Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Roger Wood sings the song "Here We Go" at a pep rally for the Steelers at Market Square. Click photo for larger image. More Coverage: Steelers fight songs to help fans sing team to victory (01/20/06) More Steelers songs for the Super Bowl party (01/26/06)

You might say the sample population exhibits a high propensity for imitative behavior, mass bonding and idol worship of alpha males, which sometimes manifests itself in the sharing of chants.

Or you could say Steeler mania is rocking Pittsburgh.

The buzz is evident throughout southwestern Pennsylvania in black-and-gold-trimmed shop windows, messages of support on marquees, Steelers flags waving from cars, football jerseys on the backs of fans, banners and creche-style Steelers altars erected on countless front lawns. And all the talk everywhere you go in Pittsburgh is about the team's chances of winning the Super Bowl Sunday in Detroit.

And in a new twist on Steeler mania, fans are writing, recording and sharing songs of support.

As rumblings of the Steeler Nation radiate from a Pittsburgh epicenter, cultural anthropologists from Pitt to UCLA note that it's more than simple team spirit. It's a social phenomenon.

"In my work, I evaluate music in its many uses," said Deane Root, director of the Center for American Music and chair of the Music Department at the University of Pittsburgh. "One use is for social bonding. Usually, it's bonding on a very narrow sphere, like writing a song about your girlfriend, but this is bonding of national proportions. It's a phenomenon. This is almost unprecedented."

The current wave of Steeler mania began manifesting itself through song in early January, when a sixth seed playoff berth first seemed possible. Songs and poems in support of the Steelers, unsanctioned by the team, started showing up in the Post-Gazette mailroom and e-mail messages. As we've done in previous playoff seasons, we posted a few samples of the songs. (Update: More Steelers songs for the Super Bowl party) Each time the team blew through another playoff game, the number of incoming digital MP3s and CDs increased. Each time we posted a few, we got more, eventually taxing our staff's ability to keep up with them.

Steelers playoff games are big business in Pittsburgh, so it's no surprise that entrepreneurs are capitalizing on the several-weeks window of opportunity to sell Steelers songs. Distribution is spotty, but Roger Woods has an underground hit with his "Here We Go," and Charlie Godart & his Legendary Polka Band market a CD of original songs about the Steelers.

What's more curious, however, is the number of people who are writing and recording homegrown Steelers songs and shipping them to the Post-Gazette and a half-dozen local radio stations with no interest in turning a profit. They just want to share. (Update: More Steelers songs for the Super Bowl party)

The Del Sinchak Band swings low from the hip with "Pittsburgh's on the Road to Detroit City" and goes folky with "Steeler Nation." Manic D gets down with a hip-hop "Steelers Anthem." Mr. Devious makes onomatopoeia with "Puhlahmahlu" -- hey, that's how they spell it -- and one band, which didn't even send a name, shakes its groove things with an elaborate disco-fied "We Are the Steelers."

And the songs keep pouring in. While writing this story, for example, this message came in: "Doesn't matter if [my lyrics with no music] don't make it to the press," wrote someone named Jay. "I am deaf, and in my school we have a fight song ... in sign language."

Kardaz, a local classic rock band, has been updating its "Go Steelers" song since Super Bowl XXX with Dallas. It's one of the most-requested Steelers songs. Keyboardist Dave Muehlbauer says it's all for fun.

"As far as Steelers songs go, it's simplicity," he says. "The idea is to cheer along. You don't want something too complicated. They don't really care about production values or anything. They just want to bond."

Kardaz knows something about bonding with sports teams. They wrote "Mighty 'Guins" for the Penguins and the "Washington Wild Things Theme" for the Washington, Pa., minor league baseball team.

The Post-Gazette isn't the only media source experiencing Steeler song overload. SteelerFever.com, a Web site selling Steelers merchandise of all kind, posts the following message: "Due to an extreme amount of bandwidth usage, the [Steelers songs] audio files will be temporarily suspended."

This isn't the first time the Post-Gazette has been inundated with readers' songs. In 2002, during the Quecreek mine rescue, songwriters wanted us to share songs inspired by the drama.

Alan Page Fiske, associate professor of anthropology at UCLA researches the ways in which culture, psychology and natural selection operate together to shape human sociality. He says Pittsburghers' use of songs is "very interesting."

"I guess the basic fact is that humans are extraordinarily motivated to imitate each other," he said. "Other animals are generally very poor imitators and not inclined to do so anyway, but humans have evolved unique capacities to copy each other. This is why we have culture and fads. Put this together with the fact that humans love music, and we very easily develop strong identification with social groups such as ethnicities, nations or teams."

Fiske says the snowball effect of shared joy and imitative behavior continues to its logical ending.

"My guess is that if the Steelers win, people are going to make up a lot of songs," he says. "Maybe some of the them will endure as folk songs. If they lose ..."

Folklorist John Lilly, editor of West Virginia's Golden Seal magazine, says the sharing of Steelers songs is "folk culture in close to its purist form."

"It's rising from the people," he said. "People feel moved to do something of a creative nature, and the fulfillment of this is to share it with others. It's not about money. It's about bonding with people you don't even know through your art. It's a very human thing.

Lilly says what's happening in Pittsburgh, however, is more intense than what you might find elsewhere.

"What does it say about Pittsburgh culture?" he asks. "You could make some inference about the intensity of feelings or the role the team plays in local lives."

"Pittsburghers, perhaps, don't think highly enough of themselves," says Root. "People tended to look down on us because of the gritty mills and I think we believed it. Here, we've got a population that has lived here all their lives -- their parents lived here, their grandparents lived here. Here's a team that came up the hard way, worked hard and has been rewarded for it, classic Pittsburgh values. We associate with that."

Lots of associating will happen from 5-9 p.m. Friday at Bloomfield Bridge Tavern in Bloomfield when anyone with a Steeler song or poem is invited to perform it, sell it or just share it as a bonding mechanism at a black and gold, insecurity-busting, anthropologically significant Steeler rally.