Dan Rooney's Book

I finished reading Dan Rooney, My 75 Years With The Pittsburgh Steelers and The NFL last night. I have to admit that I enjoyed the first part of the book much more than the last. The beginning of the book told more stories of Dan and his brothers growing up under the tutelage of The Chief. It seemed like once Dan started working for the Steelers in a business capacity, the stories weren't as enlightening and they just followed a basic "..and then I" or "...and then he" approach. From my perspective, there wasn't enough new information. They relegated the decision to hire Mike Tomlin over the two incumbents to one page. I thought an entire chapter might be devoted to this. However, some meetings of the owners 20 years ago are gone over in great detail. I was impressed to learn that Dan was a standout player in high school and that he once scored 6 TDs in a game. That eclipses Al Bundy's mark by 2 for those that are counting. A lot of the information wasn't consistent in the manner in which it was presented. For example, for one of the early Super Bowl runs, each playoff game almost went through a late drive history but then for another Super Bowl run, you would just get the playoff scores. I think in the end, this guy has spent over 55 years working in the NFL....and that's after growing up with The Chief. How you can squash all of that down into less than 300 pages is going to leave a lot open for debate. I think Dan told his stories to the two ghost writers and then they sorted them out and put the book together. When he got to praising the players from certain eras, it also got a bit boring because there were so many from each and after describing one of the Steel Curtain in a single paragraph, how can the next three sound any different when you are only giving each one paragraph? It's a minor complaint, but with all the stars from the 70's, it almost seemed like you could just switch their names around because the praise was so generic. One thing that is not arguable from reading the book is that there is no love lost between The Rooneys and Al Davis. Had I been counting, there must have been at least 5-7 disparaging stories told about Al. According to Dan, he prevailed in most of the disagreements. If Al told the stories, maybe Al would prevail in most of them. Rooney doesn't have a negative thing to say about anyone minus Al Davis. He truly seems like one of the most gracious and thoughtful people on the planet. I guess in this age of pop culture and "in your face" media I was looking for a little more "Wow" factor from the book. I was looking for behind closed door stuff with Cowher during the bad years or something. The two non playoff years were summed up neatly in a page or so by saying "my confidence never wavered in Bill...." or something like that. It's vanilla for juicy details, but in retrospect, what else would you expect from a bread and butter team? The book is a good solid 7 for information, but I found the cadence and presentation of information lacking in something.