Sports

Dan Rooney, top, after the Steelers won the A.F.C. championship. At 76, he walks to work. Rooney, above left in 1966 with his father, Art, who founded the team.
Son of Art Rooney Sr., who secured a football franchise here in 1933 and founded the team that came to be called the Steelers, Dan grew up on the city’s blighted North Side, on a street that had already seen better days when his parents moved there in 1939. Now 76 and the Steelers’ chairman, he bought the house from his brothers after their father’s death and with his wife, Patricia, moved back into the neighborhood. Judging from the parking lot directly opposite and the Wendy’s on the corner, it seems safe to say that Rooney is the only millionaire living on what used to be known as Millionaire’s Row. His house — red brick, two stories, with a small front porch — is a third the size of your average suburban McMansion.
The oldest of five brothers, Dan was a talented quarterback for North Catholic High School. When the city’s all-Catholic team was announced at the end of the 1949 season, he was disappointed to find his name on the second team. The first-team slot had gone to Johnny Unitas.

Rooney walks to the Steelers’ home games, on a broken sidewalk, past an abandoned gas station and underneath the overpass for Route 65.
For away games, he travels with the players. “I wasn’t used to the owner flying on the plane,” said the backup quarterback Charlie Batch, recalling his surprise when he arrived to play for the Steelers after leaving the Detroit Lions. “And not only was he on the plane, he was sitting in the seat that doesn’t recline, in front of the bathroom.”
Rooney goes to Mass every morning, then commutes to the Steelers’ training facility on the South Side. He drives a Buick. In the office by 8:15, he checks in with the coaches, the players and his son Art II, the oldest of his nine children and the team’s president. He watches practice. He eats lunch in the cafeteria with the players and the staff.
“Some owners treat you like a rental property,” said defensive end Nick Eason, who has played in Denver and in Cleveland. “They have some maintenance guy to take care of it, they just come by to check on it, they look and they leave. Mr. Rooney comes around, he always sticks his hand out to you. ‘Hey, Nick’— and I’m like, he knows my name?”
Nose tackle Casey Hampton said: “A lot of owners, this is a hobby, but for him, this is his business, what he does. He’s here, shakes your hand, talks to you every day. Every day.”
With defensive end Aaron Smith, Rooney talks about flying. With Batch, a Pittsburgh native, the subject is high school football. “With me, it’s usually my hair,” the platinum-blond kicker Jeff Reed said. Rooney asks about their wives, their girlfriends, their children. He asks about punter Mitch Berger’s dad, who grew up a Steelers fan and came to opening day. Strong safety Troy Polamalu said he treats all the players as his equal, “from Hines Ward to a free-agent rookie.” Some players have his cellphone number. One day a couple of years ago, cornerback Ike Taylor was exhausted and, at Rooney’s invitation, took a two-hour nap on the couch in his office while Rooney worked elsewhere.
Ward, a receiver, said it was Rooney’s example that taught him the importance of a handshake. “I never used to shake hands. It was always just, ‘Hi, how ya doing?’ But something about him made me realize it’s all in the handshake, and every time I meet somebody now, I shake their hand.”
Embracing the Past
The night before home games, Dan and his wife turn out for the team dinners at a local hotel.
“Every team says it’s a family, but it’s bull a lot of the time,” Berger said. In a 13-year career in which he has worn 10 uniforms, he said there had been times when he played mostly for himself. His five months with the Steelers have been different. “I’m glad I got a chance to experience the way it should be before everything’s said and done.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/sports/football/27rooney.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=rooney&st=cse