Steelers Sale Could Be Done Soon

When the Wall Street Journal first reported that an outside investor may buy part of the Steelers, the news seemed discouraging, but not disastrous.

Since then, the news just keeps getting worse.

Now we've learned that instead of there being a likelihood that Dan Rooney would be able to buy back all of his brother's shares, there's the potential that an outside buyer will actually take over a majority share. The Associated Press is reporting that the deal could happen within the next week. While potential new owner Stanley Druckenmiller sounds like a diehard Steelers fan who is willing to let Rooney continue to run the team, that doesn't change the fact that any kind of ownership change is a pretty significant switch.
Druckenmiller has said he would want Dan Rooney to continue to run the team, but the question is how many years does Dan have left as the team's principal decision maker? He'll turn 76 this month, which makes it likely that even if everything goes well, he'll probably give up being the team's chairman sometime in the next five to 10 years. If Druckenmiller is willing to let Rooney's son, Art Rooney II, who is the team's president, run the team after that, then we are likely looking at keeping a Rooney at the top of the Steelers for years to come. But if the loyalty ends with Dan Rooney, we're looking at someone other than a Rooney running the Steelers for the first time since the team was founded in 1933.

If you are looking for a piece of good news from the potential moves, there is this. Druckenmiller ranks as one of the richest men in the U.S. While the Steelers under the Rooneys have always been a rather capital limited team (which explains part of the reason the team stayed away from salary cap shenanigans with large signing bonuses), Druckenmiller would ensure that big bonuses are not a big deal--he's worth $3.5 billion. The Post-Gazette has a feature on the potential new owner. It notes that Druckenmiller is a true Steelers fan who paints his face for games and screams just as loud as anyone else. He seems to have the right approach, and there are no worries about the Steelers moving, but after 75 years of stability, Steelers fans reasonably are worried about any kind of change.