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In some ways, Dan Rooney was just another NFL owner
Longtime Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney passed away last week. Jeff Haynes/Getty Images

In some ways, Dan Rooney was just another NFL owner

In the week since former Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney passed away, there have been countless testaments to the man’s towering integrity and character throughout the years.

There’s no denying that Rooney was an influential figure in NFL ownership circles and that his place in league history is important for many reasons, especially as the namesake for a rule that has had a positive effect in increasing minority representation in head coaching and front office ranks.

Among the many valid criticisms of NFL media, one of the more reliably true ones is that reporters and pundits are overly deferential to owners. Players are dismissed as knuckleheads at the first sign of trouble, yet owners can often do no wrong, and even when they do, they are usually easily forgiven.

In the immediate wake of Dan Rooney’s death, it makes sense that he be remembered. Unless it’s a public figure like Aaron Hernandez, a death usually brings out the positive memories of a celebrity’s life. But just about every obituary of Rooney veered into hagiography and never bothered to mention any of his shortcomings.

Though Rooney ceded some control to eldest son, Art Rooney II, early in the aughts, he was heavily involved with running the team until Barack Obama was elected president. Rooney, despite being a lifelong Republican, was inspired by Obama and campaigned for him in 2008. More or less in exchange for that support, Rooney was named ambassador to Ireland after the election. That lent a late-life highlight to Rooney’s life that obscured a few ugly incidents in the preceding years.

It was just that year that the Steelers released receiver Cedrick Wilson for assaulting his girlfriend. In a vacuum that would be commendable, except the team didn’t have the same approach when linebacker James Harrison hit his girlfriend the same month and was allowed to stay on with the team. Not only was it a cynical calculation of skill since Harrison was clearly the more important player of the two on the field, but Rooney even weighed in to make the situation worse. Since Harrison’s episode emerged from his desire to get his child baptized, Rooney, a devout Catholic, defended Harrison’s actions, saying he had a good reason for using force.

Were something like that to have played out a few years later, Rooney would have been pilloried by the national media, but it never received as much criticism as the NFL and those who covered it were decidedly less concerned about domestic violence in the league at that point. While the Steelers expressed disappointment at Ben Roethlisberger’s rape accusations and circulated rumors that the team was considering trading him following the incident in Milledgeville, Ga., in 2010, that obviously never came to pass.

Rooney did better by players than some other owners, but his team was at the forefront of the CTE scandal with the death of Mike Webster and the subsequent research into brain injury, and the Steelers were hardly amenable to that process.

The Steelers, like any NFL team, took hundreds of millions in public money for a stadium as well. While he did many admirable things, he wasn't so much unlike many other owners in the NFL.

In short, Rooney had gravitas for an NFL owner, but he was still one of his kind, and there’s no need to worship that.

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