My first piece for Play, the New York Times’s quarterly (or so) sports magazine, publishes this Sunday, Nov. 2 (but you can read it online now). It’s about the venerable Rooney family’s attempt to sell the Pittsburgh Steelers:

In 1933, a boxing promoter and horse-racing handicapper from the North Side of Pittsburgh named Art Rooney paid $2,500 for a franchise in the young National Football League. The team wouldn’t play for, let alone win, an N.F.L. championship in its first 40 years.

But then came Franco Harris and the “Immaculate Reception,” Terry Bradshaw and Lynn Swann and four Super Bowl titles in six seasons. The Pittsburgh Steelers earned a national following and a reputation as an elite organization. The year before his death in 1988, Rooney composed a letter on team stationery to his five sons. “Time is starting to run out on me,” he wrote. “I would like to reach some kind of an understanding so that there will be no questions or complications regarding my estate.” Rooney left each son $200,000 and an equal share of his 80 percent stake in the team.

Read more. . .