The old school loses a master.(football scout Ron Wolf)(Brief Article)

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 ...