A Daring Move : Youngblood Left a Secure Job With Rams for Sacramento and WLAF

With a quick, quixotic roll of the dice a year ago, Jack Youngblood left home, his job and the hometown glory of his playing days to wander a new career path sharply removed from all the comforts of his life as a Ram emeritus.

He walked away from a secure, if hardly challenging, administrative job with the Rams that was as much a payback for his 14 years as a fire-breathing defensive end as anything else. He left it all in the dust for a league that could have folded on the spot.

A year later, and eight years after his playing days ended, Youngblood, second-year assistant general manager for the Sacramento Surge of the World League of American Football, has barely caught his breath from the commotion. The league, after the NFL almost voted to cut off its funding of it, will open its second season March 14.

“I’ll tell you,” Youngblood says now, “it has been one absolute whirlwind since last February.”

Youngblood went from the prestige and power of the NFL to the confusion and chaos of the WLAF, part of a start-up team in a start-up league in a city that had never had professional football.

This is not your usual player-retires-player-fades-away story, not in the least.

Youngblood, one of the most popular players in Ram history, a man who participated in two playoff games and the 1980 Super Bowl with a broken leg, suddenly became just another underpaid, overworked official in the WLAF, a league more famous for helmet-cams than potential Hall of Famers.

He did this, he says, because he saw great potential in the WLAF and wanted to get in on the ground floor. He did this, he says, because he saw little potential for further advancement in the Rams’ front office.

So here he is, a year into his new career, this retired lion of the NFL, pushing pencils, not offensive linemen, pumping hands instead of his fists, and generally living a life high on activity, low on recognition. In Sacramento, of all places.

“Last year reminded me of being a rookie, where all the experiences were brand new,” Youngblood says. “That’s what it was like being on the management side of a new league. Everything was brand new, everything had to be done. You were in a new city that has never had professional football. So it all has to be explained and sold and (the city has to be) convinced of the product that you have.

“I mean, everything from socks and jocks to rooms and buses had to be done.”

The Surge struggled to a 3-7 record last season, but drew an average crowd of 17,000 in a 22,000-seat stadium. Youngblood says there is momentum building for the Surge in Sacramento.

Youngblood’s job with the Rams involved marketing, player relations, public relations and whatever else he could find to do. Though he doesn’t want to elaborate, it’s clear he was kept out of the confidences of former Coach John Robinson and the front office.

Youngblood also has been the Rams’ color analyst for radio broadcasts, but now it’s unclear whether he will return for the 1992 season.

With the Rams’ front-office door closed to him and with his dream of becoming an NFL general manager still alive, Youngblood realized it was time to move away.

“It wasn’t difficult for me, from that standpoint . . . from being the player that I was and then the position that I had with the Rams,” Youngblood says. “I certainly wanted to do more there. I would have loved to have been more involved with JR (Robinson) and more involved with the managing of the football team than I was. And that’s another issue.

“But as far as me making that decision of moving here, it had to do with, did I want this challenge? Did I want to interrupt my life? Did I want to leave my home and my friends, all the comfortable things that I had going?

“And the answer was yes.”

When Youngblood heard about the WLAF, he says he saw the potential in opening up NFL-style football to the world and as a proving grounds for players who needed more seasoning to make it in the NFL.

He was tantalizingly close to landing a general manager’s job with the league’s Orlando Thunder, but lost out to Dick Beam, another former Ram executive.

He then hooked up with the Surge, and became General Manager Mike Keller’s do-everything assistant in February. Youngblood handles marketing, public relations, is the liaison to the team’s radio broadcasts, does part-time work on the team’s game broadcasts, and assists on the player personnel decisions. He also hosts a weekly radio talk show.

Because it is a bare-bones operation, Youngblood has had his hand in almost every part of the operation.

“I’ve changed hats several times,” Youngblood says. “I’ve just helped Mike wherever the general manager needed some help.

“I think there’s a certain period of time where you have to pay your dues to a degree. And yes, I do see the pieces falling into place. It certainly will not look bad on any resume to be in charge of some aspect of this pro franchise.

” . . . You’ve got to look at the football aspect of it. You’ve got to have some vision. You can’t just be locked in on what’s happening today. You can’t just have a fine focus on today’s aspects. You’ve got to look down the road. That vision part of it is exciting.”

Says Doug Kelly, the team’s director of communications: “Usually superstar players don’t make the transition to the front office very well. But Jack’s different, he works. He gets in there, rolls up his sleeves and jumps into the job.

“There’s no way in the world he can be seen as window dressing. I think sometimes former star players are just kind of there to be shown off. That’s not the case at all with Jack.”

Even in the NFL, the number of former players with real front-office power is close to zero, and Youngblood says he thinks he knows why.

“I’d have to say there’s a problem there,” Youngblood says. “I think that when you’re dealing with different egos, in this business, that it can affect your potential and where people see you going because of what you’ve done on the field.

“It can have a different affect on you. It can be intimidating. It is awkward to a certain degree. If that intimidates certain people, I try to discount it as much as possible.

“But certainly you find people looking at you sort of sideways sometimes and wondering, ‘Why are you here?’ And they have this preconceived notion that you’re wealthy and you don’t have to work.”

And then Youngblood laughs hard and loud at the notion that, given the years he played (1971-1984), he could be anything close to fabulously wealthy.

He says he never wanted to do the drudge work of being a coach, but at the end of his playing days realized he wanted to remain in the game. Which left becoming a decision-making executive, ideally with the Rams.

“In a perfect world, of course, I would have loved to,” Youngblood says. “That’s my football team. I’ve spilled my blood for them. And they’ve been awfully good to me over all the years.

“This may be an immature attitude, but I think they’ll always be my team. You’ll always sit down and when you’re watching them and you hear about them or you read about them, you’re always thinking, ‘How could I have helped? What could I have done to make a difference?’ ”

But gradually, he concedes, things changed. His goal with the Rams seemed more impossible,rumors of a major shake-up rolled through the franchise, and the team floundered.

Youngblood had the assignment of attempting to make the Rams’ 24 losses the past two seasons seem entertaining on radio.

“That 3-13 (record last year), that was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done,” Youngblood says. “To keep an attitude, to keep a spirit about the broadcast, and to try and enhance and make something enjoyable to listen to, I found that was work.

“You could have turned on them very easily and pointed out the glaring mistakes. That’s not my general nature, though. My general nature is to look for the positive areas, and there were a lot of times where you had to look hard, real hard sometimes. . . .

“You find yourself switching gears a lot. Last year, I’d leave (Sacramento) on Thursday evenings and fly to either L.A. or go jump on the charter with them and go to where they were playing. You’d have to switch gears in flight sometimes.”

Still Youngblood knows he will always be remembered as No. 85 on that broken leg in 1979. He still gets recognized almost daily, even in Sacramento.

“Everybody keeps asking, ‘Have you made that transition away from playing?’ ” Youngblood says. “Well, I’m here and we’re doing this.

“Of course, you will always be the ex-football player who did so and so and whatever, and that’s fine and dandy, people want to talk about that.

“It still amazes me that even up here you can’t go any place without somebody recognizing you. But, of course, they hate you up here because of the 49er influence. They still recognize you.”

Every time the Hall of Fame voting comes up, Youngblood admits he wonders when that panel will recognize him. He was first eligible for induction in 1990, when he made the finalist slate of 15, but was eliminated on the last vote.

Youngblood did not make the Hall’s final 15 the past two years.

“It’s certainly something that people become aware of once you become eligible,” Youngblood says. “Certainly, I can’t deny the fact that it would be a marvelous thing to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

“There’s anticipation, sure there is.”

How has he felt each time he realized he wouldn’t make it that particular year?

“Disappointment with reality setting in,” Youngblood says. “I wouldn’t deny that I’m disappointed. I think I deserve it. However, we haven’t convinced the others, I guess.”

He says his status as a memorable player has helped in dealing with the young Surge players.

“Some of them were still in diapers, but their daddies had told them about me,” Youngblood says. “I hope it lends something to the management aspect of it. I hope it says that there’s somebody there who has some idea about what’s going on with us, what it takes to perform to the level that we want to perform at.

“I hope it gives them a sense of security, that somebody has been in their shoes and now is on the other end of it, trying to help them.”