Rooneys" (to promote the state legislative campaign of the team's quarterback, and Art Rooney's brother, Jimmy Rooney), played most of their home games at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. These Steeler precursors were composed primarily of players from the local colleges: Pitt, Duquesne and Carnegie Tech, all of which were major college programs of the day. Although football was popular in Pittsburgh at the time, the city had no fully professional teams due to Pennsylvania's puritanical blue laws, which prohibited athletic competition on Sundays because it was the Sabbath. The teams of the National Football League, which was founded in 1920, played primarily on Sunday to avoid conflicts with college football games which were played on Saturday. The early years: Decades of futility In May 1933, in anticipation of the repeal of some of Pennsylvania's restrictive laws in the fall of that year, Rooney applied for a franchise with the NFL. His request was granted on May 19, 1933, and the Pittsburgh Professional Football Club, Inc. joined the NFL in exchange for a US$2,500 franchise fee (roughly $ in today's dollars). The new team was known as the Pirates in reference to their baseball club landlords at Forbes Field. Before settling on Forbes, Rooney considered playing at Greenlee Field, which housed the city's Negro league baseball club. Since the blue laws were not repealed until November's general election, the team was forced to play its first four home games on Wednesday nights. Rooney's new team was a study in frustration for many years: between 1933 and 1971, they posted a winning record only eight times, with a further six seasons at .500, and made the playoffs just once, in 1947, when they were shut out by Philadelphia. The 1930s: The Pirates years In the early years of the franchise, the Pirates were not Rooney's only (or even his primary) focus. Even the office off the lobby of the Fort Pitt Hotel from which he ran the team was shared with the Rooney-McGinley Boxing Club, which promoted fights. He also spent a good amount of his time and energy handicapping and placing bets on horse racing, a lifelong hobby. Rooney once won an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 ($ to $ million today) in a single 1936 day of betting. It actually was highly likely that the purchase of the Pittsburgh Steelers was made with horse race gambling winnings. However, this is becoming