Ryan Clark: Dan Rooney Doesn't Want Steelers Players to Listen to Rap Music

Ryan Clark: Dan Rooney doesn’t want Steelers players to listen to rap music
Posted by: Rick Brisse
http://sportsglory.com/nfl/ryan-clar...ap-music/14169

Pittsburgh Steelers safety Ryan Clark says team owner Dan Rooney wanted the N-word out of the team’s locker room, and even told Ike Taylor to not listen to rap music.
“He told [Taylor], I don’t want you guys listening to that music. I don’t want you guys using that word,” Clark told ESPN’s Bob Ley during an “Outside The Lines” special report. “And his reason behind it was that people fought against people using that word. People felt like that word was demeaning. There were terrible acts done by men using that word and by people using that word.”
Clark said Taylor shut the music off because of Rooney.
“Guys accepted it. It wasn’t like that you stopped hearing the music totally. You stopped hearing it that day,” Clark said. “But it came back. That’s the culture. That’s what these guys have grown up with.”
The NFL’s competition committee could decide to penalize players for using the N-word on the field.
Clark thinks it would be difficult to police the use of the racial slur.
“I think it’s going to be really tough to legislate this rule, to find a way to penalize everyone who uses this word,” Clark said. “And it’s not going to be white players using it toward black players. Most of the time you hear it, it’s black players using the word.”
The head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance that monitors diversity in the NFL, John Wooten, said he expects the league’s competition committee to enact a rule that would make it an automatic 15-yard penalty if a player uses the N-word on the field.
“I will be totally shocked if the competition committee does not uphold us on what we’re trying to do,” Wooten said. “We want this word to be policed from the parking lot to the equipment room to the locker room. Secretaries, PR people, whoever, we want it eliminated completely and want it policed everywhere.”