Can Dan Rooney Actually Afford to Buy Out His Brothers

It's been an article of faith among most Steelers fans that the only good way for this ownership squabble to work out is with Dan Rooney figuring out a way to retain majority ownership.

But Stanley Druckenmiller, or someone close to him, is trying to put out the word that it may not be true.

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "a source with intimate knowledge of Druckenmiller's situation" tried to lay out the two scenarios. Now for all we know, this is Druckenmiller himself not wanting to be publicly quoted on the ownership news, but whoever it is, they lay out a pretty compelling case for Druckenmiller.

Since Druckenmiller is an extremely wealthy man, he could cut a check for the $160 million the same way that me or you go down to McDonalds and buy a double cheesburger. But for Dan Rooney, coming up with the money to buy out his brothers will mean lots of loans and outside investors. Because of that, there is a legitimate concern that the resulting debt load may impact the Steelers ability to cut the bonus checks that are required to either keep or sign other team's free agents. As the Post-Gazette explains:

They would have to assume enough debt on the financing that it could jeopardize their ability to spend money freely on other matters such as free-agent players and contract extensions, especially in a small-market city where ancillary revenue streams are not always available.

Long-time Steelers fans can rightfully say that the same thing was the case in the 1990s, when Neil O'Donnell, Leon Searcy, Chad Brown, Rod Woodson, Yancey Thigpen and other stars left because the Steelers couldn't compete in free agency. That situation didn't change until the Steelers moved into Heinz Field, which brought in additional revenue streams. Pittsburgh shrugged off the free agent losses because they drafted as well as anyone during the 1990s, it would be asking a lot to try to repeat that succes again.

If Druckenmiller gets ownership of the team, he said he intends to keep Dan and Art Rooney II running the operations, just like they do now. I've been right there with everyone else on fearing an ownership changeover, but we now do seem to be staring at a situation with no real good solution. The question now is which of the bad options is the best one, and maybe Druckenmiller's option is better than we thought.