Saving Lambeau: How Bob Harlan rebuilt the Green Bay Packers

And I’m deeply indebted, obviously, to Bob Harlan for his belief in me.

GREEN BAY – When Bob Harlan was elected president of the Green Bay Packers on June 5, 1989, he took over a team that had made the playoffs just twice since Super Bowl II.

The franchise was in dire straits after 24 years of futility that included one division title, one playoff win, five winning seasons and an aging Lambeau Field reaching new lows in attendance.

Organizational restructuring, facility redevelopment, a new leadership philosophy and the hiring of Ron Wolf resulted in a huge turnaround for the franchise.

After the firing of executive vice president of football operations, Tom Braatz, in the midst of another losing season, he moved quickly in 1991 to hire Ron Wolf as general manager and vested in him full authority over the team’s football operations — a crucial decision.

“In other words, the buck stops here. So, a marvelous opportunity,” Wolf told Press Times/Packerland staff in 2023.

“I’ll never forget. I was in O’Hare waiting to fly from Chicago to Green Bay, and it’s snowing at Green Bay, so everything was delayed. And I called (then-Raiders owner) Al Davis and told him that I’m going to go to Green Bay and take over the football operation. And the end result was, he told me, ‘You’re like an owner.’

“And I’m deeply indebted, obviously, to Bob Harlan for his belief in me. Because I am sure, as I talked about the executive committee after that first executive committee meeting, and they got done with me. I’m sure they grilled the crap out of Bob.”

Though Harlan never had intentions to lead an NFL franchise, his road to the Packers is not surprising if you believe in providence.
Harlan was born four days before the 1936 Packers season, in which they won the NFL title, far from his Iowa roots.

“Frankly, from the time I grew up, I wanted to be a sports writer. And as a big Iowa fan — I was a big Iowa State fan — as far as baseball was concerned, I really was a Cardinal fan.

That’s because I could get Harry Caray’s games all the time on the radio in Des Moines, and so I kind of grew up with Harry. And my interest in pro football didn’t really get going until probably about the mid-50s,” Harlan recalled.

“I majored in journalism at Marquette, and my dream job was really to go back to the Des Moines Register and work for that newspaper,

“And I had a six-month tour of duty with the Army when I got out of school, because as an ROTC graduate, and then I went back to Milwaukee, and Dean (Jeremiah) O’Sullivan, the dean of the Marquette journalism school, got me an interview at UPI, and I worked there for about four or five months. And then Marquette called me and offered me the sports information director job. And that was basically because of the fact that I had been sports editor of the Marquette Tribune my senior year, and then got to know the people at Marquette in the newsroom very well. So, they were looking for someone to be the sports information director. I was one of the first candidates that they interviewed, and I took the job.”

That was during the same year Harlan was married to Madeline Kieler in Des Moines, Iowa.

It was 1959 — the same year that Vince Lombardi joined the Packers.

Continued next week