Steelers owner gives icky patronizing response to player complaints about facilities

It is a really bad time to be an NFL owner. Despite collecting multi-million-dollar checks from the league for simply existing, many of these decadent owners are not exactly reinvesting in their franchises. If you play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, you might have to bunk up on the road. If you play for the Kansas City Chiefs, you sat on stools in the locker room prior to winning a Super Bowl.

And to make things even worse, the Pittsburgh Steelers are starting to look like the Mike Brown Cincinnati Bengals with each passing day. I will give Brown credit for actually improving his franchise in the last five years since drafting Joe Burrow. As for Art Rooney II, his team shares facilities with the ACC's Pittsburgh Panthers, resulting in them having a no good, very bad locker room grade of an F.

Here is Rooney's tone-deaf response to his team's failing locker room grade from the NFLPA survey.

"I haven't met too many players that are architects yet. We're not opposed to player feedback...Look, we do look at what are the benchmarks around the country, what do players need to be successful these days. To be honest with you, we're not as deep into the let's say assessment of this facility as we are into the stadium. But that will come."

These are the Steelers, man. This is a gold standard franchise, but nothing glitters is gold any more...

To be honest, it might be more than just Mike Tomlin to blame for the Steelers continually underperforming.

Art Rooney II fails to read the room over Steelers' poor locker room grade

Could this be a contributing factor to the Steelers having one of the most consistently chaotic locker rooms in the league? Maybe this is a reason why Rooney will not give his team even halfway decent facilities comparative to a Power Four football team? What came first: The chicken or the egg? It doesn't matter what the answer is. It sucks for the players who must put up with cheapskate owners.

These are billionaires, folks. Even in down markets, there is not a better way of getting return on your investment than owning a professional sports franchise. Not everyone is built to run such operations. If you made your money doing something else, you probably earned the right to do whatever it is with the franchise, I don't know, you bought. But if it was handed down to you, you have to do better, man...

This could change in college football in due time, but there is a reason why even the most mid programs have great facilities there. It is because NIL was not a thing until three years ago. Any money coming in from the boosters went to things like facilities. For a league that considers itself to be full of professionals, these owners keep coming up painfully short. They are such cheap amateurs.

I cannot wait for the next painful lockout NFL because these lazy owners are cheaper by the dozen.