Acrisure Stadium was in the headlines this week after it became the new name of the Steelers home, replacing longtime name Heinz Field.
It had been Heinz Field for 21 years, after Heinz agreed to a 20-year naming rights deal.
It was extended for one more after the lease ran out last year.
The Steelers current least at whatever you want to call the place now, lasts until 2030.
Steelers owner Art Rooney II talked about the lease during a news conference earlier this week saying, We’d love to and we assume we will extend the lease at some point,” Rooney said, “We haven’t quite gotten to that point yet. We still have, I think eight years on the existing lease.”
He added that they will talk about extending the lease in the coming years.
“I certainly hope that we’re here for longer than that,” Rooney said. “Obviously, different contracts have different terms and you deal with them as terms expire.”
But Ron Cook isn’t so sure that Acrisure Stadium will be the Steelers home long into the future.
The Cook & Joe Show host has said multiple times that he believes the complex was “built on the cheap” and doesn’t compare to other stadiums in the NFL, especially the other home fields in the AFC North.
“I definitely think the Steelers are going to be asking for a new stadium after [Acrisure Stadium],” said Cook.
Producer Matt Koll also believes that a lot of people would be on board with seeing the Steelers home torn down for a newer place.
“I don’t like Acrisure Stadium, no matter what you want to call it,” said Cook. “We’re in that era where they used to stadiums averaged 30 years, now it’s 25 sometimes even 20.”
Acrisure has a 15-year naming least and Cook and Koll speculate that if a new complex is built the Michigan-based insurance brokerage firm will keep the rights though the 15 years.
The Steelers and Pirates previous home, Three Rivers Stadium, lasted 30 years before it was torn down.
It was known as a “cookie-cutter” stadium that was used for both baseball and football. By the mid-1980s the large concrete structure that used Astroturf instead of real grass had started to become outdated.
A caller chimed in during the discussion and pointed out there isn’t anywhere to build a new stadium, at least on the North Shore. Add to that, the possibility of taxpayers having to sell out more money for a stadium and it could be a difficult situation for the Steelers to get it done.
Then again, this is Pittsburgh, where the six-time Super Bowl champions are king.
When it comes to PNC Park, both Cook and Koll agree that the Pirates should keep that ballpark their home for a long, long time.