Sep 18th 2008 11:08PM by JJ Cooper (author feed)
Filed under: Steelers, AFC NorthDan Rooney’s chances of keeping control of the Steelers just took a step forward, as the Rooney’s brothers turned down Stanley Druckenmiller’s offer to buy a majority share of the Steelers.

A lot of Steelers fans will see this as great news. Druckenmiller is out of the picture, which makes it more likely that Rooney’s lowball offer will be accepted by the rest of his brothers.

But at the same time, the Post-Gazette story explains why it could end up being bad news. Druckenmiller was an extremely wealthy potential owner who was planning to let Rooney keep running the team. Now if the Rooney brothers still decide to get more money than their brother can offer, there’s no guarantee the next potential buyer will be nearly as appealing as Druckenmiller.

But the good news is that the NFL seems to be bending over backward to make sure that Dan Rooney stays as the primary owner. This should have been fixed a couple of years ago, but the NFL keeps allowing extensions that allows the Steelers to violate the league’s rules on having stake in a gambling business. It seems like the NFL is going to try to game the system for as long as need to get the result it wants: something Druckenmiller hinted at today.
“Throughout our discussions, I made clear that if the family could resolve these matters internally it should do so and I would gladly remain only a devoted Steelers fan. Based on recent developments, it has become clear that the Rooneys need substantial additional time to assess their options. I do not wish to complicate these efforts, and I also do not want the lingering uncertainty about my possible involvement to become a distraction to my business and my family.”So even though this was supposed to be fixed years ago, it’s going to take a good bit longer. Now we just have to figure out if that’s good news or bad news.