Art Rooney Sr

A man that really left a mark on Western PA football was that of Art Rooney. He did quite a bit for many sports in the area but the Chief is definitely well reknown as the founder of the Steelers football franchise.

Anyone and everyone that has knowledge of football know that the Rooney family is the majority ownership stakeholder of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers franchise. It also seems to be understood that the family has had control of the team since its inception and inaugural season in the NFL in 1933. There is a chink in the armor of that story but oh what a story it is as we go through the life of the Pittsburgh franchise’s founder, The Chief, Art Rooney Sr.

Art was born to parents Maggie and Dan as Arthur Joseph Rooney Sr. in the small town of Coulterville, Pennsylvania on January 27, 1901. He had four brothers and three sisters and one of his first loves was sports.
His father, ran a beer garden in the Monongahela Valley area, while his mom stayed home and cared for the homestead. The family sold everything in 1913 and made the move to Pittsburgh. Dan and Maggie opened a restaurant and bar and the family lived above it.

The children attended a parochial school in town and then Art later went to the Duquesne University prep school. Art Rooney was an athlete most of his young life playing baseball and football but his real love was that of boxing.

After his high school education was completed he attended Temple University on a sports scholarship. Following his graduation, he decide to pursue a career in sports - boxing being the number one sport, closely followed up by baseball and football.

Art was a pretty good fighter in his day too. In 1918, at the age of 17, he ended up winning the AAU welterweight belt in amateur boxing. He also qualified for the 1920 Olympic Games and played minor league baseball with the Flint Michigan Vehicles ball club and the Wheeling Stogies from nearby West Virginia.  
Pittsburgh had a semi-pro football team then in which Art also played right around 1921. They were called the Hope-Harveys team partly named for a fire department in the Hope ward of Pittsburgh and the other part was for Dr. Walter Harvey who tended to the team members when hurt in the brutal game. Rooney founded the team and eventually, recruited more players to the team including his brothers Dan and J.P. Rooney. Playing for a few more seasons the team finally was lucky enough to get sponsored by "Loeffler's Electronic Store", who renamed the team after one of its best selling products, the Majestic Radio. Hence the team became known as the Majestic Radios. The team's affiliation with Loeffler's ended prior to the team's 1931 season. When James decided to run for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, Art renamed the team the "J.P. Rooneys" as a way to promote his brother's campaign. James Rooney would go on to win the election easily. The Rooney brother's semi-professional teams actually were pretty good, as they won at least two Western Pennsylvania Senior Independent Football Conference titles in the early 1930s.

In 1933, as Pennsylvania's blue laws were about to be repealed, Rooney applied for and received a franchise in the National Football League for the nifty sum of $2500. The Rooneys morphed into a new name in the NFL, as they registered as the Pittsburgh Pirates with the NFL. He named the team 'pirates' to pay his respect to the city's baseball club that he was fond of. 
 Art Rooney Sr. applied for entry into his proposed franchise on May 19, 1933. Less than two months after that, on July 8, 1933, then National Football League President Joe Carr announced via a newsletter that Rooney was approved to join the 10-team league in the fall of 1933 to fill a vacancy caused by the withdrawal of the Staten Island franchise. The team had to play early and nighttime weekday games until a new Pennsylvania law allowed them to play on Sundays.
The Pirates that day lost their first game in the League 23-2 to the New York Football Giants at old Forbes Field. It would take the upstart team only a short time to find victory, though, as the very next week, the Pittsburgh Professional Football Club defeated the Chicago Cardinals 14-13 in the friendly confines of Forbes Field.
During the first few years of its inception, the team could not even pay for a coach.
Art then took an alternate route to collect money for his team. He betted his remaining money and won many bets, accumulating a huge sum quickly.
In 1936, he took a huge risk of betting and won a parlay at the 'Saratoga Race Course,' which won him $160,000. He put the money to good use, hired a coach, and paid contract amounts to his players. But despite many facilities, the team still struggled to emerge strong in the NFL.
In 1941, when the funds ran out, Art sold the team to a NY businessman Alex Thompson. He used the funds to buy 70 percent stakes in 'Philadelphia Eagles,' while his friend Bert Bell owned 30 percent of the shares. Soon after that, Art persuaded Alex Thompson to trade teams, so he re-owned the Pittsburgh team.
The on-field product was not very good in the NFL, and before the next season, it finally changed its name to Pittsburgh Steelers. However, due to a lack of finances and consistently poor performance, the team merged with Philadelphia Eagles and, a year later, with Chicago Cardinals briefly due to WWII.
In 1946, after the war was over, Art became the team's president. The team's luck changed in the 1970s. We all know what a delight it was when the Steelers finally started winning in the 1970s, and the patience of the team's founder, the gambler, finally paid off as he watched them with multiple Super Bowls.
Art, a sportsman at heart, played a huge role in reviving the hockey game in Pittsburgh by using his influence at the NHL. He became a part-owner of the city's hockey team, 'The Pittsburgh Penguins in the late 1960s. He also became the owner of 'Yonkers Raceway' in 1972 and later acquired 'Liberty Bell Park Racetrack.'
In 1964, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Duquesne University was also honored by naming its football field after him.
Art passed away on August 25, 1988, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was 87 years old at the time of his death.

The banner photo is of "Football" artwork featured in East Texas State Normal College's 1922 Locust yearbook. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons and drawn by an unknown artist.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com