The Times, Jobs Change, but He Stays the Same : Football: Through the years, Tank Younger, recently named the Rams’ director of player relations, has remained focused on succeeding.

The job title is different, the date of his birth has passed by once more, the legs wobble from time to time, but not much really has changed for Tank Younger from any of the other thousands of days he has been in this league.

Paul Lawrence (Tank) Younger. Say the name, and you hear the echoes of the NFL’s past. Titles change, the echoes do not. The man has not.

Younger, 64 last week, recently was named the Rams’ director of player relations, with broad goals to assist players in life after football. He will continue handling many of the administrative duties he has since 1987 with the Rams, but Younger specifically will work with the current players in continuing education and planning for their long-range futures.

And who else could be better qualified to map out long-range futures than the man whose life defines football as we have known it? Trace the history of his life, and there lies all the challenges and obstacles and triumphs of a football player and black man in this country. Those things never change.

“You don’t have to say, ‘Tank Younger is the director of player relations for the Los Angeles Rams,’ ” Younger said recently over lunch in a Westside restaurant near his Rams’ office in Los Angeles. “It’s almost like Tank and the Rams go together like ham and eggs.

“You don’t have to say what he is, you just have to say it. I’m proud of it. I don’t have to explain Tank. Everybody knows Tank. You associate Tank with football.”

He came to the Rams out of Grambling State in 1949 as a 235-pound free-agent fullback, the first player from a predominantly minority school to make it in the professional leagues. He was the first black to play in an NFL All-Star game. The first black to play in two All-Star Games. The first to play in three.

“I’m proud of it,” Younger said. “There’s nothing like being the first in anything--unless it’s the soup line.”

In 1975, he was the NFL’s first black assistant general manager, a job he held for 12 seasons with the San Diego Chargers. He came back to the Rams in 1987, and now he has his new role. Same man.

“I think it’s going to be a great challenge for me to see if I can pull it off,” Younger said. “I always said if I ever wrote an autobiography, the title of it would be ‘Fourth and Goal.’ It’s been fourth and goal my whole life.

“For example, the first thing I remember in life, the first moment I remember being on this earth was a fourth-and-goal situation. I was about 3 years old, the house was on fire, and I was in it.

“I got out of that one, and I’ve been hitting on fourth and goal ever since.”

Though Younger was born in New Orleans, he spent his high school years in Los Angeles, then went to Grambling, where his godfather was president of the school, his godmother was on the faculty, and they both maintained strict oversight of his school habits.

At Grambling, he was a star in the black school leagues at a time when the NFL did not deign to even scout the games. The handful of blacks in the NFL before Younger in the ‘40s were all from major colleges.

Then the Rams began taking an interest in him and eventually signed him to a free-agent contract after his senior season, the year he was named black college player of the year. They brought three other black free agents to camp that summer, but Younger was the only one who made it.

“When I got ready to leave in the summer of ‘49, after I had graduated from college, I hung around campus a couple weeks, working out every day with Coach (Eddie) Robinson,” Younger said. “And one of the things he told me, he says, ‘You have to remember, if you fail, there’s no telling when another black athlete from a black college will get a chance to play pro football.’

“So I left school with the attitude that I couldn’t fail. Know what I mean? I saw some tough days, but I hung in there.”

Said Rick Smith, the Rams’ public relations director who worked with Younger in San Diego: “When Tank made the team with the Rams, (then-coach Clark) Shaughnessy used to call him Big Boy, because he was 235 pounds.

“I remember they were playing a preseason game in Omaha, the squad was getting ready to be cut, and he lost his shoes or he left his shoes or he had pair of shoes that didn’t fit . . . He was in a great deal of pain, and his foot was bleeding. But he didn’t come out of the game, because he knew if he came out of the game he’d be history.”

Instead, he became a part of it. The first was not the last. Now, more than 30 years later, predominantly black colleges have become one of the NFL’s most-prized pools of talent.

“I don’t know if I felt like a trailblazer, but I experienced some of the same things (Jackie) Robinson experienced,” Younger said. “We played in a couple football games down in the south my rookie year, and we stayed in different hotels and things of that nature.

“But I guess I was willing to do a lot of things to achieve my goal, and my goal was to be a football player in the NFL. So if this is what I had to put up with, I put up with it.

“I considered myself a football player, a football player that wanted to prove he could play in the NFL, and whether I had the character or the patience to withstand some of the racial things that I had to go through, I never considered that myself.”

Younger, who played fullback and linebacker, credits his white Ram teammates for standing with him during some of the uncertain times--especially linebacker Don Paul and receiver Tom Fears.

Younger made the three Pro Bowls, was a key member of the Rams famous “Bull Elephant” backfield and NFL championship team in 1951 and played nine years with the Rams before Sid Gillman traded him to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1958.

He played only one more season. Younger says he knew for sure it was time to go when he was playing the Giants, and he broke through the line for a big run but was tackled six yards short of a touchdown by a little defensive back.

“I knew then,” Younger said. “I went home that night, and I remembered when I was a gung-ho rookie, and I was walking to practice in the hot sun, and it had to be about 110 degrees. But the heat didn’t bother me. I was walking with an old offensive guard named Roger Eason from (the state of) Arkansas.

“And he says, ‘Well, rook, after this year I’m going to give it up.’ I couldn’t imagine, here’s an All-Pro offensive guard, and he’s talking about giving it up. And he said, ‘I’m going to tell you something, and don’t you ever forget it.’ He said, ‘When you’re over the hill, you’re the first to know. And when the sportswriters start telling you about it, you’ve been through for about two years.’

“So when I got home that Sunday night after that last game in New York, I thought about what Roger said. I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to let the sportswriters tell me I’m over the hill.’ ”

He left the field, went into private business and eventually joined the Rams as a part-time scout. By 1967, Younger was a full-time scout, and that’s still what he enjoys doing most.

“I’m still going to do some scouting,” he said. “I don’t know if they know it or not. But when I get to the stage where I can’t do any scouting, then I know I’ll have had it.

“Of all the jobs that I’ve had, and I’ve had some pretty important jobs and assignments in pro football, the one thing I enjoyed doing the most is shaking the bushes.

“When I look at a guy like Harold Jackson, a kid we drafted in the 12th round. I look at a guy like Larry Brooks, a kid we drafted in the 14th round . . . It really is rewarding to think that you had a little something to do with getting them into the league.

“I was a free agent, and I’ve always kind of been for the underdog. I know when I showed up here the first time, I was an underdog. Fourth and goal.”

In 1975, Younger moved to the Chargers when he was given the title of assistant general manager. Twelve years later, Younger was fired by new owner Alex Spanos, and he returned to the Rams as an administrative consultant.

Though he was obviously qualified to run a team, Younger says he isn’t bitter that he never got a shot to be the first black to take the final step up in the NFL hierarchy.

“It’s going to take the right situation,” Younger said. “I have a lot of confidence in this league. I like this league. I really do. And I believe that the league is going to do the right thing.

“Sooner or later we’re going to have a black general manager. Then not one, two, but three, four . . . I believe that. It’s not going to be Tank Younger, but sooner or later . . .

“They’ve got some young guys coming in the league today who I really think will eventually get the experience and have the qualities to be a general manager. A young kid who has an awful lot of talent and in due time he will have general manager’s responsibilities is Rod Graves of the Chicago Bears. He’s a personnel scout, but he’s extremely bright, level-headed, I think he has the ability to take on the challenge.”

Younger’s newest role is to put everything he has learned, done and accomplished at the services of today’s players, who might not have the same burden Younger carried while earning a top salary of $16,000 but have been known to squander a lot of their paychecks.

For a godson of a school president, the key to this isn’t tricky.

“To me, the most important area is education,” Younger said. “There are a lot of players, especially now with the juniors coming out, they’re a year, a year and a half and even in some cases two years behind. So I think it’s important to try and instill into the players the importance of getting that degree.

“I know everybody talks about pro athletes, they make a lot of money. Everybody talks about financial planning, financial planning, financial planning. It’s a great idea.

“But here I am talking about financial planning, and if you don’t understand what I’m talking about, I’m beating my head against a brick wall. But if you’ve got education and the ability to understand and interpret, now I can talk to you about financial planning.

“I think education is the cornerstone of this whole thing.”

How about himself? Is there life for Younger after football? He, along with a handful of others, are the living historians of the game, those who were in the league before it became a product.

And he points to his brethren, such as Ram director of pro personnel Jack Faulkner and New England executive Bucko Kilroy, and he says if you love the game as much as they do, you cannot imagine leaving it.

“I try not to think about not being in the game,” Younger said. “I don’t want to go out of the game feeling that I should’ve stayed one more day or one more week or one more year.

“When I leave the office I want to leave with the same feeling I had when I left the field. When I walk out that door, I want to walk out with the satisfaction of not doubting myself. Is that time near? I don’t think so.”