As explained in previous questions, the fact that the football players of the Gotham Rogues in The Dark Knight Rises were largely played by actual football players from the Pittsburgh Steelers was nicely facilitated by one of the executive producers, Thomas Tull of Legendary Pictures to be precise, being a co-owner of the Steelers, as explained by Jordan Goldberg on the BluRay of the movie:
Our executive producer Thomas Tull is one of the owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers. So he was able to enlist a group of players to come and do cameos...
Now one could say this might have influenced the decision to pick the Steelers in particular. But then again, large parts of the movie (among them the football game) were already filmed in Pittsburgh anyway, so it already seems a natural choice to pick the Steelers (and played well into the many Pittsburghian extras' excitement during filming the game). But then there could on the other hand also be the possibility that Thomas Tull was chosen as an executive producer for exactly those connections, since, in contrast to their title, Executive Producers often don't do much else than "just" provide money and/or "be there". But this possiblity fails by the fact that Legendary Pictures, as founded by Tull back in 2000, has since produced all movies in the Dark Knight trilogy, so they weren't taken into the boat just for their football connections.
As we can see, there are already quite some ties from the movie to Pittsburgh on the one hand and Legendary Pictures on the other hand. So Thomas Tull's connections to the Pittsburgh Steelers seem like an incredibly lucky coincidence. Which brings up the question if it really was a perfect coincidence or if it might have influenced any other decisions in the movie's production apart from chosing the Pittsburgh Steelers to play the Gotham Rogues.1
I won't go as far as postulating that it had any influence on Nolan's decision to include the football game at all, as that would seem too minor a factor to influence such a major story element (that also supported themes above the mere cinematic spectacle), but then again, Nolan is also a screenwriter who has the luxury to consider directorial aspects during creating the story. But maybe it already had some influence on the decision to set parts of the movie in Pittsburgh in the first place. So is there any secured information how this interesting coincidence is to untangle and to which degree Legendary Pictures' connections to the Steelers really influenced which parts of the film-making (apart from just picking the Steelers as Rogues, of course)? Or was this really just a big lucky coincidence and they would have had to pick other players (or "just" actors) to play the football players inside Heinz Field in Pittsburgh without Tull's connections?
1) Afterall, as explained in this comment the Legenedary/Steelers cooperation has been fruitful in other parts already:
As a side note, the Legendary partnership plays out publicly even today. The intro hype video (which I greatly enjoy) at Heinz Field is branded as Legendary, and you'll see Steelers players and coaches wearing Legendary shirts.