The Green Bay Packers versus the Pittsburgh Steelers? We’re rooting for the team with the tie-in to manufacturing

The Packers’ story starts in August 1919 when Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun got together and came up with the idea of a football team. From Packers.com:

First they talked Lambeau’s employer — a war-time industry called the Indian Packing Company, where he worked as a shipping clerk for $250/month — into putting up money for jerseys.

Because the company provided jerseys and permitted the use of its athletic field for practice, the club was identified in its early publicity as a project of the company. With this tie-in, the name “Packers” was a natural, and Packers they have been ever since, although the Indian Packing Company had practically faded out of the picture before that first season was half over.

Indian Packing, which manufactured canned meats, merged with Acme Packing of New York in 1921.

The Pittsburgh Steelers carry their manufacturing alliance right on their helmets. From Steelers.com:

The Steelers logo is based on the Steelmark logo belonging to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). Created by U.S. Steel Corp. (now known as USX Corp.), the logo contains three hypocycloids (diamond shapes).

In the 1950s, when helmet logos became popular, the Steelers added players’ numbers to either side of their gold helmets. Later that decade, the numbers were removed and in 1962, Cleveland’s Republic Steel suggested to the Steelers that they use the Steelmark as a helmet logo.

When the Steelmark logo was created, U.S. Steel attached the following meaning to it: Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world. The logo was used as part of a major marketing campaign to educate consumers about how important steel is in our daily lives. The Steelmark logo was used in print, radio and television ads as well as on labels for all steel products, from steel tanks to tricycles to filing cabinets.

The National Association of Manufacturers and 19 other business groups filed a petition in federal appeals court Tuesday challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s latest interpretation of the “Johnson Memo,” in which the agency declared its plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from industrial and other stationary sources. The EPA intends to impose its mandates by Jan. 2, 2011.

As NAM President John Engler said in the news release:

Today’s challenge is yet another step we are taking to stop EPA from its overreach in regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. We believe this issue deserves transparency and debate that should be handled by Congress, not by a bureaucratic agency that has no accountability to the American people.

EPA’s power grab creates uncertainty and adds costly new burdens on manufacturers while further complicating a permitting process the EPA and state environmental enforcement agencies are not equipped to handle. Further, these actions will stifle job creation and harm our competiveness in a global economy by adding compliance, administrative and legal costs.

The trade association petition filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is available here. The NAM’s Manufacturing Law Center has additional background and filings.

Others filing their own litigation include the American Iron and Steel Institute and Gerdau Amersteel Corp., Inc.  From E&E News: (continue reading…)