PITTSBURGH -- Billionaire Mark Cuban explained why he's not interested in buying his favorite football team.

The Mount Lebanon native is in town Monday for an Internet roundtable at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University.

Cuban said the National Football League's salary cap makes it too difficult for him to consider owning the Pittsburgh Steelers.

"The realities of environments -- where the cap is based upon total revenue, including local revenue of the league divided by the number of teams -- means that teams that can't generate local revenue as fast as the cap can go up," Cuban said.

He added, "I think a market like Pittsburgh, given the structure as I understand the NFL, that's one of the reasons they opted out of the collective bargaining agreement."

Cuban, who owns the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks, has expressed interest in buying a Major League Baseball team.

Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney wants to buy out his four brothers, who collectively own 80 percent of the team. The Rooneys' cousins in the McGinley family own the other 20 percent.

Dan Rooney's four brothers are said to want more money than he is willing to pay for their shares. The four brothers have hired Goldman Sachs to calculate the value of their shares, while Dan Rooney has turned to Morgan Stanley for guidance.

Goldman Sachs analysts have put the team's value at $800 million to $1.2 billion.

Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, a New York investment banker who hails from Pittsburgh, has said he wants to buy the team. One possible scenario has him buying out the four Rooney brothers -- or helping Dan Rooney do so -- while Dan and his son, Art II, retain managing control of the team.

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