STEELERS BLACK -N- GOLD POST A Pittsburgh Steelers Blog from the heart of Steelers Nation.

by Ramona Dye 

Although NFL owners approved the sale of our Steelers more than seven months ago, this sale was pretty complicated.

The sale allows Dan Rooney and Art Rooney II to control 30 percent of the team's shares, as required of a principal owner under NFL rules.

Under the old honorship, the Rooneys had been violating NFL's requirements that each team have a primary owner and that any owner could not have dealings with any gambling enterprises.

Under the deal, brothers Pat and Tim Rooney are selling all of their shares of our Steelers, while brothers John and Art Jr. will sell 8 percent each while keeping 8 percent each.

Some of the 20 percent share held previously by the McGinley family of Pittsburgh also will be sold to Dan Rooney and his son. Family patriarch, the late John "Jack" McGinley helped Art Rooney Sr. buy back our Steelers in 1941, after Art Sr. sold the team and bought into the Philadelphia Eagles.

In buying the brothers' shares, expected to run around 128 million a piece, Dan Rooney and son Art Rooney II had to bring in outside investors. 

The Rauner, Stallworth and the Varischetti families join James Haslam III, the Paul family and Thomas Tull as new partners with Dan Rooney and Art Rooney II to help maintain the Rooney family ownership of the Steelers. Pittsburgh billionaire Stanley Drunkenmiller had been rumored to be the outside investor, but he backed out.

The new investors seem more than happy to stay in the background while Dan and Art Rooney II continue to run the team in the front office as well as the Rooney's remaining the public face of our Steelers franchise.

All contract agreements have been signed and now we wait for the closing of the deal, which is expected to close within the next several weeks according to sources inside the media relations office of the Steelers franchise.

Art Rooney II shall continue to run our Steelers head office while his father, Dan Rooney stays in Ireland as the recently appointed U.S. ambassador to Ireland. Art has done so since becoming team president six years ago.

CBSSports.com reports that the U.S. Senate confirmed Dan Rooney to become the next U.S. ambassador to Ireland. The Senate approved his nomination by voice vote.
     
Known as a lifelong Republican, Rooney backed Barack Obama in his bid for the White House and campaigned for Obama in western Pennsylvania .

Mr. Rooney helped to found the American Ireland Fund, an organization that advocates for peace and education in Ireland.

Dan Rooney is the son of Arthur J. Rooney who bought and founded the NFL Pittsburgh area franchise in 1933.