FAN: Art Father

Hallowed be thy name.......
Look out for us today Mr. Rooney

Christmas Comes Early As Rooneys Keep Steelers

Finally, some good news. Looks like it will be "The Steeler Way" for the foreseeable future. Thank God I can keep watching football.

The Roosnine Chapel

Ahhhhh. I finally put the finishing touches on my Rooney Lisa this past weekend. It was a good relaxing project after my travel schedule died down a bit. The day after the Super Bowl I had a business trip to Boston. I picked up the 2 Philadelphia papers, my local suburban paper, The USA Today, The New York tabloid and a paper from my hotel in Boston. Add those to the 3 Sports Illustrated covers plus the commemorative SI issue and it gave me a bunch of stuff I didn't want to store in a box! My wife is an avid scrapbooker so I asked for her advice. Usually the way I mount my autographs is an extension of my personality - they are all symmetric and neatly spaced. To mount everything I had from SBXL would have taken 3 poster sized frames if I did it that way and I didn't have the space. I decided to just make an abstract kind of deal out of everything I had. The glare in the middle is from the Commemorative issue - it's the trophy being kissed by Joey Porter. I just cut out the trophy but if you look at it closely, you can see him in it. Well, I guess I now own a one-of-a-kind piece of Steeler art work. Anyone want to make me an offfer for it?

Why The Rooney's Rule

The Steelers have the 16th highest average ticket price in the league. The Steelers also just won their 5th Super Bowl, the third team to do so. They are also returning most key components on offense and defense and have an excellent shot to repeat. So, season ticket holders should probably expect to get hosed this year. What a perfect time for the Rooney's to raise ticket prices to get them more in-line with the higher market teams and pad their pockets a bit. Wrong. The Steelers organization decided to raise ticket prices 0% this year. Huh? Can you imagine if the Redskins won the Super Bowl? Kansas City failed to make the playoffs and their fans got a 15.2% ticket increase to move them to 3rd highest average in the league. Wow. Mind boggling. As the popularity of the league continues to grow and waiting lists for season tickets cross 100,000 - owners are taking advantage of the time honored system of supply and demand. Some of these teams also have 90,000 seats in their stadiums. The Steelers, although playing in a brand new stadium, only have around 65,000 seats. I think they easily could have had 80,000 plus - but decided the stadium should have a view of the city - easily passing up millions of dollars per year in ticket sales. You simply cannot claim the Rooney's are only out for themselves. They really care about the fans. Click here to see the complete list of ticket prices for all teams. I don't mind that some of the lower priced teams raised prices over 10% to get more in the middle of the pack, but what on earth are the Niner's doing raising prices 10% to move into 6th place?