The old school loses a master

Sporting News, The, Feb 12, 2001 by Paul Attner

For my first extended sit-down interview with Ron Wolf, we met for lunch in the cafeteria at the University of Pittsburgh hospital. I was soon to learn how much that setting revealed about the essence of the man.

At heart, Ron Wolf is a scout, an old-line, grass-roots football scout who, long before computers and frequent-flyer miles, learned about the pro game in a most unglamorous fashion. He traveled to small-town America, watched college practices in all types of weather and first smelled the scent of a good player. The hours were extended, the perks rare, and when he could sniff out a good, cheap place to eat, so much the better. That is how he found, even in big-city Pittsburgh, the quickest, most-reasonably priced, closest-to-the-campus luncheon establishment. Later, when he could afford much fancier surroundings worthy of a man with a multimillion-dollar contract, he still felt most comfortable in that cafeteria, where he always had lunch when scouting players at Pitt.

That is Ron Wolf. Uncomplicated, unpampered, no facade. And that is how he views football. To him, as he reminds me often, it is still a game of blocking and tackling. Everything else confuses this most fundamental of sports. And how this sport has become confused, what with a salary cap and free agency and roles to alter the flow and spirit of the game. With each change, Wolf winced and adapted and stayed among the best. But like it? It was as if the very fabric of his professional existence was being pulled apart.

What happened to Wolf is the same malaise that claimed Bill Parcells this of[season and Bobby Beathard the last. They are among the best and brightest of a generation of football grinders who helped extend the successful run of the NFL with their unmatched savvy. And now, they are gone.

They don't mind the long days and the travel; that's how they were weaned in the business. But there is something about today's football, with its out-of-kilter priorities and upstart owners and outrageous agents and irresponsible, disrespectful players that drains these special men. What kept them in the game for so long--the thrill of competing, of seeing a nugget of an idea bloom into success--no longer is enough to offset the daily disturbance to their sense of dignity and correctness.

Wolf's resignation from the Packers speaks volumes about the conflicting status of the NFL. On one hand, it is a league successful almost beyond comprehension, a massive moneymaker that can attract a monstrous audience even to a Super Bowl matching the Giants and Ravens. But it also is not our father's league, with dominant teams and player loyalty and athletes who lived down the street. They are uptown now, in their mansions with their attendants and marketing people. Wolf never felt comfortable as an uptown guy--or being in their company.

When I sat down with him three years ago to write a book about his management philosophies, a nine-month odyssey that resulted in The Packer Way: Nine Stepping Stones To Building a Winning Organization, I knew the basics of the man. He had learned how to scout under the guidance of Al Davis, and had been a Raider for the bulk of his professional life. He had been the first general manger of the Buccaneers and, record-wise, failed miserably before being fired. Later, he was hired to revitalize the Packers' organization, which had wallowed in mediocrity after Vince Lombardi left town in the late '60s. In a few years, Wolf did the unthinkable: He found a gem in coach Mike Holmgren and a superstar in quarterback Brett Favre; lured free agents to small-town Green Bay, beginning with Reggie White; and, ultimately, earned a Super Bowl ring for his genius.

But this shell of an outline, no matter how impressive, tells so little about him. Wolf is a football historian. His idea of a perfect fall afternoon is watching Army or Navy play a home game. There is so much he admires about these academies and the men they produce and the football they once played--simple, tough, physical, with honor. He has few close friends, but those who have gotten to know him are extremely loyal. He can be stern, grumpy, moody, but he has a whimsical sense of humor and he constantly pokes fun at himself and the various personnel mistakes he has made throughout the years. He has earned plenty of honors, but none moved him more than his induction last summer into the Packer Hall of Fame. And when some of his friends started referring to him as "L.L.," as in Living Legend, no one chuckled more than he did.

Yet Wolf always has been a serious guardian of what he considers the right way to conduct NFL business. He knew he couldn't bring back the old NFL--without free agency, without a cap, without the agents he despised so much. He couldn't bring back a structure where he could draft players and develop them and turn them into winners instead of seeing, as he did, a Super Bowl champion dismantled through the familiar player movement of this era. He would have welcomed a modification of free agency, perhaps a mandatory longer initial contract that would tie a player to his first organization for five or six years. Yet he realized there was no turning back the salary explosion and the cancer of overpaid, underachieving players and the resulting decline of the game's quality.