A Football Scout Who Does His Prep Work

Lichtenfels's cellular plan allows for free nights and weekends, plus 4,000 daytime minutes each month. He regularly exceeds that limit. When he was hospitalized for a week last year with a pulmonary embolism -- a combination of stress and his sedentary lifestyle, doctors said -- Lichtenfels asked Shannon to make recruiting calls for him. Then, two days after his release, Lichtenfels ignored doctors' orders and left town for a nine-day work trip.

Sometimes, while at work in his office, Lichtenfels overhears his 4- and 7-year-old sons in the living room, playing a game they call "Daddy." The boys jabber into fake telephones and pounded away on detached keyboards.

"I'd like to disconnect from it sometimes, maybe turn my phone off when I'm out to dinner with my wife, but I'm terrified I'd miss something," Lichtenfels said. "You can't take a vacation. You can't block it out. Recruiting keeps going for 24 hours a day, every day of the year. So that's what I've got to do, too."

His home town taught Lichtenfels to become a workaholic. Robinson and its 120 houses have persisted through the Johnstown flood of 1977 and a mass murder at a local bar in 2002. With a downtown consisting of a post office and a general store, Robinson sits on the banks of the Conemaugh River, five miles from the nearest regularly plowed road. Most of its men work in nearby coal mines and steel mills. Lichtenfels owns a house two blocks away from his childhood home. He wooed his wife while they were students at the same local high school where Lichtenfels's parents met.

Lichtenfels's father, Denny, worked at a local steel mill as an electrician for 35 years. He asked for his first sick day in 2003, because his stomach ached. A doctor diagnosed pancreatic cancer that afternoon. Nine weeks later, Lichtenfels buried his father dressed in his favorite Steelers jersey.

Lichtenfels always understood hard work, but never knew what to work for. He started at the steel mill when he was 16. He worked part-time as a local disc jockey. He counseled youth sex offenders. He trained hounds to hunt raccoons in the Pennsylvania woods and raised a champion dog.

"I always wanted to be the best at everything, but I never had a passion for any of it," Lichtenfels said. "If you told me, three years ago, that I'd be doing what I am right now? I would have laughed. I'd have said, 'That's too good to be true.'

"I mean, just think about it: Good ol' Big Bob, from Robinson, making a living in football. It sounds weird to say it, but it almost feels like it's a calling."