Mr. Rooneys passes on.
- Thread starter tetonpanther
- Start date
Great life
Good man
Great owner and leader for the NFL
Good man
Great owner and leader for the NFL
He certainly helped the league take off from what it was in the early 60's to the behemoth it is today. Grabbed the reins from the rowdy father and brought professionalism to the Steelers. Helped engineer the merger of the NFL and AFL and 'allowing' the Steelers to move from the 'established' NFL to the new AFC. Most of the old guard teams were reluctant to do it because the AFC would be considered the 'lesser' conference, but he realized the Steelers were an also-ran in the old league, and maybe could jump-start the franchise to prominence.
Whether things would have happened the same way or not if the merger hadn't occurred and the Steelers hadn't switched, the league DID explode and the Steelers definitely DID go from also-ran to dominance ... quite literally the Rooneys became the royal family of this city, good or bad (there's some of both). And by the time it happened, he was the real King, not Art.
He wasn't perfect. It was shameful that he publicly made excuses for the violence James Harrison inflicted on his wife. And the Steelers certainly have financially and politically thrown their weight prodigiously around the city.
I wouldn't say he was a solid friend to Pitt either, a little too chummy with the dreadful Bradleys, who they kept trying to ram down Pitt's throat. But the relationship now benefits Pitt in many ways too. The shared stadium many hate is actually critical to Pitt football's existence. Football would likely have been gone by 2000, certainly by the first ACC raid of the Big East shortly thereafter, if we didn't have Heinz. Maybe Dan Rooney was too old by then to have wheeled much of that deal, but he certainly could have squashed it if he didn't like it. So, for whatever he had to do with that, RIP.
That all said, as mentioned above, bring on the Field Turf he DID squash! Or at least get rid of those ridiculous diagonal stripes in the end zone...
Whether things would have happened the same way or not if the merger hadn't occurred and the Steelers hadn't switched, the league DID explode and the Steelers definitely DID go from also-ran to dominance ... quite literally the Rooneys became the royal family of this city, good or bad (there's some of both). And by the time it happened, he was the real King, not Art.
He wasn't perfect. It was shameful that he publicly made excuses for the violence James Harrison inflicted on his wife. And the Steelers certainly have financially and politically thrown their weight prodigiously around the city.
I wouldn't say he was a solid friend to Pitt either, a little too chummy with the dreadful Bradleys, who they kept trying to ram down Pitt's throat. But the relationship now benefits Pitt in many ways too. The shared stadium many hate is actually critical to Pitt football's existence. Football would likely have been gone by 2000, certainly by the first ACC raid of the Big East shortly thereafter, if we didn't have Heinz. Maybe Dan Rooney was too old by then to have wheeled much of that deal, but he certainly could have squashed it if he didn't like it. So, for whatever he had to do with that, RIP.
That all said, as mentioned above, bring on the Field Turf he DID squash! Or at least get rid of those ridiculous diagonal stripes in the end zone...
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