Dan Rooney (31 page)

A separate theater showed highlight films from Super Bowls past, and special galleries were dedicated to the Chief and Chuck Noll. Other displays included Man of the Year trophies awarded to Franco and Lynn Swann, Bradshaw's
Sports Illustrated
Man of the Year award, and the eight bronze busts of Steelers inducted to the Hall of Fame—Art Rooney, Bert Bell, Johnny Blood, Cal Hubbard, Bill Dudley, Walt Kiesling, Bobby Layne, and Ernie Stautner. Fans from all over the country paid a dollar apiece to see the exhibit, with the proceeds going to Dapper Dan Charities.

McDonald's and Coca-Cola were the principal sponsors of the anniversary celebration. We distributed more than 1.5 million All-Time Steelers Team ballots at Pittsburgh-area McDonald's and all stores where Coke was sold. More than a hundred thousand fans voted for their favorite players. Memories came flooding back as I reviewed the fans' picks.

More than twenty-six hundred people paid $100 a plate for the Steelers 50 Seasons banquet at the Convention Center on October 9. Some said we should make this a black-tie affair, but I wanted every fan to feel welcome. This extravaganza was really the highlight of the anniversary. It was as much a tribute to my father as it was a celebration of the Steelers' fifty seasons.

But an NFL players' strike threatened to mar the celebration. The NFLPA called for a walkout beginning September 19. Though we had played and won the first two games of the regular season—one over the defending AFC champion Cincinnati Bengals—the fifty-seven-day strike broke our stride and hit right in the middle of our
festivities. The next eight games were canceled, and we wouldn't play again until November 21.

Some people wondered whether we should cancel the dinner, but the fans wanted a celebration. Most of the striking players told me they
would come to honor the team and my father, strike or no strike. True to their word, Bradshaw, Franco, Lambert, and the others were there. Only ten of the 1982 team failed to show. And, of course, scores of former players from every decade, including every one of the twenty-four named to the All-Time Steelers Team, came to the banquet.

Franco Harris spoke for the Steelers' offense, saying, “One, two, three, four Super Bowls. We're going after the fifth one—this year. One thing that will never change is Pittsburgh's tradition of hard, rough, tough football.”

Andy Russell spoke for the defense. He said to the striking players, “We want to see you come back, but we'll let you make the decision when.” People in the audience shouted, “Now! Now!”

The Count Basie Orchestra provided musical entertainment, while rookie running back Walter Abercrombie sang the national anthem. The dinner menu included everything from filet mignon to chocolate cups filled with amaretto mousse.

Howard Cosell emceed the evening, reminding everyone, “This is still the City of Champions. The cheering has stopped for now, but here, in Pittsburgh, the Renaissance City, the cheering will never stop. Being here is one of the greatest moments in my life. I have very deep feelings about this city. This is the City of Champions, not because of the Pirates winning the World Series and not because of the Steelers winning the Super Bowl . . . but when you have Joe Greene and Willie Stargell in the same city in the same era—that's what makes Pittsburgh the City of Champions. When you play Pittsburgh, you play the whole city. Yes, it's still the City of Champions. It has nothing to do with victories. Pittsburgh has a winning character.”

Howard was at his best that night. His encyclopedic knowledge of the game and the players amazed me and everyone in the audience. His thoughtful introductions of players hit the mark every time.

“The most productive quarterback in the entire history of the National Football League . . . Terry Bradshaw.”

“The most graceful, the most acrobatic wide receiver in football . . . Lynn Swann.”

“If there ever was an authentic hero, it's this man . . . Rocky Bleier.”

“There are no words and there never will be any to talk about Joe Greene. He was the best there ever was at what he did.”

This went on for three and a half hours, but nobody complained or left the hall.

Co-hosts included our game announcers Myron Cope and Jack Fleming, and anniversary chairman, Joe Greene. Joe said, “This is a hard town, an honest town, a tough town. That's what we're all about.” Mean Joe got choked up as he looked at the twenty-four members of the All-Time Steelers Team on the dais. He continued, “I like to think of these people as my people, my boys. Yes you are. My coach too. Learned an awful lot about life. I wouldn't trade it for anything—things like Mr. Rooney telling me about the good old days. Loved it. I do. Thank you so much.”

Pete Rozelle presented my father with a special award. “You have to love him,” Pete said of my father, “he's so honest and down to earth. He has a heart of gold, and that was the Steelers' problem once upon a time. He has a feeling for the tradition of this league, and that's so important in these times.”

Pittsburgh mayor Richard Caliguiri commented, “It is easy to get emotional about Art Rooney. He's gone through good times and bad times and enjoyed them both. The Rooneys and the Steelers of the last fifty years are a tremendous source of pride to Pittsburgh.”

Other speakers included Supreme Court justice Byron “Whizzer” White, Chuck Noll, Senators Arlen Specter and John Heinz. Senator Heinz said, “I want to thank Art Rooney and the Rooney family for the love and loyalty they have given this city.”

My father came to the speaker's stand. He had applauded every one of the players who had been recognized, sometimes with tears in his
eyes. Now it was his turn to speak. Even the waiters and bartenders stopped to listen.

“I thought maybe they weren't going to ask me to say something,” he said, laughing. Dad went on, “I guess I'm kind of dumb. I didn't even know this was being planned. I wasn't for all of this. I thought we'd bring the old ballplayers in and introduce them to the fans. But this has made me very happy.

“Yesterday, Danny told me there would be very little to say. There would be movies and Howard and Myron Cope and Joe Greene would be here and the players would have something to say. So I figured, good. But I thought I could tell them something about myself that they didn't know. I wanted to say that I was a baseball player and a manager, a football player and a coach, a boxer and a promoter, and a horse player. And I enjoyed every minute of it. Sports have been my life. The present-day ballplayers that came to this affair really made me very happy.

“I spend a good bit of time with our ballplayers, in the training room, in the dressing room, and our offices. I enjoy it. I never had a ballplayer play for me that I didn't think was a star. And I never had a ballplayer play for me that I didn't like.

“I would like to take this opportunity to introduce somebody who the sports world has rarely seen or heard of. But someone who is very important to me, has been a wonderful wife and mother, Mrs. Rooney.”

My mother, Kathleen McNulty Rooney, was sitting beside me at a round table directly in front of the dais. She was such a graceful lady, and that night she looked beautiful in her midnight blue lace dress. Around her neck she wore a glittering Super Bowl XIV pendant. As my father introduced her, she smiled shyly and half rose from her seat to wave to the crowd.

Neither my mother nor my father had been privy to the details of the fiftieth anniversary banquet planning. They both enjoyed the
evening, seeing old friends and telling stories of the old days. The love that filled the hall that night is almost impossible to describe. But they felt it, and it meant a lot to them both.

 

 

On November 28, 1982, a week after the players strike had ended, we played the Seahawks in Seattle. In the middle of the game I received a phone call from Patricia, who was at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh with my father. My mother had died at the hospital following a heart attack. Patricia gave me the details—my father was too grief-stricken to speak. She told me that my mother had died in our daughter Kathleen's arms. We had named Kathleen after Mom, and they always had a special relationship. As a young woman, Kathleen had been diagnosed with lupus. She would stay with my mother, who would care for her. But in a strange twist of fate, it was Kathleen who cradled my mother in her arms after she suffered her heart attack.

Some weeks before her death Mom had broken her leg. She had a difficult time maneuvering her oversized cast around the house. Under the strain, her heart just gave out. It was hard for me to believe she was gone. She had always been so strong, the glue of the family. She kept us together and always administered love and wisdom and discipline in the right amounts. Imagine what it must have been like for her, raising five athletic and high-spirited boys on Pittsburgh's North Side, as my father worked hard at his various enterprises and built the Steelers from the ground up. We'd been to a lot of funerals, but this one hit us hard, my father, especially. Pete Rozelle, Wellington Mara, Stormy Bidwill, Rankin Smith, Gene Upshaw, and many of our NFL friends attended the funeral service at St. Peter's.

But it was the presence of our nine children—Art, Pat, Kathleen, Rita, Dan, Duffy, John, Jim, Joan—that gave me strength and hope for the future. Like my mother, Patricia had played the greatest role
in raising our children. I helped, but she was with them every day. And, also like my mother, she kept all of us—including me—on the right path. Like my father, I often traveled and worked away from home, especially during the football season. I'm happy to say our four boys and five girls grew into fine young men and women. They were baptized and attended Catholic grammar schools and high schools.

Usually, after the football season ended, we took our whole family to Seven Springs in Pennsylvania or to Vail or Beaver Creek, Colorado, to ski. While Patricia watched the younger kids I hit the slopes with the older ones. I found the high mountain snow and clear, dry air invigorating and became quite passionate about skiing—that is, until I broke my leg. After that Patricia tried to slow me down. She urged me to take up cross-country skiing instead of black diamond downhill racing. To humor her, I tried cross-country once, but I just couldn't get into it.

Eventually all of our children would graduate from college—with law degrees, master's degrees, and degrees in special programs—and several would graduate from Catholic colleges, something that Patricia and I had always hoped for. All of them went on to marry and have families of their own. We are proud of each and every one of them.

The day before the Steelers beat New England and won a place in the AFC playoffs, and exactly a month to the day after my mother died, my daughter Pat and her husband Bob presented us with our first grandchild, a beautiful baby girl named Laura. On Christmas Day 1990, my son Art and his wife Greta brought us our first grandson and named him Danny (who in the Rooney tradition has turned out to be a good football player). It seems in this life whenever a door closes another opens.

 

 

By 1982 the NFL had evolved into a twenty-eight-team partnership that spanned the nation. Although the league was now big business—
revenues from gate receipts, television, film, ventures, and endorsements totaled in the billions of dollars—it always had been and still was a kind of fraternity. In the early days, the owners were a close-knit group of men who cared about football and looked out for one another. When a man gave his word, he kept it. A handshake was all you needed. Sure, we had our disagreements, but we never threatened another owner or club. The rule against one club suing another is just one example. Of course, we were as competitive as we could be on the field, but no owner would ever deliberately undermine another in a way that might drive him out of business or hurt the league.

But in 1980 the NFL rules of engagement seemed to change. Al Davis determined to move his Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles without league approval and in the process ended up suing the league, even going so far as naming individual owners as defendants. Moving the Raiders to Los Angeles was in itself a direct attack on another owner, in this case Carroll Rosenbloom's widow, Georgia Frontiere (Carroll had drowned in a tragic accident in 1979). By moving to Los Angeles, he directly challenged the Rams' revenue base. Rozelle and the league's attorney, Paul Tagliabue, argued that the move would not only erode the Rams' market but would leave the loyal Oakland fans high and dry without a team. He pointed out that the success of the NFL depended on the fans—those loyal supporters who should never be taken for granted. I supported this view completely. I thought Davis's move was wrong for the NFL, wrong for Los Angeles, and wrong for the fans.

The NFL is a franchise business. You have to understand that the other franchisees are your partners. It's like McDonald's. They wouldn't put one set of golden arches right across the street from another. It wouldn't make any sense. The two restaurants wouldn't make any money, and the resulting war might even threaten the parent organization. That's just what Al Davis's move to the Los Angeles Coliseum amounted to. You try not to get angry about things like
this, but the rules are in place for a reason—some people think the rules don't apply to them. Pete and the owners now found themselves pitted against Davis and the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission in an antitrust lawsuit.