Hines Ward, crowned MVP of the Super Bowl, will help pick the belle of the ball as one of nine judges on the celebrity panel for the Miss USA pageant April 21 in Baltimore.

Ward, who returns this week from a 10-day trip to his native South Korea, joins another athlete as a judge, speed skater and U.S. Olympic triple-medal winner Chad Hedrick, in the Donald Trump production that will be televised live on NBC from 9 to 11 p.m. that night.

Ward and the other celebrity judges will help pick the winning contestant from a group of 15 selected by preliminary judges.

The winner will represent the United States at the Miss Universe 2006 contest later this year.

He is not the first Steelers receiver to serve as a judge, although he is the first active player on the team.

Lynn Swann helped judge the contest in 1991. Pitt Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett was a judge in '84.

Spelling error

The Steelers are having the names of all full-time employees in the organization etched onto the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Tiffany, the trophy's maker, is handling the job and it can only hope to avoid the kind of embarrassing misspelling that happened to the NFL.

On the Web site of NFL Shop, the clothing marketing arm of the league, the page that contains items for the current Super Bowl champions is titled: "Pittsburg Steelers."

So, what the Seattle Seahawks could not do Feb. 5 in Detroit, the NFL did by knocking the "h" out of Pittsburgh.

Quick hit

Wide receiver Walter Young, who is on the Steelers' roster, caught two touchdown passes to help Frankfurt beat Cologne, 21-14, in an NFL Europe game the past weekend. Young caught five passes for 70 yards.