It happened last week when I stumbled upon an on-line school term paper of his in which he concluded that the 1985 Chicago Bears were the best NFL team ever. He "proved" this by comparing that team to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only other team he deemed worthy enough.

I clicked on his e-mail address.

"Hey, kid," I wrote. "Don't you know that the greatest team to ever take a football field was the 1978 Pittsburgh Steelers? No, you obviously don't know. So, let me tell you about this team. My team. My Steelers. I was about your age, in between boyhood and manhood, that awkward age when you're too old to be young but don't know how to be old yet. I was like you, kid. I acted like I knew everything so nobody would suspect the truth, that I didn't know anything, that I couldn't count on anything. That I was afraid.

"Except on Sundays. I knew some things on Sundays. I knew that, even if the Steelers fell behind some mortal team such as the Oilers, Browns or Bengals, that my team would not let me down. That's because we had what we called a Steel Curtain, kid. And it hurt when you hit it. I knew that Jack Lambert would blitz and stuff Earl Campbell for a three-yard loss. Or Mel Blount would time his hit and pop the ball from the hands of a dazed Chris Collinsworth. Or Dwight White would sack Brian Sipe for a safety. I knew that Terry Bradshaw would then connect on the hook-and-go to John Stahlworth, spreading the defense so Franco could get his hundred yards. The Steelers would win.

"You could count on it, kid. My team was a winner. That meant I was a winner. On Sundays. Even on Monday mornings you could still be a winner. You might even get to talk to the popular kids in school for a while on Mondays about how great the Steelers were on Sunday. Our Steelers. The black kids and the white kids might even talk to each other. The Steelers made everybody the same for a while. Everybody was OK. Sometimes even on Tuesdays you still felt OK about your life. That's right, kid. My team was so great that it lasted until Tuesdays. And by Wednesday your life wasn't that bad because you started to look forward to the next Steelers game on Sunday.

"I am grateful that I had my mighty Steelers when I needed to count on something, when I needed to believe in something. Believe in myself. And I suppose I still feel that way. Those Steelers are still part of me. That's why I am very protective of them, kid. And if you threaten my team, you threaten me. My identity. And when I feel threatened I feel afraid. And when I'm afraid I get angry. And I'm angry right now, kid, because you didn't even mention my team in your term paper."

I clicked back on the kid's term paper and discovered he had come to his conclusion by comparing statistics from the '85 Bears to those of the '72 Dolphins, such as wins and losses, points for and points against, touchdowns scored, yards per carry, interceptions - he based the whole dang thing on numbers!

I did some checking and found that the '78 Steelers' numbers were at least comparable to the other two teams - better in some categories - but that was not the point. Didn't this kid know that it's about more than numbers? It then occurred to me that the kid had never seen that great 1978 Steelers team, let alone the '72 Dolphins. Heck, he might not have been born before the one-year-wonder '85 Bears won it all.

I wasn't angry with the kid anymore. I got a little sad. He didn't have a great football team he could know, that he could believe in, that he could count on during the most turbulent time of his life. And he never would, the era of NFL greatness having now been replaced by NFL parody. All he could count on were numbers. But perhaps that was enough for him. Perhaps believing in his numbers and term paper helped this kid to believe in himself. He obviously believed enough in himself to post the darn thing on the Internet.

I deleted my email and started a new one. "Good term paper, kid," I wrote.

Tony Bickert is editor of the Alaska Star.