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Dallas — The 45th Super Bowl has been portrayed as a game matching the two most committed fan bases in the National Football League.

When it comes to a zealous following over many years, nobody quite does it like the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers.

"As I look across the league, they're the closest to us in terms of how the fans support the team and how they travel," Packers President Mark Murphy said at mid-week. "It's a very, very similar fan base."

Remember the 40th Super Bowl in Detroit? Black-and-gold fans turned Ford Field into almost another home game against far-from-home Seattle.

At the 43rd Super Bowl in Tampa, some neutral observers said the "Terrible Towel" waving fans from Pittsburgh outnumbered those from Arizona by a 4-1 or 5-1 margin.

"We have the best fans in all of sports," Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said Wednesday. "Fans are what make you America's Team."

As testament to the enthusiasm of the Steelers' fans, an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 found their way to Lambeau Field in November 2005 to watch their heroes defeat the 1-6 Packers. No one could remember ever seeing that many visiting fans watching a game in Green Bay, and it hasn't come close to happening again.

Since then, the two franchises have played just one regular-season game. That was on Dec. 20, 2009, when the Steelers defeated the Packers, 37-36, at Heinz Field.

The Steelers (6-7) entered with a five-game losing streak, their longest in six years. Although not mathematically eliminated, their playoff chances were bleak.

With the temperature at 30 degrees, a crowd of 57,452 showed up at the 65,050-seat stadium that opened in 2001. That meant the unused ticket total, or number of "no-shows," was 7,598.

When James Jones caught a touchdown pass with 2 minutes, 6 seconds, the Packers went ahead, 36-30.

Then something else happened. Thousands of fans got up and began heading for the exits.

They missed one of the great finishes in Steelers' history. Roethlisberger's 19-yard touchdown pass to Mike Wallace as time expired plus the subsequent extra point gave Pittsburgh an exhilarating one-point victory.

"Never. Never," linebacker Desmond Bishop replied when asked if he could imagine fans flooding out of Lambeau Field under similar circumstances. "Winning by 100 or losing by 100 … I don't think Green Bay Packer fans would ever do that. I think that's why we have the best fans."

That scene against Green Bay was repeated on Dec. 12 this season when the crowd to watch division rival Cincinnati at Heinz Field was announced as merely 57,501.

"I'm not going to bash our fans," said John Mitchell, the Steelers' defensive line coach since 1994. "I think we've got great fans. They're like other fans. They come, things don't go the way they should and fans leave early."

Certainly there have been times when Lambeau Field has emptied when the Packers were being routed. An example would have been the 48-27 loss to Tennessee on a Monday night in October 2004.

Steelers offensive coordinator Bruce Arians was coaching running backs for Kansas City when the Chiefs crushed the Packers, 21-3 in 1989 and then 17-3 in 1990, at Lambeau Field.

"I saw them walk out of there when we were beating them," Arians remembered. "Christian Okoye was running it down their throats."

But thousands bolting early from a close game at Lambeau? That's hard to recall.

Since moving from Three Rivers Stadium to Heinz Field, the Steelers have had three other games with a "no-show" count of more than 9,000. In 2003, when they finished 6-10, the unused ticket total was 11,971 against Oakland in Week 13 and 12,523 against San Diego in Week 15.

In 2003, the Packers increased their seating capacity to 72,928 at renovated Lambeau Field. They've reported attendance of at least 70,000 for every home game since December 2005, when crowds of 69,000 saw the last two.

The last time they reported a "no-show" count of more than 5,000 was the day after Christmas in 1993, when 5,061 decided not to attend when the temperature at kickoff was 0.

Although the Packers have sold out every ticket for every home game since the early 1960s, they did have major problems getting their weary fans to show up as recently as 20 years ago.

Late in the 1991 season, Lindy Infante coached his final game at Lambeau before a crowd of 43,881, or 15,662 below capacity. The temperature was 10.

A year before that, the same opponent, the Detroit Lions, played before just 46,700 on a 2-degree afternoon in Green Bay.

But today, with a team that has made the playoffs 13 times in the last 19 years, almost every ticket for a game at Lambeau ends up being used or scalped.

"You know I'm from southwest Pennsylvania, right?" said Packers tight ends coach Ben McAdoo said, a native of the coal-mining hamlet of Homer City, Pa. "I've never coached there (Pittsburgh), but I think they have some fans with some high expectations.

"I will say this about our fans. They are die-hard. They're intelligent. They back us to the end. Those stands are always full at our place."