From the Desk of Eagles Outsider Barry Bowe

Football Round Table

Yesterday, annoyed by WIP’s Afternoon Drive, I switched to The Fanatic and, to my pleasant surprise, encountered a Football Round Table with Mike Missanelli, the Cuz, Tim McManus, Brian Westbrook, and Barrett Brooks.

I purposely placed Barrett’s name last to enhance the organic flow of this narrative.

You see, I enjoy Barrett on the radio – especially during football season – although he’s not on often enough to suit me. But in any case, they were discussing football owners. The names of Jeff Lurie, Jerry Jones, and Daniel Snyder came up. And then Barrett started mentioning what Dan Rooney was like when Barrett played for the Steelers.

So I tweeted Barrett.

And Barrett replied.

So, Barrett, here it goes . . .

Art Rooney was Dan Rooney’s father.

Art was a skinny, Irish-Catholic kid from Pittsburgh who grew up playing baseball, football, and boxing. A scholarship athlete at Georgetown, he concentrated on boxing after graduation and won the AAU welterweight boxing title in 1918. But when he fell short of making the 1920 Olympic team, he went back to playing baseball and football.

He played minor league baseball for the Flint (Michigan) “Vehicles” and the Wheeling (West Virginia) “Stogies.” In 1925, he was Wheeling’s player/manager and led the Middle Atlantic League in hits, runs, stolen bases, and finished second in hitting.

During football season, he played halfback for the semi-pro Pittsburgh “Hope Harvey” and “Majestic Radio” teams. Eventually, he bought the Majestic Radio team and renamed it the “J. P. Rooneys.” That experience hooked him on football ownership.

An all-around sportsman, Rooney spent part of his summers at the Saratoga Race Track in New York State. For years, one of his racetrack cronies was Philadelphia Main Liner Bert Bell.

Bert Bell & the Eagles

On July 9, 1933, Bert Bell and his partner Lud Wray paid $2,500 to buy a new NFL franchise to put in Philadelphia – which they called the Eagles. Art Rooney was envious of his racetrack crony – but not for long.

Just one month later, Rooney won a $160,000 parlay-bet at Saratoga and immediately ponied up the $2,500 franchise fee to put an NFL football team in Pittsburgh. He named his new team the “Pirates” after the city’s baseball team. He then used his racetrack winnings to bankroll his football team in the years that followed.

In trying to win a title, Rooney spent lavishly on players and coaches. But he failed to win a championship and he was losing around $25,000 per season. By 1940, his finances were running thin. Prior to the 1940 season, Rooney changed the name of his team to the “Steelers.”

Birds of a Feather

During the first three years that Bert Bell and Lud Wray operated the Eagles, they lost $85,000 – which is approximately $1.5-million by 2015 economic standards. Lud Wray wanted out so bad that, in 1936, he held a public auction to sell his interest in the team. When Bert Bell bid $4,500, he became sole owner of the Eagles.

But Bell continued to lose money as the calendar flipped from one year to the next up until 1940.

That situation made Bert Bell and Art Rooney birds of a feather:

• Both loved football.
• Both loved owning an NFL football team.
• Both were running thin on finances and feeling desperate.

Enter the Millionaire

Alexis “Lex” Thompson was a 28-year-old New York City millionaire playboy who inherited $3.5-million in Republic Steel stock when he was 15 years old – and he wanted to own an NFL team. When he learned that Bert Bell was experiencing financial distress, he approached Bell.

Was he interested in selling the Eagles?

Knowing that his pal Art Rooney was also experiencing financial woes with the Steelers, Bell went to Rooney. They put their heads together and came up with a three-step scheme:

1. Art Rooney would sell the Steelers to Lex Thompson.
2. Thompson would move the Steelers to Boston so that the team was closer to his home in New York City.
3. Rooney and Bert Bell would then pool their financial resources. They would change the name of the Philadelphia Eagles to the “Pennsylvania Keystoners” and split the team’s home games between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

When Lex Thompson agreed to the deal, the scheme hatched:

• Lex Thompson paid Art Rooney $160,000 to purchase the Steelers – 64 times more than Rooney’s initial investment seven year earlier.
• Art Rooney used the funds to purchase 70% of the Eagles from Bert Bell – with Bell retaining the remaining 30% of the Eagles.
• Lex Thompson immediately changed the name of his new team to the “Pittsburgh Iron Men” and petitioned the NFL to allow him to move his team to Boston.
• At the same time, Art Rooney and Bert Bell petitioned the NFL to allow them to transform the Philadelphia Eagles into the Pennsylvania Keystoners.

Snag Develops

Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall was apprehensive about Art Rooney and Bert Bell monopolizing the entire state of Pennsylvania with one team they jointly owned. With only ten teams in the NFL at that time, Marshall had little trouble convincing enough owners to go along with him to block the proposed moves.

The NFL owners shot down both proposals.

Both Lex Thompson and Art Rooney were suddenly experiencing buyer’s remorse. Thompson didn’t want to own a team in Pittsburgh and Rooney didn’t want to own a team in Philadelphia.

So another deal was struck:

• The men swapped cities.
• Lex Thompson moved his franchise and his players from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to play as the Eagles.
• Art Rooney and Bert Bell moved their franchise and their players from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh – and they changed the team’s name back to the Steelers.

The 1941 season started with Bert Bell as president and head coach of the Steelers and Art Rooney as the team’s general manager. But after the Steelers lost the first two games, Rooney convinced Bell to step down as coach.

Bert Bell then returned to Philadelphia to become general manager of the Eagles. To avoid a conflict of interest, Bell sold his shares of the Steelers to members of Art Rooney’s family.

This series of moves came to be known as the Pennsylvania Polka.

In addition to being an official Eagles Outsider, Barry Bowe is also the author of:

• Born to Be Wild
• 1964 – The Year the Phillies Blew the Pennant
• 12 Best Eagles QBs
• Soon-to-be-published sexy, police procedural Caribbean Queen
• Soon-to-be-published novel Stosh Wadzinski
• Soon-to-be-published novel Polish Widow
• Soon-to-be-published novel Birth of the Birds