It’s yet to be known whether or not the Pittsburgh Steelers will play a regular season game in Mexico next season, but to hear team president Art Rooney II talk about the possibility, it might not happen until 2017 at the earliest.
“The league has been looking at Mexico as probably the next location for a game and we’ve kind of put our hand up to volunteer for one of those games if that becomes a possibility,” Rooney said Thursday on Steelers Live. “We have a lot of great fans in Mexico and would love to get back down there to show them Steelers football in first presence. so if that opportunity arises, we’ll try to take advantage of it.”
According to Rooney, the holdup of a regular season game in Mexico stems from the fact that venues aren’t quite ready to properly host a game.
“The stadium situations in Mexico are probably not to where we would like them to be, so that’s something that needs to be addressed and I don’t have a time frame on that,” Rooney said. “As you know, we played down there in the mid-90s and played a preseason game down there. They have a large stadium in Mexico City, but it does need some work and hopefully that will happen in the near future.”
Because of stipulations in the lease that the Steelers signed with Heinz Fields, the team is obligated to play 8 regular season games there every season, so when and if they eventually do play a game in Mexico, you can probably count on it being labeled one of their 8 road games.
Being as the Steelers are currently scheduled to play the Houston Texans on the road during the 2017 season, perhaps that might be the first regular season game that’s chosen to be played in Mexico as that certainly would make a lot of sense.
The 2016 NFL weekly schedule will be announced sometime in April.
