In the money-first world of professional sports owners, Rooney, who died Thursday at 84, showed courage many others might have avoided. Obama had just won the Iowa caucus, the first step in his march to the presidency, and there was something about the way Obama spoke that moved Rooney. “The knowledge of the game and what it looked like and how it was played was so strange and foreign to Americans in so many ways. Chances of winning We’ve finally hit the point in our rankings where it’s only implausible to imagine a team winning the title rather than absolutely and utterly impossible.