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Rooney: Opposing teams discriminate Steelers fans
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Opposing teams did all they could to keep Steelers fans out of their stadiums, Rooney said, whether it was forcing them to buy tickets for multiple games or by instructing their fans not to sell tickets to people in the 412 telephone area code.
Rooney broached the topic to other owners prior to the NFL's annual meeting last month in an effort to curtail these practices.
"We were not able to get it on the agenda, so I guess we will have to go through another year that Steelers fans will have to scramble to try to find tickets," Rooney said. "We submitted a resolution where we asked the league to consider not allowing teams to engage in some of the practices they were engaging in as we understood it last year, where they wouldn't sell to people calling from the 412 area code and trying to discern who the buyers were and discriminate against Steelers fans ...
"Obviously, they can market their own fans and put the effort out to get their own people in the building. But we just felt like, once they put the tickets on sale to the general public, they shouldn't be discriminating against Steelers fans."
With the Steelers coming off of a Super Bowl title, their powerful fan base likely will invade stadiums in Jacksonville, San Diego, Atlanta, Oakland, Cleveland, Baltimore, Carolina and Cincinnati next season.
Rooney will continue to mention other teams' ticket-selling practices at league functions, even though it was not well received at the annual meeting.
"It wasn't received at all, so I guess that tells you something," Rooney said. "It can still come up at the May meeting. We will, obviously, push for that. It turned out that there was probably more on the agenda, and things took longer to get through at this last meeting than we expected. It wasn't the only resolution that didn't get considered. Maybe we will be able to get it considered when we go there in May."
