R.I.P. Dan Rooney

[Ramfins59]

Pittsburgh Steelers owner and former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland has passed away at 84 years of age.

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I was born a Steeler's fan and I will die one too.  I grew up watching the games with my father and grandfather.  The Rooney's are the best owners in sports IMHO.  He will be missed.

[KWT]

Steelers fan til the day I die... RIP Mr. Rooney

[Xingu]

Not a Steelers fan, but most everyone (including opposing players) have nothing but praise for the Rooney family. That goes a long way in this era when some owners are considered the enemy, even by their own players.

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Posted by Mike Florio on April 13, 2017, 8:19 PM EDT

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Steelers chairman and Ambassador Dan Rooney died on Thursday at the age of 84. His son, Art II, honored him with a simple but strong statement released through the team.

“It is a sad day for my family and me,” Art Rooney II said. “My father meant so much to all of us, and so much to so many past and present members of the Steelers organization. He gave his heart and soul to the Steelers, the National Football League and the City of Pittsburgh. We will celebrate his life and the many ways he left us in a better place.”

Few figures in the NFL or elsewhere can or will evoke the volume of positive memories and messages that Ambassador Rooney has generated upon his passing. Statements are flowing from every corner of the NFL and beyond, and the process surely will continue in the coming days.

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Posted by Michael David Smith on April 13, 2017, 6:22 PM EDT

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Former President Barack Obama issued a statement praising Dan Rooney today, hours after the team announced that its chairman had died at the age of 84.

“Dan Rooney was a great friend of mine, but more importantly, he was a great friend to the people of Pittsburgh, a model citizen, and someone who represented the United States with dignity and grace on the world stage,” Obama said. “I knew he’d do a wonderful job when I named him as our United States Ambassador to Ireland, but naturally, he surpassed my high expectations, and I know the people of Ireland think fondly of him today. And I know the people of Pittsburgh, who loved him not only for the Super Bowl championships he brought as the owner of the Steelers, but for his generosity of spirit, mourn his passing today. Michelle and I offer our condolences to the Rooney family, some of the most gracious and thoughtful people we know — even as we celebrate the life of Dan Rooney: a championship-caliber good man.”

Rooney was a supporter of Obama’s during the 2008 presidential campaign, and served under Obama as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland for three years.

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Posted by Josh Alper on April 13, 2017, 5:23 PM EDT

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The death of Steelers chairman Dan Rooney has spurred responses from all corners of the NFL on Thursday afternoon, including one from Panthers owner Jerry Richardson.

“My heart is heavy today as the passing of Dan Rooney leaves a void that can never be filled,” Richardson said in a statement. “No one in the National Football League provided me more friendship and counsel over the past 25 years than Dan, and I will always cherish our time together. Dan was a cornerstone of the National Football League and leaves a lasting mark on the game he loved both on and off the field. His lifetime of service to his team, the NFL, his city and his country earned Dan the respect and love of so many. He will be dearly missed. Rosalind and I send our thoughts and prayers to the Rooney family and the entire Steelers organization.”

Many current and former Steelers players shared their condolences and other thoughts on social media. Wide receiver Antonio Brown was among them, writing that he will miss Rooney and that his No. 84 “will represent the 84 years you spent on this earth making an impact on the lives of others.”

Former Steelers coach Bill Cowher called Rooney his mentor and thanked him for “guidance and wisdom” during their time together.

Pro Football Hall of Fame president and CEO David Baker also issued a statement announcing that the flag at the Pro Football Hall of Fame “will fly at half-staff in honor of one of the greatest men to ever serve this game” on Friday. Rooney was elected to the Hall in 2000.

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Posted by Mike Florio on April 13, 2017, 5:20 PM EDT

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Despite owning the Steelers, Dan Rooney cared about the NFL nearly as much, if not as much, as he cared about his team. Because of that, Dan Rooney became a key figure in the growth of the league into the dominant sport on the American landscape.

“Few men have contributed as much to the National Football League as Dan Rooney,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement issued Thursday, following the passing of Mr. Rooney. “A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he was one of the finest men in the history of our game and it was a privilege to work alongside him for so many years.  Dan’s dedication to the game, to the players and coaches, to his beloved Pittsburgh, and to Steelers fans everywhere was unparalleled.

“He was a role model and trusted colleague to commissioners since Bert Bell, countless NFL owners, and so many others in and out of the NFL. A voice of reason on a wide range of topics, including diversity and labor relations, Dan always had the league’s best interests at heart.  For my part, Dan’s friendship and counsel were both inspiring and irreplaceable.  My heart goes out to Patricia, Art, and the entire Rooney family on the loss of this extraordinary man.”

An extraordinary man from an extraordinary family that has owned the Steelers from the moment the franchise was founded, and that by all appearances will continue to own the team for many more years and decades into the future.

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Posted by Mike Florio on April 13, 2017, 5:00 PM EDT

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With the passing of Dan Rooney, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who helped his father make the Steelers into a perennial contender and then carried the tradition forward for nearly three decades after the team founder’s passing, the NFL has lost one of its most important figures of the past half-century.

Dan Rooney first became officially involved with the Steelers in 1955, after graduating from Duquesne University. By 1960, he was involved in management of the team. By 1969, he assumed leadership of the organization. Not coincidentally, in that same year the Steelers hired coach Chuck Noll, one of only three head coaches the franchise has employed since then. It would prove to be one of the best hires made in any American sport.

The team that had perennially struggled quickly reversed its fortunes, with the 1972 Immaculate Reception sparking an unprecedented run of excellence, with four Super Bowl wins in six years and a slew of Hall of Fame players who helped Pittsburgh stay true to its blue-collar persona even as the steel mills that provided so many of their jobs shut down.

Rooney was firmly a member of the old guard, which gradually has seen its influence yield to a generation of owners who made millions (or billions) in other lines of work before buying NFL franchises. The Steelers have endured as a thriving, relevant franchise without pricing their most loyal fans out of Heinz Field, a dynamic that often frustrated owners who believe that every team should charge every last dollar that the market will bear.

Still, Rooney remained influential and vital to the league, championing the promotion of Roger Goodell to Commissioner in 2006 before stepping away from the team to become the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. Even after Dan Rooney accepted the assignment from President Barack Obama, Dan Rooney remained synonymous with the Steelers, and the Steelers remain synonymous with Pittsburgh.

But for his efforts during one of the best decades any sports franchise ever has had, that may not be the case.

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http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000799810/article/nfl-community-remembers-dan-rooney

Edited April 14, 2017 by afx

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Tony Dungy shares his memories of Dan Rooney

Posted by Mike Florio on April 14, 2017, 4:12 PM EDT

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Hall of Fame head coach Tony Dungy started his NFL career 40 years ago in Pittsburgh, undrafted after teams went through 12 rounds of picking new players. But he made the team as a rookie, and in 1978 Dungy led the team in interceptions.

During Friday’s PFT Live, Dungy shared one of his most enduring memories of Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, who passed away Thursday at the age of 84.

“Something I’ll never forget,” Dungy said. “I was, as a free agent, one of the lowest paid guys. I took the minimum contract. We won the Super Bowl. I led the team in interceptions and I had a little bonus in my contract. If I played 50 percent of the plays I would get — I think it was a $2,500 bonus. And I didn’t play 50 percent, I played about 38 or 39 percent but had an impact, and Dan came to me and said, ‘Hey, I know you didn’t make it by the numbers but you made it by your impact and we want to give you that bonus.’ And it was $2,500 but it was huge to me at that time. Just the fact that he would reach out and not say, ‘Hey, too bad you didn’t quite make it, this is what we negotiated’ [but say] ‘we want to do what’s right and what’s fair and you contributed more than we expected and we want to reward you.’ And that’s just how he was in everything.”

It’s a good story, and a concrete example of Mr. Rooney’s character. But Dungy had an even better story that didn’t involve him directly.

“I’ll tell you another story about Dan Rooney that really probably has as much to do with the success of the early Steelers teams of any,” Dungy said. “When he hired Coach Noll there was another hiring that didn’t generate as much buzz but was just as important. There was a gentleman by the name of Bill Nunn who wrote for the African-American newspaper, The Courier, in Pittsburgh and for years the Steelers were losing and Bill wrote some scathing articles about their scouting department, about the fact that they didn’t have a lot of black players on the team, and really very critical.

“And Dan called Bill Nunn and said, ‘Hey, would you come to lunch with me?’ And he said, ‘You know what, you’ve been critical of us. Do you have some suggestions? How can we do this better?’ At the end of the lunch he said, ‘Bill, why don’t you come work for us?’ And he talked Bill Nunn into leaving his job at The Courier and becoming a scout. Bill got the jump on a lot of other teams in the NFL at that time in scouting the predominantly black colleges. You look at that roster, Mel Blount, Glen Edwards, Sam Davis our offensive captain, Frank Lewis, John Stallworth, Ernie Holmes. Guys from those SWAC schools, predominantly black schools, they got the edge, but it was really from Dan not reacting negatively to a bad situation but saying, ‘Let’s talk, how can we make this better?'”

Dan Rooney always was trying to make things better. When it came to the adoption of the rule that bears his name, Dungy said that Rooney’s push to mandate interviews of minority coaches wasn’t about avoiding liability as much as it was about helping NFL teams improve by not dismissing without serious consideration a group of coaches who could be very talented, and who could help teams win games.

For everything Dungy had to say about Mr. Rooney, check out the full segment from Friday’s show.

[dublin boy]

Very well respected man over here too JC.

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Peter King's MMQB:

On March 31, two days after returning from a historic NFL owners meeting in Arizona (for several reasons), NFL commissioner Roger Goodell flew to Pittsburgh to see the ailing Steelers owner, Dan Rooney. Goodell feared what he might see. Rooney, 84 and seriously ill, was now in a rehabilitation facility with major back problems and an undisclosed ailment. Goodell hadn’t seen him since Super Bowl Sunday in Houston.

When Goodell opened the door to Rooney’s room, Rooney was in bed, too weak to get up and greet him. A slim man already, Rooney had lost weight. But when he saw Goodell, Rooney smiled broadly.

“Commissioner,” Rooney said.

Goodell didn’t want to get emotional just then. It was difficult. “I flashed back,” Goodell said on Sunday afternoon. “It was exactly the same thing he’d said to me once before.”

Eerily, it was. Same word, same smile too, as on a hot day in August 2006, in a hotel in Northbrook, Ill. In a ballroom of the hotel, the 32 NFL owners ended a lengthy debate about the man they’d elect to succeed Paul Tagliabue as commissioner, choosing Goodell over league lawyer Gregg Levy. One of the league’s biggest power players for four decades, Dan Rooney, was dispatched to give the winner the news. Rooney went to room 755 and knocked on the door.

When Goodell opened the door, Rooney smiled broadly.

“Commissioner,” Rooney said.

Thirteen days after Goodell’s hospital visit, Rooney died, and so much of the history of the league (and the all-for-one, one-for-all nature of the old NFL) died with him. Rooney had a key role in four labor negotiations; I believe he’s the most significant diplomat between players and owners in NFL history, and that had much to do with him skating into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000. Rooney stuck his neck out to hire the unknown Chuck Noll, 37, in 1969 (and to keep him when the Steelers went 12-30 in Noll’s first three years) and the unknown Mike Tomlin, 34, in 2007; in this era of instant gratification, Rooney knew something so many other owners didn’t. The Steelers have had three coaches in the 48 seasons since 1969, and won six Super Bowls, more than any other NFL team.

And so unique. In a league filled with Republican owners, he campaigned hard in Pennsylvania for Barack Obama in 2008—then accepted President Obama’s ambassador appointment to Ireland in 2009. He worked for years on the peace process between Ireland and Northern Ireland. For the past 41 years, he awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature to a young Irish writer. The annual prize money (now 10,000 euros) wasn’t as significant to most of the writers as the career push. Rooney didn’t forget his first sporting love while ambassador: On each of the Fourth of July holidays he served in Ireland, an American football game was played on the front lawn of his ambassador’s residence in Dublin.

“The NFL was the least of his accomplishments,” Tagliabue told me. “He truly cared about an extraordinary array of world affairs.”

Rooney longed for the Steeler life while in Dublin, and when he returned four years ago, he was back running the team with son Art Rooney II. Intensely loyal to his team, he was as loyal to his league. Rooney was in Pete Rozelle’s kitchen cabinet throughout Rozelle’s commissionership, then in Paul Tagliabue’s, then in Goodell’s, almost until the end. When I mentioned to Goodell on Sunday that he must have learned a lot in his weekly talks with Rooney, he said, “It was more than weekly. Really, it was daily. I talked to him almost daily. It goes back, I’d say, 30 years.

“So many of the conversations I had with him, I came to realize, were to prepare me to become commissioner. He has such a strong sense of history. He has a perspective that is unmatched by anybody in the league. Often we’d talk about his historical perspective, and things that were important to focus on for the future, and the importance of the game itself, which he was intensely focused on. The players, the officiating, the game … the game. He had a focus that a lot of other owners didn’t have.

“Pete would always say, ‘Dan is one of the most valuable owners in the league.’ And Paul would say that. And of course, now, I would say that. He was a treasure.”

Goodell got quieter for a moment. Over the phone, he sounded emotional.

“I never met a better man in my life. He had the highest integrity. There was a genuine goodness about him. He was the most devoted man I ever met … devoted to his wife—he met his wife in 1936! Devoted to his family. Devoted to his city, Pittsburgh. Devoted to his Steelers. His father, The Chief [Hall of Fame owner Art Rooney] was a legend, and Dan came in and created his own legend. It was always about the game, his team, and his league.”

Said Tagliabue: “His values were so traditional, but he was one of the first people to support major change and innovation. Stadium financing, the salary cap. He was for free agency, and for fundamental changes in how players were treated. The Rooney Rule, so characteristic of him, seeing a wrong and trying to right it. I don't think enough attention has been paid to a man who was such a traditionalist and was truly so innovative.”

I found it compelling that as much as Rooney was egalitarian about every team in the league being able to compete fairly, he never minded sticking a needle into Goodell (or the commissioners before him) when he felt his team had been wronged. I witnessed it at a dinner in 2009, when Rooney bitterly complained to Goodell (with wives present) that the NFL was unfairly trashing the reputation of Hines Ward. I reminded Goodell of that Sunday.

“I used to tease him,” Goodell said. “He would call up on a Monday, and if he was mad about the officiating, he’d say it was ‘your officials.’ After a good game, he’d said, ‘The officials did a pretty good job.’ With Dan, his guys never committed a foul. He was all Steeler, through and through.

“I remember he was the first person I fined as commissioner. Remember that?”

October 2006, seven weeks into Goodell’s reign: After a 41-38 Atlanta win over the Steelers, Rooney, mad at several calls from ref Ron Winter’s crew, said, among other things: “Those officials should be ashamed of themselves.”

“So,” Goodell said, “I got Dan on the phone. I read him his quotes. I said, ‘Dan, is this what you said?’ He said, ‘That sounds about right.’ I said, ‘That’s a violation, Dan. I’ve got to fine you.’ He told me, ‘That’s okay. I deserve it.’ He knew.”

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Photo: David J. Phillip/AP

Rooney was at the fore for a lot of famous things—CBA talks, the Rooney Rule, commissioner elections. But where Goodell valued him was as a conscience, and a sounding board. Before he became commissioner, the NFL was about to expand to 32 teams, and realign from six divisions to eight. It was a clunky time, back in 1999. Few teams want major changes. And so Tagliabue and top lieutenant Goodell and Rooney (among others) began months of talks to figure out how to take a 31-team league with six divisions, add Houston in 2002, and become a 32-team league with eight divisions.

At the time, all visiting teams would get a financial share of the eight games they played on the road from the home teams. And the teams playing at Dallas or the Giants, for instance, lucrative dates, didn’t want to give those up. So it wasn’t going to be easy to form an AFC South with smaller markets (Nashville, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, for example) making less than the teams with foes from bigger markets. So it was proposed that instead of each game being an individual visitors’ share, all 256 regular-season games be pooled and all 32 teams get the same collective visitors’ share each year.

Rooney loved that. “Both to maintain the proper rivalries and to get the schedule perfect, and to get the regional divisions right, it made sense,” said Goodell. “Through the process, Dan would scratch out his ideas for the right divisions, and he’d send them all to me. With the financial incentive taken away, it leveled the playing field. It was crucial for revenue sharing. It got us to a place where we could now talk football. Dan would talk to owners, I would talk to owners, Paul would talk to owners. Dan did a lot for that process and that solution, but he didn’t want any credit. He operated with total humility. He just wanted what was best for the health of the game, the future of the game, the future of the league. He just always put the game first. I start almost every league meeting with that point.

“In fact, I talked about that in Arizona. History is so important to our league. When we started the meeting this year, I said, “Except for a year or two when he was in Ireland serving as our ambassador there, this is the first league meeting since 1961 that Ambassador and Mrs. Rooney have not been to a league meeting.”

I wrote this the other day, but it is Rooney to the core. One year, the Steelers announced they were holding the line on ticket prices, which means that the percentage the Steelers would be contributing to the visitors’ share of the pie would stay flat. Rooney heard some grousing at a league meeting about it. He got up and said: “I’m not concerned about your share. You’ve got enough money—we’ve all got enough money. I’m concerned about our fans and their ability to afford the tickets.”

Are there enough Dan Rooneys out there to keep this game great, and to be fan advocates? After a four-month period during which rabid fans in San Diego watched the Chargers leave because a new stadium wasn’t forthcoming, and rabid fans in Oakland watched the Raiders leave because a new stadium wasn’t forthcoming there either, are there enough men and women of conscience in the league to watch out for the fans and the football? If Dan Rooney could have left one message to his peers—the 32 stewards of the game, and Roger Goodell—I can pretty safely predict what it would have been:

We’ve all got enough money. It’s got to be about the game. The game. The game.

Edited April 17, 2017 by afx