Opposites Attract Titles : Jones Is as Brash as Rooney Is Modest, but Both Win Big

Jerry Jones, who has 3,500 square feet of marble floors and a private elevator at the Dallas Cowboys’ Super Bowl hotel headquarters, wears a Texas-size Super Bowl ring with so many flashy diamonds there is no reason to turn on the lights.

“Hot dang!” the Cowboy owner mugs in a nationally televised commercial, “If I had 11 men like Deion Sanders, I’d rule the world.”

Dan Rooney, who looks like a back-stage security guard who has never made it up front to see the big show, has no picture, no bio, almost no mention in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ media guide.

“I don’t look at this as any special accomplishment of mine,” the Steeler owner said, his eyes down as if trying to avoid the glare of the spotlight. “It’s just a thrill for me to see these young people come of age; it’s really their Super Bowl.”

Super Bowl XXX: Keeping up with the Joneses versus “Danny Boy,” the guy who stands as humble protector of NFL tradition and stability.

“I had the audacity to think I could come in the NFL and be the president and the general manager when I didn’t have any experience at all,” Jones said, his speech delivered with the passion, intensity and intimacy of a TV preacher. “That was criticized by everyone when I first got here. And somehow I thought that Jimmy Johnson could come in here and help despite not having any NFL experience, and that we could figure out how to have a successful football team.

“I really believe that most people, if they focus on it, could do something different from what they do now, and also do it well.”

The Steelers have done it over and over again--the same way--for 63 years. When the telephone receptionist answers at the team’s headquarters in Three Rivers Stadium, she says, “Pittsburgh Steelers.” There is no mention of the four-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers or the current AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

From father to son, the Pittsburgh Steelers are now one of the last mom-and-pop operations in the NFL. Dan Rooney, son of the late Art Rooney who bought the Steelers for $2,500 in 1933, moved back into his father’s house on North Lincoln Avenue a year ago, and like the elder Rooney who was known affectionately as the “Chief” in Pittsburgh, he now walks to the stadium after attending church at St. Peter’s.

“I think the Steeler personality was set by my father; it’s the people that mean something,” Rooney said. “To get very emotional, I would say it’s love and that came from him, and we’re trying to carry it on.”

The Chief, his likeness standing in front of Three Rivers Stadium complete with his identifying cigar, was friendly with everyone. It was often said when he was alive he attended every funeral in Pittsburgh because he had to pay his respects to his friends.

“He was the Will Rogers of football,” said Vito Stellino, who wrote about the Steelers from 1974 to 1982. “Art Rooney was a saint.”

And that makes Jerry Jones . . . ?

“We’re fairly similar to Dallas in our approach on the field; we both want good players,” said Rooney, who has been struggling to overcome recent gall bladder surgery. “Off the field, we’re totally different than the Cowboys. Their approach is the big sell, the big America’s Team, while ours is more of a low-key thing being part of the league and the way it does things.

“We don’t want to be like [America’s Team]; that’s just not us. In fact, this goes way back before Jerry when NFL Films was thinking of the term, America’s Team, and they started off saying that we were the nation’s team. And I remember saying, ‘We don’t want that; we’re Pittsburgh’s team.’ ”

Rooney, whom many consider the voice of reason in the NFL, was described once by a fellow owner: “I don’t want to sanctify Dan, but if you met him in a restaurant and were just talking about things, you would have no idea who he was.”

Although lost sometimes in the overpowering shadow of his father, Rooney’s influence was instrumental in making the Steelers the dominant team of the ‘70s and was critical in resolving labor difficulties between the players’ union and management in the late ‘70s, again in the early ‘80s and once more in the early ‘90s.

“I remember Ed Garvey [former union chief] made the statement once, the players are the game,” Rooney said. “That angered most of the owners, but it didn’t anger me, because I agreed.

“The difference in the Super Bowl from the last time we went [Super Bowl XIV], to be quite honest with you, is more Jerry Joneses. It’s more selling. But I really believe the game is the important thing.”

Jerral Wayne Jones, however, has become bigger than the game at times. This year, for example, he made a mockery of the $38.1-million hard salary cap by spending $60.7 million in salaries and bonuses. The league’s resident rogue helped put together the $1.58-billion TV contract with Fox, but then turned on his comrades and struck independent marketing deals with Nike, American Express and Pepsi, thereby prompting the NFL to file a $300-million lawsuit against him.

“Santa Claus does not put that tricycle under the Christmas tree,” Jones said. “This is the real world. The world is full of dreamers, but they lack the substance to get it done. It’s really hard to cut and shoot if you’re on shaky ground financially. There’s no way we could have signed Deion Sanders if we hadn’t made the Dallas Cowboys financially sound.”

Jones, who sold $30 million in luxury suites in Texas Stadium the first year after he bought the team although Dallas went 1-15, has a cartoon of two buzzards circling overhead hanging on his office wall that he often quotes: “Patience, my ass,” says one buzzard. “Let’s go kill something.”

Rooney has four pictures of his family adorning his office walls. And while Jones hasn’t missed a news conference this week, an old-fashioned Rooney is dwelling on the nostalgic ramifications of his team’s success rather than the manner in which it got here.

“I’m told they put a picture of my father on the scoreboard while I was being presented the AFC championship trophy after our win in Pittsburgh,” Rooney said. “I’m glad I didn’t see it; I might have broken down. I’m not saying he’s here or anything like that, but his involvement was so much, and what he set the stage here for was very, very important.

“You know my father got along with everybody. He would have gotten along with Jerry Jones too, and told him he’s wrong in certain instances. But my father would have gone out and shook his hand too, and wished him luck.”