SUPER BOWL XXIII : CINCINNATI BENGALS vs. SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS : GOLD MIND : Many Come and Go in Pro Football, but Brown Just Keeps Coming Up With Something Else New

Time waits for no man, as the declines of old dynasts Tom Landry, Don Shula and Chuck Noll are said to prove.

They’ve all had to make way for the great young minds of the modern game like . . .

Paul Brown?

That’s right, 80-year-old Paul Brown, still active as principal owner and general manager of the Cincinnati Bengals, who are about to play in their second Super Bowl in the ‘80s.

Actually, it’s Paul Brown’s mind that has never waited for anyone.

If you want to know where modern football started, try this man, who was the first to grade players on film and give IQ tests-- at Massillon High School in the early ‘40s --who helped integrate the pro game, hired the first full-time coaching staff, first sent in plays from the sideline.

That electronic helmet they’re still trying to get right?

“I did it, must have been 30-40 years ago,” the old gent says. “I had this thing, no bigger than a watch. We put it inside George Ratterman’s helmet.

“We were playing an exhibition game and I could talk to George. The thing never worked real well. It was buzzing and all that. He finally came over and said, ‘Coach, some guy just got stabbed over on Fifth Avenue.’ ”

Brown’s news conference breaks up in laughter.

“You had to know Ratterman,” Brown says, grinning. “I probably made a mistake, trying it out with him.”

DAYS OF GLORY, DAYS OF RAGE

PB, we barely knew ye.

PB, that’s what everyone in the Bengals’ front office, including the secretaries, calls him. Far from the austere figure he appeared on TV, prowling the sidelines, looking sterner than stern, those flaring eyebrows making him look like a frowning hawk, he is gentle, polite, and, around people he doesn’t know, a little shy.

He is self-effacing and hates self-promoters. If he’s aware that he changed his world--don’t worry, he is--he is becomingly embarrassed if it’s mentioned in his presence.

He doesn’t mind talking about the good old days, when a team was a family, when football was a game rather than a retirement plan, and everyone wasn’t bent on cashing in on each of his life’s experiences.

He doesn’t, however, have the modern habit of re-hashing his grievances over and over.

But he has those, too, or one big one: That first Monday in 1963 when Art Modell, the new owner of the Cleveland Browns, barely off the plane from Brooklyn, called him into his office and fired him.

“That’s in the past,” says Brown when asked about it. “Long gone. Forgotten.

“Art and I see each other socially now and it’s history.”

At the time, though, Brown considered Modell the devil in manipulative merchant-prince’s clothing.

Modell fired the coach who had started the franchise; who had 8 years left on his contract; who had built the team into a power in the All-America Football Conference and took it right to the top of the National Football League, too; who brought 12 future Hall of Famers players to town, among them Jim Brown, Marion Motley, Otto Graham and Mike McCormack; on whose staff Shula and Hall of Fame coach Weeb Ewbank learned their lessons; whose very name the team had taken.

Modell had the things in Brown’s office put in a cardboard box and placed on the porch of his house.

Brown called his assistants to his home and told them they owed it to their families--a theme he always returns to--to stay on if asked, that he wouldn’t consider them disloyal.

Modell did retain them, under Brown’s old top assistant, Blanton Collier, who took the team Brown had just gone 7-6-1 with and won a division title in his first season.

“I didn’t hear from any of the coaches after they left my home that day,” Brown says in his autobiography, “PB.”

“Katy (his wife) and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t call or come see us. Of course, I realize now that if Modell had heard about it, their jobs would have been in jeopardy.

“Finally, I said to Katy, ‘I’ve got to see these guys anyway,’ so I reserved a room at the Midday Club in Cleveland and invited them all to lunch. I didn’t know what I really expected to accomplish, although I did ask them one favor: To tell the truth if they were ever called to testify in a damage suit.

“Other than that, very little was said by anyone and it just tore me up. When lunch ended, all I could say was ‘Goodby,’ and with a hollow feeling, I left them. I guess that I was upset, too, that the men to whom I had given so much had offered me so little when I really needed it. I had brought every one of these men into football. They were my guys and my closest friends, and I couldn’t understand what was happening to them or to me.”

ELBA ON THE PACIFIC, RESURRECTION ON THE OHIO

It’s January, 1989, the day after the Bengals have won the AFC championship, and Brown is sitting in his office in Riverfront Stadium. It’s cool and dimly lit, with a Bengal tigerskin rug in front of the window.

He’s asked about Modell. He doesn’t really want to go into it in length. He talked about it in his book and how many times can a private man trot out his soul?

“Would you like a copy?” he asks.

He reaches behind him into a cabinet and bring out one of the 50 or so copies there, autographs the flyleaf and gives it to his interviewer.

“Art was not a football person at all,” he says. “He was from a PR firm in New York.

“He was a friend of one of our owners, Bob Gries, and he made a suggestion to him--that there should be doubleheaders in football like there were in baseball. Art thought that sounded like pretty good--what’s the term Bob used?-- merchandising. “

Modell ultimately bought a controlling interest in the Browns. Brown, a 5% owner himself and contractually entitled to full operating control of the team, found himself fighting for everything.

“We drafted a young guy named Ernie Davis, but it turned out that he was going to die of leukemia,” he says. “Art wanted me to put him in an exhibition game and I couldn’t do that. Pete Rozelle backed me up, told me not to activate him, which I didn’t. . . .

“It had never entered my mind that anything could ever happen in Cleveland to me. When I was told I wouldn’t be there anymore, I guess that was the low point. It was difficult for me to go home, tell my wife, kids. It’s part of the coaching world, but I never thought about it in terms of happening to me.

“What he said to me was, ‘This football team can never be mine as long as you’re here.’

“All we did was pack up and go as far away as we could, which was La Jolla. And say nothing.

“But that’s all history. It’s so many damn years ago, it’s nothing to me.”

It was something to him then, though. In his book, the chapter on his La Jolla days is titled, “Years of Exile.”

There were 4 such years, in which he looked around, and Rozelle looked around for him, and they concluded finally that the new franchise proposed for Cincinnati would be almost perfect.

Brown’s Bengals wore orange and black.

His Browns had worn orange and brown.

The Bengals had orange helmets.

The Browns had orange helmets.

Brown says it was just a coincidence, that he wanted a lively name, like the Tigers of Massillon High, and that Bengal tigers are orange and black.

And so he set out.

“We flew into Cincinnati,” says Al LoCasale, now the Raiders’ executive assistant but then Brown’s newly hired head of scouting. “There was a big snowstorm. There was also a public transportation strike and everybody was stuck downtown. And the newspapers were on strike.

“He looked at me and said, ‘We left La Jolla for this?’ ”

MODERN TIMES

You don’t fight a war with close-order drill. But the first thing you do in the Army, believe me, is close-order drill.

--Paul Brown When Bill Walsh was a toddler and Sam Wyche an unformed hope, the one great thinker in football was Paul Brown, who thought out everything under the sun.

On California players:

“I remember he was talking about Frank Gifford,” LoCasale said. “He said, ‘Now that’s a guy who went to USC who’s normal. ‘

“He said, ‘I don’t want to coach guys who come into training camp with any surfboards in the back of their cars.’ ”

On when a team should start weightlifting:

“We scouted the Saints, who entered the league the year before we did,” LoCasale said.

“They put in a big strengthening program from Day 1. Paul’s feeling was, they’re spending a lot of time strengthening people they’re going to cut the next day. He said, ‘Let’s get down to the people we think are going to play football for us and then put our strength program in.’ ”

On entertainment:

Brown was the first to take his team to a movie the night before the game, but he was particular. The Raiders might not mind--or might insist on--having their guys watch “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” but not PB.

From his book: “In the ‘70s, the choice of movies became a bit skimpy for my taste and when I complained publicly, a local theater in Cincinnati provided us with some private showings of decent movies.”

The Bengals went back to “Bambi.”

On what he wanted in a player:

“He put a tremendous stress on, quote, good people,” LoCasale said. “ ‘We’re going to win with good people.’

“His speeches to the squad were famous. He met with our squad the first day in training camp for 2 hours, and he covered life.

“He said, ‘I’m very fortunate to be in the Hall of Fame and I’ve got nothing left to prove. I got back in football to have fun. And if anybody stands between me and my having fun, they’re gone.’ ”

“He said, ‘Don’t call me Coach. Call me Paul. I want to have a first-name relationship. However, remember one thing; you play and I pay.’ ”

In their third season, the Bengals made the playoffs, the fastest rise of any National Football League expansion team.

But things were different.

It was the ‘60s, and authority figures were hard-pressed on all borders.

Football players hired agents, joined the union and became less interested in surrogate fathers than in obtaining raises in their allowances.

“There was a lot of philosophy,” said Bob Trumpy, the NBC broadcaster who was a star Bengal tight end and early maverick, prone to revolutionary acts, such as smoking in the dressing room.

Brown had trouble with Trumpy, and vice versa.

“He started every year with a 6-hour talk, 3 hours the first night, 3 the next morning. I listened to it for 8 years.

“He used to say, ‘Lou Groza heard it 21 years.’ We all thought, ‘Lou Groza must have been able to sleep with his eyes open, or he must have been dead.’

“He certainly encouraged us to call him Paul, but, I mean, nobody did. I think, after a lot of players retired . . . some of the Cleveland players . . . they became pretty good friends with him.

“I played for him for 8 years and he wore the same pants and shirt to training camp for 8 years: black hat with CB on it; white T-shirt with nothing on it; a pair of khaki pants with a black belt; black shoes with white socks.

“I had no complaints about him as a coach. I thought he got more out of us than we really had and he’s got to be given credit for that. But when he stepped down, I thought he duplicated a lot of what Art Modell had done to him.”

Says linebacker Tom Dinkel, who arrived after Brown quit coaching:

“You got a very cold feeling with him. I got along great with him, but there was always that feeling, like he definitely had the upper hand. That’s his whole thing. He wants you to be part of a family, but he wants you to know that he has the leverage to dispose of you as he sees fit.

“He thinks, as a player, you should have enough money to pay for a car in cash and have a nice, healthy down payment on a house.

“That was one of his big sayings: ‘This is not going to be your life’s work.’ ”

Cash for a car?

Not lately, in this league. That rolling German steel goes for $50,000 and up.

“He used to say, ‘Those banks want you to take out those big loans,’ ” Dinkel said. “I didn’t think I was going to take serious financial advice from him, as far as tax consequences go. But I used to chuckle about it.”

GENIUSES PART

After going 10-4, 7-7 and 11-3 in 1973, ’74 and ‘75, Brown gave up coaching.

Trumpy thinks that he picked Bill (Tiger) Johnson as his successor--and passed over Bill Walsh, who had worked for him for 9 years--so that he could retain control.

Walsh, bitterly disappointed at not getting the job, left the organization and rose to greatness elsewhere.

Said Brown: “The fact is that I made a business judgment and selected Bill Johnson--Bill was our senior assistant. In those days they didn’t have what they call offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators.

“I fully thought that Bill Walsh would be back with Bill Johnson. I thought they’d make a great combination.

“But Bill went down with the rest of our coaches to the Senior Bowl and while he was there, the owner of the San Diego Chargers, Gene Klein, got ahold of him and made him a good proposition, plus the title of offensive coordinator. I guess in those days there wasn’t as much protocol. Nobody called us and asked permission. It just happened.

“In fairness, Bill always had--I thought--a desire to get back to the West Coast.

“You can only appoint one guy and I had Chuck Studley, Mike McCormack. I had a lot of people I could have made the coach. Bill Johnson’s first year was a good one. He made the playoffs. But then he had health problems.”

So did the Bengals. They had consecutive 4-12 seasons. Homer Rice followed Johnson and Forrest Gregg followed Rice.

In Gregg’s second season, 1981, the Bengals reached the Super Bowl, where they lost in the Silverdome to Walsh and the 49ers.

Two seasons after that, Gregg bolted suddenly for total control in Green Bay.

Brown hired Wyche, an ex-Bengal and Walsh’s quarterback coach.

Trumpy says that Brown hired Gregg, a powerful personality in his own right, because Modell had fired him, that Gregg left because of collisions with Brown, that Brown hired Wyche because he wanted a Walsh-surrogate.

Brown doesn’t agree, but history does seem to have a way of coming around again in his life.

FOREVER YOUNG

PB does the Ickey Shuffle.

Really.

“I walked into the dressing room before a game,” Brown said. “We were playing Seattle. I saw Ickey (Woods), James Brooks, Stanford Jennings.

“I said, ‘Ickey, that dance you do--I can’t say much for it. But my wife likes it. I don’t think it’s taunting anybody. As far as I’m concerned, you can do it.’

“And then I went . . . “

The august Paul Brown then did the Ickey Shuffle for his news conference, complete with feigned spike, while the audience howled.

(Mildly exasperated,) “Right away, some people thought that was funny. You can be 100 years old and do this.

“Nothing to it but leaning on one foot, then the other. But he’s having more fun with it. It just developed. It’s one of those things--it’s amazing what takes place in our society.”

Whatever else they say about Brown, they’ll never say he was swayed by the tide.

They say he’s cheap, and old-fashioned.

The Bengals rarely get a rookie signed before the end of training camp. The Bengals skimp on scouts and used to draft heavily in the Big Ten. The Bengals didn’t like the idea of starting a scouting combine workout because it cost too much money, until they found out it would save them money, after which they fell in love with it.

Well, try thrifty, and principled.

Does he have an opinion about drug policy?

“Well, you’re talking to the wrong guy. I can remember when I dismissed a guy forever if he got drunk. I had a guy our first year in Cleveland who got himself . . . intoxicated and got in a fight with some police. That was the night before the championship. So when he came to the field the next day, I said, ‘Jim, for the welfare of this football team, you are dismissed. Get out.’

“That was the way it was then.”

Instant replay?

The purist of purists, Brown still leads the fight against it.

“He’s on the competition committee,” LoCasale said. “There’ll be a number of issues on which there’ll be a 3-1 vote, where Paul will just stand up and be the one. The game is very important to him.”

Fiscal policy?

“You’d be surprised how many teams lost money,” Brown said. “We’ve got people today who aren’t football people. They call themselves entre . . . preneurs. They have outside businesses.

“In the old days, there were the Rooneys, the Halases, the Maras. Right now, we’re one of the old ones, ourselves, because we’re nothing but football. We have to operate in terms of what we’ve got to do it with, and make no apologies for it.

“In fact, I got a lot of fun out of the fact that we got here with our rinky-dinky little 11.

(Smiling,) “There used to be a writer in Pittsburgh, Chet Smith, the Village Smith. He’d call me on the phone when we were going to play the Steelers. He’d start like this:

“ ‘How is the wily mentor today?’

“I would say, ‘Wiley’s pretty good, Chet. What are the news?’

“And he would say, ‘Not a single new. I called to find out about your scrappy little 11.’ ”

He smiles at the memory.

Thus goes Paul Brown’s last Super Bowl hurrah.

Or is it?

“I make a point of not thinking about it,” Brown says, smiling.

“I told our players and I told our coaches, ‘Win this for yourselves.’

“Who knows? I could be here . . . “

He laughs.

” . . . mind a little wishful thinking, fellows?”

Figure he’ll be back a couple of times.