Sunday, December 26, 1999
Times change, Mike: This isn't your father's NFL anymore
BY SCOTT MacGREGOR
The Cincinnati Enquirer
One of the biggest criticisms of Bengals President Mike Brown over the last decade has been his refusal to hire a general manager to make football decisions.
In large part, that philosophy is rooted to Brown's insistence that the family not lose control of the team. And that seems to stem from 1962, when Art Modell took control of the Cleveland Browns and fired Brown's father, Paul, the founder of the franchise.
But many National Football League experts think the jobs of owner and general manager are too big for one man to handle in this age of free agency, which helps explain the Bengals' futility since unfettered free agency hit the league in 1993.
Many of the teams that have hired a general manager and given him authority over personnel — such as Ron Wolf in Green Bay and the hot guy of the moment, Bill Polian in Indianapolis — have turned years of losing into winning.
“You hire a general manager — in my mind — to build a ball club, and if he's tied up with contract negotiations and other things like that, you're taking him away from what he should be doing best,” said Bob Harlan, president of the Green Bay Packers.
Even George Young, a close friend of Brown and former GM of the New York Giants who helped turn them from laughingstock to Super Bowl champ in the 1980s, thinks owners give themselves the best chance to win when they step out of the way.
“I think you find a person with talent, then you allow him to develop his own job description based on his ability to do things,” said Young, now a senior vice president with the NFL.
“I think if you're looking for a Caesar or Napoleon, you've got a problem. But my experience in this league is that owners should own, managers should manage, coaches should coach and personnel people should scout,” Young said.
After years of foundering in the post-Vince Lombardi era — the Packers were 142-189-8 from 1968 to 1990 — Green Bay decided to hire a strong football mind, Wolf, in 1991. The Packers had a 50-50 split in power between the coach and front office that wasn't working. Wolf wanted and received total control of personnel and the hiring and firing of coaches.
He then helped build the Packers into a two-time Super Bowl participant and the world champions in 1996.
“The two most important people in our history the last 50 years are Vince Lombardi and Ron Wolf. Ron Wolf took this thing and changed it totally overnight,” Harlan said.
After years of struggling in Indianapolis, Colts owner Jim Irsay hired Polian, one of the NFL's finest football minds, two years ago — and is reaping the benefits all the way to the playoffs. At 12-2 this season, the Colts are one of a handful of legitimate Super Bowl contenders.
Polian has helped turn a perennial loser into one of the NFL's hottest young teams through a combination of shrewd drafting — running back Edgerrin James instead of the popular choice, 1998 Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams — intelligent free-agent signings and turning the franchise in a new, optimistic direction.
Many general managers can look good if they have superstar-in-the-making Peyton Manning at quarterback, as Polian does. And hiring a GM is no panacea. Brown is fond of saying there's always a guy on top today who may not be there tomorrow.
But Polian also built winners in Buffalo, where he and coach Marv Levy were the architects of the Bills' unprecedented four straight Super Bowl appearances, and at Carolina, where he built an expansion franchise into a division champion in two years.
“I'm not surprised at all,” former Bills coach Levy said of his friend's fortune with the Colts. “He's going to have success wherever he goes in this game. He's a builder of morale within the organization, by his own personal integrity, by his knowledge, by giving responsibility to other people, by the way he encourages people.
“That all enhances his ability to recognize talent — not just player talent.”
Brown, on the other hand, has been criticized for everything from bad drafting decisions — first-round busts David Klingler and Dan Wilkinson top the list — to morale being as low in the Bengals' locker room as their 52-106 record this decade.
Bad feelings run high among current and former players over things that may seem ridiculous to sports fans, but rank high with athletes. For instance, Brown slashed the breakfast budget during the season and took heat.
Those moves affect free-agent players, many of whom say they will not come to Cincinnati. Cleveland defensive back Ryan McNeil, for instance, signed with the Browns this fall only after they included a clause in his contract that he not be traded to Cincinnati.
Experts say Brown has made a few good decisions this decade — namely, drafting running back Corey Dillon in the second round in 1997 and linebackers Takeo Spikes and Brian Simmons in 1998. Also, some of the Bengals' problems have been injury-related, as with 1995 first-round pick Ki-Jana Carter. But compare his draft record to the hot general managers in the league, and Brown falls short.
“Good players, that's what makes us all smarter,” Young said. “I wouldn't get away from that. But it's also important to pick good people to pick good players and good coaches. Still, it gets down to having good players and knowing what to do with them.”
The point is not to say Brown needs Polian. It's that many experts think he needs a guy like Polian. Of the 11 teams that have played in the Super Bowl this decade, only one has had an owner in charge of its personnel decisions — the Dallas Cowboys, whose owner, Jerry Jones, worked with coach Jimmy Johnson before their falling out. All others have ceded control to either a coach or general manager, or both.
“What's left to change?” said NFL draft analyst and former Cincinnatian Jerry Jones, publisher of the Drugstore List. “If there are no changes, and they continue to lose and play poorly, it falls in Mike's lap. If there were a GM or a coach or whoever who had total football control, it would fall in his lap.”
One major difference between Brown and general managers such as Polian and Wolf is that most of them learned foot ball from the bottom up, while Brown learned it from the top down.
Brown was handed the management reigns when his father died in 1991. Before that, Brown had been the team's assistant general manager since the club's inception in 1968.
Polian started as a part-time scout for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League in 1973, and Wolf as a scout for the American Football League's Oakland Raiders in 1963.
“I think doing it the hard way adds to your resume, builds your qualifications,” Levy said.
Brown runs the organization the way his father did. Paul Brown was, said Young, “the most complete contributor to our business, the NFL. He contributed more to the coaching profession than anyone.”
It used to work. The family-owned structure got the Bengals to two Super Bowls in the 1980s. But that was before free agency made winning more complex by making money and morale issues more important.
“Ron (Wolf) tells me if I used to need somebody I'd just go get them,” Harlan said. “Now I've got to find out what it costs and do I have the money. It's changed the general manager's job. If you don't have a capable one, you're going to find it very tough to compete.”
The Bengals' success was also before Paul Brown died. Close observers of the Bengals think Mike Brown doesn't have the same talents.
“He doesn't have the hands-on ability his father had,” said draft analyst Jones, a longtime Bengals observer who has seen Brown up-close as an eavesdropper in their draft war room. “How can you have that?
“You can connect a lot of this with Paul Brown dying. It's very hard to explain the type of effect he had, even after he had given up being general manager. It was amazing when he walked on the field. Everything changed, got sharper, crisper. Players wanted to make a good showing in front of the Hall of Fame man, the legend,” Jones said.
“No matter what Mike Brown does, he can't be his father. I don't know if he's fighting that constantly.”
Brown has steadfastly refused to give up football decisions. But as long as he doesn't and the Bengals keep losing, he remains the whipping boy.
“If he would hire somebody and it doesn't work out, that's no disgrace,” Jones said. “I think he's made it rather clear he doesn't wish to relinquish (control). If that's it, he's indeed the fall guy for the whole works. The final outcome of that team is the measure of his work.”
John Byczkowski contributed to this report.
Shareholders' take of profits drained Bengals
What the fans say
Times change, Mike: This isn't your father's NFL anymore
Bengals went from awesome to awful
'50s Cardinals compare to '90s Bengals
Recapping the dismal 1990s
Bengals-Ravens Stories
Sophomore slump? Not for XU's Frey
Turner back practicing with Xavier
Naehring giving best off the field
'99 Sports: Color the year Red
Ruth or Jordan? Tune in
State baseball back to Columbus
Couch still the story in Kentucky
