Steelers chairman helped to reshape the NFL
Dan Rooney, the powerful and popular Pittsburgh Steelers chairman whose name is attached to the NFL’s landmark initiative in minority hiring, died Thursday. He was 84.
The team announced his death but details were not immediately available.
Rooney took over operation of the team in the 1960s from his father, Art, who founded the franchise. From there, Dan Rooney oversaw NFL championships for a team that had never even played in an NFL title game.
He was a powerful force within the league. He helped develop the Rooney Rule under which NFL teams are required to interview minority candidates for coaching and frontoffice positions. He was a key figure in labour negotiations and league expansion.
In 2000, Dan Rooney was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, joining his father. Dan Rooney’s son, Art II, has been the Steelers president since 2003, with Dan Rooney becoming chairman.
“My job is to do what’s best for the organization and to make that decision regardless of what the conse- quences are to me personally,” Dan Rooney once said. “I take my position very seriously. What I want is an organization that can be together, one where everybody in the place has the same goal, and that is to win.”
And win the Steelers did. With superb drafts that led to the building of the Steel Curtain defence and a potent offence, Pittsburgh eventually saw nine mainstays from the 1970s dynasty, plus coach Chuck Noll, make the Hall of Fame.
Under Rooney, two stadiums were built in Pittsburgh, securing their place in a small market where they are sporting kings.
A confidant of three commissioners, he played a major role in negotiations with the players’ union and in league expansion in 1976 to Seattle and Tampa. He also was involved in scheduling and realignment decisions.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called Rooney “one of the finest men in the history of our game,” adding Rooney’s “dedication to the game, to the players and the coaches, to his beloved Pittsburgh, and to Steelers fans everywhere was unparalleled.”
Rooney was such a fixture in the Steel City that he regularly walked to home games. He mingled with fans, much as his father did before him, and made his players feel supremely comfortable in his presence. He would frequently have lunch with members of the staff, players and even the media, stopping to say hello or chat up whomever he came across.