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Monday, January 20, 2003

The Super Bowl will be all the talk of one Rooney today. You have to tune to WBZT-AM, Talk Station 1230 out of West Palm Beach, Fla., to hear it.

His show airs at noon Mondays and Fridays, in between programs by a local chiropractor and Dr. Laura. The station bills his “NFL Preview” this way: “An insider’s view of the weekly pro [and college] football scene, hosted by one of the NFL’s own.” Sometimes, even Uncle Dan helps him get guests or steers him in the right direction.

“I started doing it last April 12,” Pat Rooney Jr. was saying the other day over the telephone from the Palm Beach Kennel Club and Poker Room, where he holds down his regular day job overseeing the family’s dog-track business.

“Pulled some big strings and got Kevin Colbert to be the first guest. He was very good. Put up with a lot of stuttering and stammering on my part.”

His second guest was Will McDonough, a Boston Globe columnist and longtime NFL insider who died little more than a week ago. Then, in the final segment of the show, he ran out of things to say.

“You don’t think 10 minutes is a long time,” he said, “but if you don’t have anything on your mind, it’s definitely a challenge to come up with something creative.”

Rooney is, like his cousin, Steelers vice president and general counsel Art Rooney II, a lawyer. “There’s a ton of us in this profession. And some of the Rooneys are very successful attorneys,” Pat Rooney said. Yet this one realized a while ago that he wanted to try other things. At age 38, with a wife and four children to feed and the Kennel Club to help run, this nephew of Steelers President Dan Rooney tried something different.

He enrolled in a school of broadcasting in Florida and took a quickie course. He finished in February and started calling stations in south Florida to offer his services. WBZT bit.

He isn’t exactly one of the NFL’s own, but he knows how to contact them. Sometimes, he merely has to ask his dad, Pat, “You talk to Uncle Dan? What’s he saying?” A few weeks ago, the host of “NFL Preview” in West Palm Beach broke the news that the Steelers weren’t thrilled about Jerome Bettis’ weight.

“It’s not a Pittsburgh Steelers show, though,” Pat Rooney Jr. said. “If it was, that’s all I’d be doing, trying to find inside stuff about the Steelers. It’s an NFL show. I try to keep it as open as I can about the NFL in general.

“I’ll call Uncle Dan. If I think it might be a sensitive type of league issue ... I’ll give him a call first. He’s never told me no, don’t call him. He’ll just say, ‘Be careful, he may not want to talk about it.’ He’s been generally supportive.”

Can you imagine a nephew of Jerry Jones in broadcasting?

Worse still, Al Davis?

Rooney spends most of the time on his shows interviewing front-office types, coaches, players and reporters, which last week included the Post-Gazette’s Ed Bouchette. “It’s more work than you think for just an hour show,” Rooney said. “I don’t know how some of these guys do it for three, four hours a day. My show is just the NFL.”

So Rooney dials up prospective guests on his own. Hi, this is Pat Rooney from WBZT in Palm Beach .... That’s how he landed Marv Levy, CBS’ Phil Simms, San Francisco’s Bill Walsh, Cleveland’s Carmen Policy and Kansas City’s Carl Peterson. Peterson was the one who asked him, Who’s dad is your dad? The normal inquiry is, Which of Dan’s kids are you?

“I’m not one of his sons, even though he has a ton of them,” joked Rooney, born in Pittsburgh but raised in Philadelphia. “He’s my uncle.”

Most of the time, though, NFL guests don’t pay attention to the last name of a radio interviewer, or even the first name. It’s just another on a stack of media requests. There’s a John Rooney who works on White Sox broadcasts and various Fox telecasts, and he’s not one of Dan’s sons or nephews.

It’s only when the “NFL Preview” host gets stonewalled that he feels compelled to play the family card. “Usually, they don’t know me from jack. If I have to, I throw around the Rooney name,” he said.

Two of his brothers are in the military, another is a professor in Florida. His two sisters aren’t involved in the family business, either. So Pat Rooney Sr. leaves him to run the dog track, poker room and jai alai wagering operation. But Pat Rooney Jr. would love to get into the NFL realm through broadcasting. That’s why he’s saving tapes, working toward a radio career that runs more than two days a week.

“It is tough. But it’s something that’s always interested me. Getting the contacts and getting the people I need to know, that’s a good start.”