by Dan Rooney
Once I graduated from high school I set my sights on college. And not just any college—I wanted to play football. Now, my dad was never very keen on college. He believed there was plenty of honest work that didn’t require a degree. He wasn’t opposed to education, but Pittsburgh was a hard-working, blue-collar town, and there were lots of good jobs and money to be made for anyone willing to work. Dad owned a piece of a construction business at this time and since I shoveled and mixed cement in the summers, he asked if I wanted a job with the company.
I told him, “No! I’m not working a shovel the rest of my life!”
“Well, do you want to work at the racetrack?” he said.
“No, I’m not interested in horses.”
This conversation took place in Dad’s office in the Union Trust Building in downtown Pittsburgh. People were coming and going all day because that’s where the Steelers sold their tickets and where my father conducted business for his other enterprises. That day it just so happened that longtime family friend and business associate George Anderson was in the office. He overheard my father tell me that I didn’t need to go to college.
“You have to be kidding, Art!” he said. “It’s obvious your son is a bright young man. You’re making a big mistake. He’s capable of succeeding in college, and these days he’ll need a college education no matter what he’s doing—including football. He has to go to school!”
For the next few weeks, with my mother and several teachers as allies, Anderson worked on my father until he finally gave in and allowed that a college education might be a useful thing—so long as I went to a good Catholic school. Of course, there was never any question about that. I considered College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, St. Bonaventure in southwestern New York, and St. Vincent College and Duquesne University in the Pittsburgh area. I ruled out Holy Cross pretty quick because it was too far away from home. My father and Uncle Dan—Dad’s brother who was ordained Father Silas, a Franciscan priest—took me to St. Bonaventure for a look around. Father Silas was the athletic director at the college and cleared the way for my enrollment.
As we drove through the campus, Father Silas, with a sweeping gesture toward a dormitory, said, “And here’s where Danny will be staying.”
I knew then and there the fix was in. They had already decided that I would be attending St. Bonaventure in the fall—without even talking to me. My father usually got his way, but I was pretty strong-willed myself and told them St. Bonaventure was out—I wouldn’t go there.
Dad relented and said, “Then you can go to St. Vincent. They have a decent football program.”
St. Vincent College had financial trouble in the 1930s, and Dad had guaranteed a note that kept them going. Whatever strings he pulled, I got enrolled there right away and spent time at their summer football training camp. I wasn’t happy being there, mostly because it wasn’t my choice. What’s more, the football coaches there had the most complicated playbook I’d ever seen. Just imagine, when the quarterback called a play in the huddle, he didn’t call just one play. He had to give each running back explicit instructions on his assignment. Instead of just calling out, “Fox Green on three,” a play everyone would understand, I’d have to say, “Fullback block, halfback two, wingback eight, pass on three.” It was unnecessarily complicated. In a real game the refs would have flagged them for delay of game twenty times a half.
It didn’t take very long before I’d had enough. I returned to Pittsburgh, and on my own signed up at Duquesne University. This school was close to home, and it had a football program. When I told Dad about it he wasn’t pleased. He had worked hard behind the scenes to get me into St. Bonaventure and then St. Vincent, only to have his efforts undone by his thankless son.
He told me to go to the Steelers training camp, at that time held at St. Bonaventure, and report for work—all the kids who worked there were back in school. After two weeks of exile I came home again.
Of course, he knew my principal concern was being near Patricia, but he felt I shouldn’t be making decisions affecting my career and livelihood based solely on affairs of the heart. To his dismay, I stood my ground. With the help of the Duquesne dean of admissions and graduate assistant Merle Gilliand (later PNC Bank chairman and lifelong friend), I arranged my class schedule so I could attend football practice in the afternoons.
It worked out. My first year at Duquesne went well, both academically and on the football field. Professor Ebert, my business law instructor, told the class, “We’ve had a lot of Rooneys coming through here, but none of them were as smart as this guy.” He had taught my father, my uncles, and a host of Rooney cousins. Who knows if he was just laying it on thick so I would work harder or whether he really meant what he said. But in any case, my youthful dream of becoming an architect or businessman had given way to football.
Then I learned that Duquesne would drop its football program after the season. This news was disappointing. I had made the decision to attend Duquesne partly because of its football program.
Villanova representatives had come to Pittsburgh to recruit while I was still in high school. They were interested in North Catholic athletes. They asked Miles Bryan, Dave Winter, and me to come to a hotel to discuss the possibility of attending Villanova. As we wrapped up the meeting they asked me to stay and Miles and Dave left. They offered me a scholarship to play for Villanova. I told them I’d let them know. I didn’t tell anyone but my teammates. After a couple of days I called and thanked the Villanova recruiters but told them I was going to Duquesne.
After Duquesne dropped its football program, I received another call from Villanova. They said the scholarship was still there if I would come and play for them. I discussed this with Patricia. She said she would back me in any decision I made. I called the coach at Villanova and thanked him but said I was staying in Pittsburgh.
At Christmastime 1950 I surprised Patricia with an engagement ring, which my mother had helped me select the week before. We married two months later, during Duquesne’s winter break.
The wedding was a Rooney affair from beginning to end. Uncle Dan, better known as Father Silas, married us at St. Peter’s Church, with Father Campbell and Father McAnulty (later president of Duquesne University) attending at the altar. Bud Rieland, my North Catholic classmate and good friend, stood as best man, while Art served as my groomsman. The twins, Pat and John, were the altar boys. Tim filmed the proceedings. Barbara Foley served as Patricia’s maid of honor, and her sister Mary Regan (later my dad’s devoted secretary for almost forty years) acted as bridesmaid. As soon as we exchanged our wedding vows, we turned to see St. Peter’s packed with our friends and family. It seemed the whole North Side had jammed into the old stone church. In fact, more than half the people in the church were related to us—parents and siblings in the front pews, behind them uncles and aunts, and scores of cousins. Also in attendance were neighbors, the mayor, ward leaders, Coach Kiesling, Billy Conn, and Dad’s business associates. Patricia’s father, Martin Regan, brought the builders union, Local 249. As we walked down the aisle to leave the church, Uncle Paddy Muldowney stepped out of the back pew, grabbed Patricia, and gave her a big kiss. I was afraid all the guys would line up and do the same thing, so I took her by the arm and steered her out the front door, where we were pelted with rice. Tim, with a 16 mm camera on his shoulder, walked backward recording every detail, for I was the first Rooney son to be married—a pretty big deal for our family. Even Aunt Alice, who wasn’t too keen about us getting married so young, wanted the event recorded for posterity.
One thing I was sure about: this was the right decision, the best I ever made.
In the summers I worked for my father’s construction business, but I also continued to go to the Steelers training camp, not as a water boy, but as the camp manager. Jock Sutherland had died suddenly after the 1947 season, and John Michelosen had taken over as the Steelers head coach, never deviating from Jock’s single-wing formation even though the rest of the league had
adopted the more versatile T formation. During the four years Michelosen coached, the Steelers lost more than they won, but we had many talented players, including running back Bobby Gage, running back-punter Joe Geri, and Hall of Fame defensive tackle Ernie Stautner.
I handled the payroll, wrote the checks for laundry and other services, arranged schedules, sent the water boys on errands, and even negotiated player contracts—mostly draft choices, since in those days the majority of players signed before camp began. I was only nineteen at the time and not legally old enough to sign a contract. But I did the negotiating just the same. I’d call Fran Fogarty in Pittsburgh, our business manager, and he’d give me advice on how much I could spend. Then I’d sit down and talk with a player. “You’re now making a hundred dollars,” I’d say. “We’ll give you a hundred and ten.” After I had negotiated the salary, along with incentives and benefits, I took the contract to the coaches to sign, because Dad was hard to pin down. He’d be at his office in Pittsburgh, at the racetrack, but almost never at the St. Bonaventure camp.
Patricia and I set up housekeeping in a small apartment. Married life was good for both of us. She helped me become a better student and challenged me intellectually. My grades improved and I even made the dean’s list.
Though I was married and had many responsibilities I don’t think you could say that I was yet a mature adult. I remember the first time I brought Patricia home to my parents’ house after we were married. My mother had prepared a beautiful dinner. Dad and my brothers were arrayed around the big round dining table at their usual places. Our father held court. “Now, we can’t talk football all night,” he said, so we tried to change the subject, but after about ten minutes of current events and small talk, the conversation always came back to football. The family was on its best behavior, as Mother and Aunt Alice wanted to make a good impression on Patricia. Everything seemed to be going just fine, until my mother brought out the dessert: vanilla ice cream, my favorite.
That’s when things started to go downhill.
Fourteen-year-old Tim piped up, “You have vanilla ice cream for him, don’t you! How come you don’t have chocolate! You never think about us!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
But Timmy wasn’t backing down. He stood up, his chair falling over backward, and put up his fists. I jumped up, too, and squared off with him. We were both ready to fight. But before any punches were thrown, my mother came between us and swept Timmy back with a broom, knowing him to be the instigator.
All the while Dad just laughed, while my mother shook her head, mortified by our boorish behavior in front of her new daughter-in-law. Dad never did mind our sibling rivalries—in fact, he seemed to encourage them.
In some ways Patricia and I grew up together. We had met in grade school, started dating in high school, then married at age nineteen while I was still in college. There’s nothing like the responsibilities of marriage to hasten maturity. We made mistakes, of course, but we learned and matured together.
About this time, Father Campbell came to me and asked if I would help out at St. Peter’s by coaching the boys’ football team. My twin brothers, Pat and John, were stars on the team, Pat as a receiver and John as halfback. Coaching these kids taught me a lot about football, and about people. Most of the boys came from working class families. Their parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t, come to our games or practices. The fathers worked long days, and the mothers stayed at home with kids and never-ending chores. The kids learned to look out for themselves. More than anything, these boys needed their self-esteem bolstered, and they turned to me for guidance and encouragement. Together, we fixed up a locker room they could be proud of. Inevitably, some of the boys would get banged up—football is a contact sport and these kids often played with wild abandon. So when they got hurt, I’d take them to either Allegheny General or Divine Providence Hospital, where they never charged us for emergency room visits and the doctors were very kind to them. Sometimes I provided first-aid myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I recall, one boy had his finger dislocated and I pulled on it and manipulated it back into place. It worked out okay, but I later learned this was dangerous. His ligaments might have gotten out of alignment, requiring surgery. But somehow we got along without serious mishaps.
As young as I was, in some ways I became a father figure to the boys. We practiced under the North Side’s street lights on a field in West Park, near Lake Elizabeth. One night I noticed some of my older players harassing a youngster. They wanted his money, and the little guy wasn’t able to defend himself.
I confronted the oldest boy and said, “Mike, I’m really disappointed in you. Bullying a little kid isn’t you. Just stop it!”
Another kid hanging out in the park came up to me and, looking me straight in the eye, sneered, “Just who are you to be telling us what to do?”
I stared him down and said, “Listen you little punk, you’ll end up down at the police station if you don’t watch yourself. Let this kid go!”
My boys hung their heads and retreated. I never saw them bullying anybody ever again. These weren’t bad kids; they just needed direction and a firm hand.
Patricia and I had to see to all the team’s needs, including getting the boys to the games. We piled kids and equipment into our beat-up Chevy station wagon. It must have looked like a clown car, but we made it work. We sewed numbers on old, repaired Steelers’ jerseys, which had to be altered for the little guys. I painted the receivers’ helmets white so the quarterback could see them, and the linemen’s helmets green so he’d know they were ineligible to catch passes. Patricia asked the family living in the apartment above us if we could use their washing machine. She wanted to dye a batch of uniforms. She filled up the machine with green dye and crammed in twenty pairs of pants. The pants turned green all right, but you can guess what happened the next time our neighbors did their wash. For weeks after that, we saw their green-tinted sheets and underwear flapping on the clothes-line outside our apartment. But they were Irish, too, so nobody seemed to mind.
My first season coaching went well. St. Peter’s won nine games and lost only one. The loss came from St. Joseph’s and Coach Danny McCann—he was a real character and I know played a ringer or two. The most frustrating part of coaching these youngsters was that I knew too much about the game and expected too much of the boys. I always wanted to kick the ball in obvious kicking situations, but they didn’t always have the leg for it. I also tried to teach them a “gap-8” defense, which required great discipline: the players had to stick to their positions and not get distracted. Unfortunately, the rival coach at St. Cyril’s also knew the gap-8 and mowed us down with his bigger players. Once I figured out how to use the talent we had, we started winning. We even beat St. Bernard’s, the powerhouse of the league.
I was proud of my boys. They never cried, and they learned to take their losses like men. Those kids didn’t know it, but I was learning as much from them as they were from me. These lessons would stick with me the rest of my life and prepare me for my career with the Steelers.
While I was coaching at St. Peter’s, Father Campbell was keeping an eye on me. He continued to counsel me on spiritual matters, while I advised him on the sports program at the school. I remember when the new gym was built. No provisions had been made for installing backboards on the basketball court. Father Campbell asked me to put them up, attaching them directly to the wall at both ends of the court. But I knew they couldn’t be hung that way, because the players needed to run under the basket. When Father Campbell saw us installing them two feet away from the wall, he asked, “What are you doing?”
When I explained the rules of the game to him, he said, “You don’t know anything about basketball. You’re a football player!”
“Were putting them up right,” I countered.
“No you’re not!”
“Well,” I said, laughing, “we have a book that tells us where the baskets go.”
“The book is wrong
,” he said, “but go ahead and do it your way, but don’t make a mistake.” He reminded me of my father.
Father Campbell was a great man and a real inspiration to me. He instilled in me the confidence I needed to run a sports program. I may have given up any hope of being a priest, but he taught me the importance of give and take in working with people.
My coaching at St. Peter’s, under Father Campbell’s guidance, gave me the opportunity to work with children. I remember 1952 was a busy year for me. I was a junior at Duquesne taking a full load of classes, working part-time jobs, and acting as manager for the Steelers summer training camp. That year our first son, Art II, was born—another major milestone for the Rooneys and a time of celebration for our extended families. To me, having a family has been more important than anything else in life. More important than lifting the Lombardi Trophy over my head at the Super Bowl or being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
While I attended Duquesne and began a family, Johnny Unitas, a year behind me in school, explored several universities with strong football programs. First, Notre Dame looked him over, but the coach there told him, “I like what you do, but you’re so skinny! I mean, you’re five eleven, and a hundred thirty-some pounds—we’re liable to be sued for manslaughter if we played you.” Turned down there, Johnny went to Indiana University in Bloomington with the same result—they didn’t want him. All the coaches thought he had talent but believed he just wasn’t big enough to survive in a top-flight college football program. They suggested he try Ivy League schools which, with their smaller players, might be able to use him. But Johnny knew in his heart that his academics weren’t up to Ivy League standards. The University of Pittsburgh, in his own hometown, offered him a scholarship. So with my friend Richie McCabe, he went to take the entrance exam. Richie passed, but Johnny didn’t, something that bothered him for the rest of his life.