You probably already heard it, but President Obama has nominated the Steelers’ own Dan Rooney to be a US ambassador to Ireland.
As always, the Post Gazette is all over it:
In a White House ceremony this morning, Mr. Obama called Mr. Rooney a “great friend” and cited his efforts to support peace in Ireland.
“I am honored and grateful that such a dedicated and accomplished individual has agreed to serve as the representative of the United States to the Irish people,” Mr. Obama said in a prepared statement.
“Dan Rooney is an unwavering supporter of Irish peace, culture, and education, and I have every confidence that he and Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton will ensure America’s continued close and unique partnership with Ireland in the years ahead.”
This is pretty awesome to see. Believe it or not, there’s a world outside of football and being nominated to a post like this by the president of the US is an unbelievable honor.
But that said, I’m not all happy about this.
For my entire life, after every game – win or lose – Dan Rooney has personally thanked and greeted every player in the locker room after the game. More so than any player, Dan Rooney has been the face of the Steelers. He’s been around since the beginning and witnessed the creation of the franchise firsthand.
I know Art II has taken over the day to day duties and has been doing so for a while. But I view Dan as the soul of the franchise and I’m guessing most of you do too. He’s done great things for the NFL as a whole and will be sorely missed outside of Steeler land as well.
So I’m taking a selfish approach to all of this and will be very sad not to have him around all the time. It was like having your favorite grandpa run the team and I was confident that Dan Rooney would always represent the franchise I love better than anybody else could.
I’m happy to see he is moving on to do bigger and better things and helping Ireland is a great cause. But I can’t say I’m thrilled as a Steeler fan.
