By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

There’s no mystery about who Kissimmee resident Dave Link is backing when Super Bowl XLV begins at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

The Pittsburgh Steelers emblem, about 20 feet in diameter, painted on his front lawn is a good tip off.

“It took me about two and a half days to do it,” Link, who lives in the Kings Crest subdivision off Neptune Road, said Thursday.

The Steelers will seek their seventh Super Bowl championship against the Green Bay Packers, who own 12 NFL titles, in a game pitting two of the NFL’s historic franchises.

Link, a Virginia native, said he has always been a Steelers fan and decided after Pittsburgh beat New York for the AFC title two weeks ago that this was a good time to show the world. Or, at least his neighbors.

“They’ve been pretty enthusiastic about it. Most of them give me a thumbs up,” he said. “The garbage pickup guy saw it and said ‘Go Packers,’ but he was smiling. I think he was just giving me a hard time.”

The emblem is painted on the grass with ordinary spray paint, Link said.

“There’s a gallon alone on the gray outer circle, and a half gallon of white background,” he said.

To make the three decorative yellow, red and blue hypocycloids on the emblem, which Link simply called stars, Link took a big piece of cardboard and cut out a quarter of a star. He then rotated the cardboard four times to make each star.

He needed help to make the “Steelers” lettering on the emblem.

“I had a friend who I had make a stencil,” Link said. “I knew that’s the only way I could get the letters right. Other than that, it’s all free hand.”

The Steelers emblem originally was the trademark for U.S. Steel and was adopted by the team in the early 1960s.

Link, who is single and described his age as “double-nickels,” said he talked with a former room mate, also a Steelers fan, about putting the emblem on his yard two years ago when Pittsburgh played at Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, but they never got around to it.

To make sure no one misses his artistry at night, two spotlights illuminate his front yard.

As far as potential damage to his St. Augustine grass, Link said he isn’t sure what will happen.

“I guess we’ll see,” he said. “I let it grow pretty high. I haven’t cut it in about three months.”

Link isn’t satisfied with the betting line that has the Packers as 2 1/2-point favorites.

“How does a team (the Packers) that comes in as the sixth seed (in the NFC) become the favorite?” he said. “Pittsburgh will win by about five. I think it’ll be a low-scoring game, something like 21-17 or somewhere in there.”

The Mighty News-Gazette Super Picks of the Weak – Rick Pedone: Steelers by 4; Ken “Young” Jackson: Packers by 6.

To winner goes the 2010 football season “Picker of the Year” championship.