Success Quote by Art Rooney

There is a whole philosophy of power tucked into Rooney's casual roll call of "Sportswriters" as "friends". It sounds like a shrug, but it is really a map of how influence moved in 20th-century American sports: not through press releases and brand campaigns, but through shared circuits, shared vices, shared clocks. "They were racetrack guys and so was I" is less about a hobby than a badge of affiliation. The racetrack isn't just a venue; it's a social algorithm. You learn who can be trusted, who can pay, who talks too much, who keeps a secret. You also learn that outcomes are never purely "earned" - they're managed, narrated, and occasionally wagered on.

Rooney, a businessman and sports owner, is signaling an older media bargain: access in exchange for intimacy. Sportswriters weren't neutral referees of public truth; they were inside the clubhouse, passengers on the same late nights, beneficiaries of the same informal economy. That line quietly normalizes the cozy relationship modern audiences now treat with suspicion. Today, "my friends in the press" reads like a conflict-of-interest warning label. In Rooney's world, it reads like stability.

The intent is disarming candor, almost nostalgic. The subtext is harder: the myth of the clean, purely competitive game was always running parallel to gambling culture and backroom relationships. Rooney isn't confessing corruption so much as reminding you what counted as credibility then: not distance, but belonging.