Rooney Brothers Reject Dan too...

This will be a long answer (I’m the manager of a medium-sized, independently owned company’s finance department … which gives me no working knowledge of billions, but I’ve worked with a few million at a time) so I apologize for the money talk & the length it’ll take to get there…

There’ll be no sale/transfer/etc. until the current economic situation is well in the past. Too much up & down on Wall Street right now for any company not in bankruptcy to liquidate & sell off assets. Nobody knows what they’re really worth if the nation’s economy is in a violent flux.

The league will have patience with the Rooneys, as the majority of changes & evolutions of professional football have involved Dan in some aspect of planning, implementation & orchestration. He’s been part of the fountainhead that’s created enormous wealth for a lot of people. All the owners (except for Al Davis) love Dan, and will most likely oppose any transfer of ownership.

I don’t think gambling’s really the issue … the league knows that without gambling their average number of viewers would drop … exponentially so on certain Monday nights as well as the final few weeks of the season after teams have clinched playoff spots. Their issue is with the mandatory percentage of ownership.

I would be fine with this situation on any team within the same context … family owned and passed through the generations to the point where the value of the team is well beyond what the primary owner can afford to buy outright. With aggregate economic growth of the franchise, there’s no way someone with Dan’s checking account could simply ante up and buy off the other shareholders … especially with the NFL’s conditions on how much debt a team can take on at once.

(It’s like a bad credit card for folk with bad credit … sure, you think you can easily pay off your $300 limit, but with enough time for the amount to grow, you can spend a year or two just paying off the 21% interest rate, and probably end up consolidating the card with other debt into one big old payment of youthful mistakes … aggregate economics will get ya if ya live long enough)

An important aspect to remember is that this isn’t entirely at the behest of the league … this began a few years ago when the other brothers initially wanted to divest from the Steelers as their dividends continued to shrink and as they got older & older … fear of enormous capital gains & estate taxes for their next of kin. The issue is how to move this money around in a way that makes all involved happy, and that fairly compensates all involved for their partnership.

My guess is that Dan & Art Jr. will begin to work together again, to consolidate the shares necessary to keep it Rooney on the North Side. The brothers turned down an $800 million immediate cash payout! (Well, not true cash as the news present it … it most certainly would’ve been a wire transfer). That would’ve been an in-hand $200 million to each of the selling four, they would’ve continued to run successful real estate businesses, race tracks & casinos, and the money could’ve been immediately dispersed to their children and grandchildren in the form of trusts, etc. that would’ve avoided an estate tax entirely. They turned this down.

My only thought? This is going to take awhile, because all are doing what they can to keep things in the Rooney name. As I’ve said on this board before, Dan is one damn fine businessman … I have no worries about the future of the Steelers. I could be completely wrong on this – hell, I could be proven wrong on everything within the next week – but I believe that within the next year Dan Rooney will be the primary, 30%-minimum owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.