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, said he felt Brown’s endorsement was indicative of Trump’s ability to bring “nontraditional voters” into the fold.
“I honestly am not even that close to his history, but I think, big picture, the more people that come up and embrace President Trump from … nontraditional parts of the coalition, I think that’s better,” he said.
Voters who spoke with NBC News at the Sunday voter registration drive also did not express concerns over Brown joining the Trump team.
“We were voting for Trump before them,” Gregg Paladina, a school superintendent from New Castle, Pennsylvania, who is backing Trump but voted for Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2022, said, adding, “I don’t think you can judge somebody. Obviously, Antonio Brown’s not a role model, but a lot of the people that support Harris aren’t role models either.”
Dok Harris, Franco Harris’ son, who has endorsed the vice president, said Brown has “unfortunately” made some “questionable” decisions in his post-Steelers career, but he still praised the pro-Trump Steelers for being willing to get involved in the political process.
“My heart goes out to them,” he said. “I love the fact that they’re getting involved. Now I don’t agree with them. They aren’t really talking about the same lessons that my father taught me.”
This isn’t the first time football and politics have mixed in Pittsburgh.
Franco Harris, who played a leading role on the franchise’s four Super Bowl winners in the 1970s, was politically active for decades and campaigned for prominent Democrats across the region in recent cycles. His former teammate, wide receiver Lynn Swann, was the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania in 2006. And the team’s late owner, Dan Rooney, surprised many when he came out publicly and campaigned for Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign. Rooney later served as Obama’s ambassador to Ireland.
For Pisciottano, the difference between Trump’s and Harris’ Steelers backers is that Harris’ have much more substantial ties to Pittsburgh and the region than Trump’s do.
“A lot of the folks endorsing Kamala Harris are long-time Pittsburgh natives or people who have been heavily involved in our community,” he said. “Those people understand Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania and their political beliefs or their moral compass has been influenced by the culture in western Pennsylvania, and that instructs their political decisions. … I don’t think that either Mr. Brown or Mr. Bell have those long-standing ties.”
