NOT EVEN JFK SLAY STOPS NFL

PITTSBURGH Steelers owner Dan Rooney says he desperately tried to get his team’s game against the Chicago Bears canceled after President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination two days earlier, but was overruled by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and JFK’s press secretary Pierre Salinger, who insisted “Jack Kennedy would have wanted it that way.” Playing football while the nation was in mourning was a p.r. disaster that got worse when, two hours before kickoff, the news broke that Jack Ruby had blown away Lee Harvey Oswald, the Steelers boss relates in his upcoming autobiography, “Dan Rooney” from Da Capo Press. The game went on with no mention of the second murder – the only concession being that the Steelerettes remained seated instead of leading cheers. “Pete later told me it was the wrong decision, one of the few he regretted making during his term as commissioner,” Rooney writes. “It [helped] me put things in perspective. There are more important things than playing football every Sunday.”