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The Maras and the Rooneys By Tom Deignan
The long and enduring relationship of two Irish-American sporting families.
When the New York football Giants capped a spectacular drive in the final
two minutes of Super Bowl XLII, to become underdog winners against Tom
Brady and the heavily favored New England Patriots, you have to believe
Dan Rooney was among those cheering loudly.
True, Rooney is not affiliated with the Giants organization. In fact,
he is patriarch of the rival Pittsburgh Steelers.
But Rooney’s Pittsburgh clan and the Giants – long run by
the Irish-American Mara family – share a bond that spans nearly
a century and transcends their deep Irish roots.
“Two Irish-American families have had their contribution to
professional football recognized by having both a father and son enshrined
in the Hall of Fame,” Larry McCarthy writes in Making the Irish
American (edited by Marion Casey and J.J. Lee).
He is referring to Tim Mara and his son Wellington, as well as Art Rooney
and his son Dan. “In their way,” McCarthy continues, “each
family has made significant contributions to the creation and development
of America’s football league.”
Passing the Torch
The Steelers were the league’s most dominant franchise in the 1970s,
winning four Super Bowls that decade with stars like Terry Bradshaw, Lynn
Swan and Mean Joe Green. By the mid-1980s, however, the Giants had become
big winners, nabbing their own Super Bowl victory under coach Bill Parcells
in 1986.
Art Rooney died in 1988, passing the mantle of Pittsburgh leadership onto
his son Dan, who then had to watch his friendly rival, the Giants, win
another Super Bowl in 1991. As they did in 2008, the Giants beat
a heavily favored team in 1991, the Buffalo Bills, led by Irish-American
quarterback Jim Kelly. The Giants again made it to the Super Bowl in 2001,
but they lost badly. Sadly, it was Wellington Mara’s last
chance at another title. In 2006, Mara died at the age of 89.
In one widely reported story, while sitting in a pew at St. Patrick’s
Cathedral during Mara’s funeral service, Bill Parcells tapped Dan
Rooney on his shoulder and whispered: “The torch has been passed.”
Parcells was referring to Rooney’s newfound status as the NFL’s
lone elder statesmen. Rooney later was quoted as saying: “Bill has
been a friend of mine for a long time and I have great respect for him,
both as a person and a coach. What he said meant a lot to me.”
When Mara died, The New York Times Magazine noted: “He had an earthy,
pug-nosed Irish face and an authentic New York accent, of the kind you
hear now only in movies from the 30’s and 40’s. He was a Catholic
who attended Mass daily and fathered 11 children. And as his eulogists
kept pointing out, he was the last of the old-school sports-team owners,
a throwback to football’s leather-helmet era.” Inheriting
the torch from Mara meant a lot to Rooney because the Maras and Rooneys
have been friendly rivals since the 1920s. It is an association that shows
no signs of ending any time soon.
For proof of that, look at up-and-coming actress Kate Mara. She
has appeared in many TV shows as well as movies such as We Are Marshall
and Shooter. As you can tell by her name, Mara is a member of the Giants
clan, one of Wellington’s 40 grandchildren. Kate’s mother,
meanwhile, is Kathleen Rooney. She is a niece of current Steelers owner
Dan Rooney.
 The
Early Days
Timothy J. Mara and Art Rooney had been friends, often frequenting the
racetracks together. One possibly apocryphal story has it that the
Irish duo’s bets one day were so profitable that Art Rooney promised
to name his son Tim. Rooney indeed had a son and named him Tim. Mara – a
New York native – purchased the football Giants (not to be confused
with the baseball Giants of New York) in 1925. Mara’s nine-year-old
son, Wellington, began working for the team as a ball boy.
Dan Rooney, meanwhile, was born in 1932, just before his dad, Art, purchased
the Pittsburgh Steelers. At this time, college football was much more
popular than the professional game. The Giants, who played their
home games in the Polo Grounds in uptown Manhattan, are often credited
with increasing the game’s prestige in the public eye. The
main reason is a 1930 game against the Fighting Irish powerhouse of Notre
Dame, designed as a fundraiser to assist New York’s homeless. The
Giants won easily, a surprise in the eyes of many.
The Giants ultimately made it to eight football title games during the
1930s and 40s. In the 1950s they were led by stars Sam Huff, Frank Gifford
and Roosevelt Brown.
The Steelers’ history is not quite as storied. As fate would
have it, they lost their first game to the Giants and made the football
post-season only once prior to the creation of the modern day NFL in the
1960s. However, they dominated the 1970s and have once again become a
powerhouse, going 15-1 in 2004 and making it all the way to the Super
Bowl winners’ podium the following year.
Creating the Modern NFL
It was in the 1960s and 1970s that the Maras and Rooneys each played key roles
in creating the modern day NFL. The Maras saw early on that the league
would be successful only if teams were given every chance to become competitive.
That meant sharing television revenue equally, rather than allowing big
city teams to dominate the market, thus giving them more money to spend
on top players.
Meanwhile, two existing football leagues merged in 1970. Now operating
as a single league, the NFL nevertheless had two distinct conferences.
The Giants were seen as members of the dominant conference. It is said
that Wellington Mara convinced Rooney and the Steelers to join the supposedly
weaker American Football Conference, to achieve a balance of power. The
move swiftly made the league more competitive and, hence, more successful.
As Larry McCarthy wrote in Making the Irish American, Mara and Rooney
agreed to do this “so that each (franchise) has a realistic opportunity
of competing and winning. This strategy has helped transform the
league from a collection of family run enterprises owned by the Maras
(New York Giants), the Rooneys (Pittsburgh Steelers), the Modells (Cleveland
Browns and Baltimore Ravens) and the Halas-McCaskeys (Chicago Bears) to
a highly successful, multi-billion dollar, multinational sports enterprise.”
It also led Timothy and Wellington Mara, and Art and Dan Rooney, into
the Football Hall of Fame.
One Hill Left to Climb
The Rooney family is not merely dedicated to football. It has played
a large role in Irish-American affairs, far beyond the mere fact that
a 2004 biography of Art Rooney (by Andrew O’Toole) was titled Smiling
Irish Eyes. Along with Sir Anthony O’Reilly, Dan Rooney established
the American Ireland Fund, which has secured millions of dollars for investment
in the Irish economy.
The AIF’s achievements would have been “unthinkable twenty-five
years ago when Dan Rooney and I staggered through that first dinner in
New York,” O’Reilly once said. He added that Dan Rooney “is
a symbol of the modern American dream; the poor family that came from
Newry in County Down, who made their way through the tough North Side
of Pittsburgh to the pinnacle of American football in their ownership
of the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
Indeed, the Maras and Rooneys have achieved so much for so long that there
is only one hill left to climb. They have yet to play against each other
in the Super Bowl. With both the Giants and Steelers pointed in the right
direction, perhaps Super Bowl XLIII will finally be the time. |
