There are plenty of ties that bind when it comes to the brotherhood that takes place in a locker room and on a football field.
But today's game between the Steelers and Arizona Cardinals at Acrisure Stadium will feature a different kind of brotherhood, one that runs deeper than all of them.
Not only will Craig Wolfley handle the color commentary on the Steelers' radio broadcast, his younger brother, Ron, will do the same for the Cardinals' broadcast.
And if the two swapped places at halftime, few would be able to tell the difference between them. They both have a deep baritone voice tinged with their upstate New York accent and a, shall we say, unique way of using the English language that is purely Wolfley.
"There's little things here and there," Craig said of telling the two of them apart from their voices. "But Ronnie's just so talented with this. You listen to his broadcast, he somehow broaches a very masculine Myron Cope-type of craziness. I just love listening to him. He's a riot."
The brothers and their families might be able to more easily tell the two apart. But to the average listener, it's much more difficult.
"People in Phoenix will contact me, reach out to me and say, 'Hey, were you in Pittsburgh this past week? I heard you on the radio,'" said Ron, who like Craig also hosts a daily radio show, as well. "No, that wasn't me. That was my brother Craig. But it makes me laugh. We get it all the time. When Craig was on this past week, Craig came on three days in a row, which never happens in radio. We had Craig on to talk about this game. All the people that reach out, 'It's stunning how much you sound alike.'"
They had similar paths to the broadcast booth.
Craig was a standout guard in the NFL from 1980 through 1991, spending most of that with the Steelers. Ron, meanwhile, played from 1985 through 1995 with the Cardinals, Browns and Rams and was a four-time Pro Bowl player as a special teams standout.
The two brothers squared off many times on the football field. And that's where the brotherhood had to take a back seat.
"His rookie year, it was my fourth or fifth year in the league. He came in and I picked him up at the hotel and we drove back home," Craig recalled. "That morning was special teams meetings and he was a special teams nightmare. In the meeting that morning, they decided they were going to kick the ball to him on kickoffs because he was the up back. They wanted to take him out of the equation for blocking.
"All during dinner, I want to tell him, 'Hey, we're going to kick at you.' But you've got your blood brother and you've got your team brothers. It's killing me the whole evening. So, I'm riding him back to the hotel before curfew. I'm trying to get myself to say something, and I can't. I drop him off, and he starts walking away and I say, 'Ronnie. Come here.' He comes back and I just say, 'Ah.' He says, 'Listen, you're a big brother, you want to protect me. It's fine.' That was all good. That's the way it was. I just couldn't share even a simple little thing like that. We honor each other's profession with the chosen team and that's the way it is."
This won't be the first time the Wolfley brothers have been on the broadcast for their respective teams. They've done that before, but with Craig as the sideline reporter for the Steelers. For Super Bowl XLIII, they were the first brothers to play for their respective teams and then call the game against each other.
Craig moved to the booth as the color analyst to replace his longtime friend and former teammate Tunch Ilkin when Ilkin retired to continue fighting a battle with ALS that he unfortunately lost in 2021.
"It's a great privilege, a great honor to do the things we're doing," Craig said. "We're so blessed to be able to enjoy this time of life and stay close to the game we love so very much. For myself, it's been a dream come true, whether I'm on the sideline or in the booth."
For Ron, it's another way to follow his big brother, a man who has paved the way for him in so many ways.
"It's so cool. It really is because it's kind of the way it's been my whole life. I talk about it all the time. He's five years older than I am. That didn't put us in a category where we were competing with each other. Those five years gave us a lot of separation," Ron said. "It gave me the ability to observe him for who he is and what he was all about. He's always plowed the road. He always has. He's always been a great example to me my whole life to what a man should look like and how he should conduct himself.
"I mean that from the bottom of my bones. It's one of the reasons I'm so thankful to God for his example to me in my own life. He's always been that guy for me. To follow his path, so to speak, in getting into broadcasting, it was really encouraging. It has been."
It's also bittersweet that it comes a short time after the two lost their youngest brother, Dale, earlier this season. Dale Wolfley served as a broadcaster at his alma mater, West Virginia University. He died unexpectedly in October.
Sunday's game will mark the first time Craig and Ron will call a game in the same stadium since losing their brother.
"With the three of us, we were thick as thieves. That's what brothers are," Craig said. "It was a great thing and we certainly miss him very much. I told my mom, I can imagine Tunch waiting at heaven's gate and he probably looked at Dale and said, 'Oh, I thought your brother was coming. I heard the voice. I thought it was the fat guy.'"
