49ers' new GM proud to be 'big time' football nerd

SANTA CLARA

Who is Scot McCloughan and, by the way, how do you pronounce his name?

Mc-Clew-an. Got that?

We've heard about him lately, how after three years of running the department of player personnel for the Niners, he ascended to general manager, how he has the power to fire coach Mike Nolan if it comes to that -- he sure hopes it doesn't -- how he's the ultimate straight shooter, how he's respected throughout the NFL, and how he's a certified whiz at spotting good players.

But who is Scot McCloug-han?

Facts: He's 35. He grew up in Loveland, Colo. He played minor-league baseball -- more on that later. And he's the guy who approached me outside his office the other day and said, "Let's rock 'n' roll."

Which means he's certainly energetic. Maybe he's also a good dancer, but I can't attest to that.

He led me into the office and said he likes to keep the lights off. "I'm a creature of the dark," is how he put it. He's always watching tape. He can sit at his desk and hit a button and project tapes of prospective 49ers on the far wall. He can project live college games on the far wall. He lives in a command center of football. The room is all football all the time. It has no decorations, except one dramatic photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in fog. The photo may have symbolic meaning and then again it may not.

He gets up at 5:30 in the morning and drives to 49ers headquarters and works out and ascends to the command center and gets on with football, always football. His wife will say they're having dinner with the neighbors, and he'll say, "Remind me of their names." His daughter will ask who are the three receivers for Virginia Tech, and he'll recite them off the top of his head.

Is he a football nerd?

"Big time. Big time," he said proudly.

His dad, Kent, played cornerback for the Raiders from 1965-70, and after that Dad became an area scout for the Raiders -- still is. At age 7, McCloug-han prepared to enter the family business -- his brother David is director of college scouting for the 49ers. Football is the McCloughan calling. When he was 7, McCloughan bought all the preseason football magazines and studied them and memorized them the way some people absorb the Bible. He even kept notebooks with his thoughts about players.

He would discuss players with his father, and when he was in junior high school his father began to take him on football day trips to nearby colleges -- Wyoming, Colorado, Colorado State. His parents would phone his junior high and say Scot wouldn't be attending that day. And Scot and his father would drive to a college and talk to the coaches.

"You hear the football vocabulary," McCloughan said. "It's very important."

He'd hear what the coach said about a player and then he'd watch tape right there, and on the ride home he'd hear what his dad said about a player. It was a form of apprenticeship.

In high school, he was a running back, safety and return man. But he went to Wichita State on a baseball scholarship. He'd torn up his left knee in football, and by the time he was 21 he'd had four surgeries. Doctors said if he persisted in football he'd end up with a plastic knee by 25. So he played baseball, twice played in the College World Series as a designated hitter and third baseman.

He got drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays and played right field in their farm system, even made an All-Star team, but he didn't hit with power. And after three years, he had the break of a lifetime.

His dad phoned and said Ron Wolf, the legendary general manager of the Packers, wanted to hire McCloughan as an area scout. McCloug-han was 24 at the time. Kent McCloughan had told Wolf about his son, about the preseason magazines, about the day trips to colleges, and Wolf took a chance on the kid. This is the greatest argument in recorded history for the value of playing hooky.

So McCloughan gave up on baseball and for the annual salary of $18,500 -- "I think I made more in the minors" -- spent 4½ years learning his trade with the Packers.

After that he went to the Seahawks as director of college scouting. Things always had worked well at the Packers, but they didn't work so well at the Seahawks. There were battles in the front office, and in his five years there McCloughan learned what not to do.

"I always learn things," he said. "What can I learn so it won't happen again?"

What did he learn this season?

"I learned you don't want an inexperienced coordinator with a young quarterback and running back. If you have a young team, you need an experienced coordinator to show them the way. We were more talented player-for-player this year than last year, but last year there was more calmness."

He meant Norv Turner calmed the team and Jim Hostler, this season's offensive coordinator, was feeling his way just like Alex Smith and Frank Gore, and that was a bad combination.

He learned something else.

"The league wants offense," he said. "The league office wants points. The game is offense oriented."

He is the guy who drafted Patrick Willis and Frank Gore. He is proud of those picks, although he doesn't claim genius status for drafting Gore -- "I'm not highly intelligent." Everyone knew Gore was good, but he fell to the third round because his knees were suspect.

McCloughan traveled to Miami several times to interview Gore in person.

"All he wanted to do was talk football," McCloughan said. "He was to the game what I am to the personnel side." Football geeks. "Football is all he wants to know. He doesn't want to branch out.

"Even now I talk to Frank every week. He watches the playoffs. He wants to know, 'Why aren't we in these games?' This is a kid who cries after losses. He was like that in college -- I knew him through and through. He is a very passionate player. People say height, weight and speed are important. Those are combine numbers. You've got to know them as people, talk to the person, observe the body language. Gore at first kept his head down. When I talked football, he looked me in the eye. Football players, a lot of them are simple people. It's easy to figure out how passionate they are about football."

McCloughan, in case you haven't noticed, has the passion. So does Gore, so does Willis. McCloughan wants a team of passionate men. He doesn't have the problems attracting players that they face in Green Bay or Seattle.

"With the Packers, the location was tough for the kids from the South. They didn't want to go there. Seattle is tough. Kids from Florida thought it was in Canada. But here we have a tradition. Players say Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, Roger Craig. It's an easy sell. The area is nice, but the 49ers' tradition is more important."

McCloughan is old enough to remember what the 49ers were, what they meant, and what they should mean. He wants to restore that meaning.

"If you had told me as a kid I'd be the general manager of the 49ers, I'd have done a back flip."

You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or lowell.cohn@pressdemo

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