The day Art Rooney, Sr. brought his professional football team that later won six Super Bowls to Portage to face the Bulldogs

… little known football history

In the early days of the Pittsburgh Steelers history, Art Rooney, Sr. never envisioned that his football team, or the National Football League, would become the behemoth that it eventually did.

However, the NFL had always wanted a professional football team in Pittsburgh during the 1920s because of the popularity of football in Pennsylvania, and because of the success of the then powerful Panthers of the University of Pittsburgh.

However, the big problem is placing a team in Pittsburgh was the conservative Christians who insisted that the state have “Blue Laws” that required that no sporting events of any kind, or at any level, could take place on Sundays.

However, in the years of the Depression, that changed just at the same time as Prohibition was repealed, which drove the Christians wild but made Art Rooney, Sr. very happy.

In 1933, Rooney was able to scrape up a fee of $2,500 to the NFL for a franchise in Pittsburgh — and the rest is history.

However, in the early years, Rooney struggled to make the team, which he called the Pirates like the baseball franchise, popular in the area.

Rooney also struggled to keep the team afloat financially. However, according to Murray Tucker, who wrote a book entitled “Screamer: The Forgotten Voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers” about his father, Joe, The Chief was aided by a win at the racetrack, which is where he was making most of his money in those years despite the Depression,

In 1936, Rooney won a parlay at Saratoga Race Course, which netted him about $160,000. He used the winnings to hire a coach, Joe Bach, give contracts to his players and almost win a championship. The winnings funded the team until 1941 when he sold the franchise to NY playboy Alex Thompson. Thompson wanted to move the franchise to Boston so he could be within a five-hour train ride of his club. At the same time, the Philadelphia Eagles ran into financial problems. Rooney used the funds from the sale of franchise to get a 70% interest in the Eagles, the other 30% held by Rooney friend and future NFL commissioner, Bert Bell. Bell and Rooney agreed to trade places with Thompson. Bell took the role of President of the Steelers that he relinquished to Rooney in 1946 when Bell became Commissioner. Rooney got his good friend and his sister's father in law, Barney McGinley, to buy Bell's shares. Barney's son Jack, Art's brother in law, retained the McGinley interest that passed to his heirs when he died in 2006.

Murray Tucker

His decision to bring his team to Portage

In order to generate interest in the Pirates/Steelers, Rooney brought his rag-tag operation to Portage, Pa. to face the local semi-professional team. They were known as the Bulldogs, and the date was Aug. 8, 1935.

I first learned about this from my father, who worked in Portage for about 40 years and officiated the Bulldogs’ games as a referee. I attended some of those games in the 1950s. The Bulldogs were a group of men who worked in other jobs but loved football and just wanted to continue playing.

The game was held at a field located along Route 53. I am not certain of the name of the field, but it may have been Eagles’ Field or Legion Field, but I am not certain. It was also a baseball field for many years.

Later, it became the home of a strip mall that included a Quaker Market, later named Foodland.

According to “The Pro Football Archive,” the name of the location was “Portage Field” and the Pirates/Steelers won the game, 46-0. It also notes that attendance for the game was listed at 3,000. The game was a pre-season exhibition game, according to the archives.

I am going to try to discover more information about the game. It was an interesting part of Portage lore than many contemporary residents do not realize.

https://www.profootballarchives.com/1935pora.html