Editor's note: Tony Grossi covers the Cleveland Browns for ESPN 850 WKNR.

Last of a kind: I once asked Dan Rooney his philosophy on hiring a coach.

The Browns were going through one of their myriad coaching searches. Whom better to ask for advice than this ultimate people person, Dan Rooney, who had hired three coaches in 40-plus years as chief operator of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and fired not one of them.

“You hire a good coach, and you keep him,” Rooney replied.

Such a simple answer to a question that has vexed Browns owners for decades. It was the essence of Rooney – simple, plain-spoken, loyal, and so wise. He was also humble and caring and honest.

I recall visiting Steelers training camp and standing in the team’s lunch line, turning and seeing the diminutive Rooney behind me, holding a tray like me. When his Steelers came every year to Cleveland, Rooney always made a point of visiting the writers in the press box. He never failed to do this at Super Bowls, too.

The tributes to Rooney are many, of course. He passed away Thursday at the age of 84, and the NFL will never be the same, I am sure. It hasn’t been the same since he all but retired as an NFL kingpin to accept the ambassadorship to Ireland, his ancestral home, in 2009 under President Barack Obama.

If he wasn’t one of a kind, he is the last of his kind in the NFL. His bust belongs on the Mount Rushmore of sports team owners.

He was born the year before his father, Art Rooney, a legend in his own right, bought the Pittsburgh NFL franchise in 1933. Dan Rooney started working with the club as a water boy at age 9. Until Dan Rooney hired native Clevelander Chuck Noll as coach in 1969, the Steelers were a losing laughingstock in the NFL. Dan’s emergence as the franchise’s major decision-maker resulted in six Super Bowl championships – most among NFL teams.

A scant few “old-guard” owners, or their descendants, remain active with their teams, but Rooney was the last one whose voice, soft-spoken as it was, was heard by all – the money-grubbing “new guard” owners, the players union, the corporate sponsors, the network executives, the fans, the media, and the commissioner.

A soft-spoken kingpin: “Dan Rooney is a healer,” former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue once said. “He’s a consensus builder. He’s a voice of reason.”

His lasting contribution is the so-called Rooney Rule, which he championed. It required teams to interview one minority candidate for a head coach or general manager opening. It has since been expanded to include women for consideration of front office jobs and to encourage minority inclusion for coordinator positions.

In Rooney’s heyday, which spanned the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and into the new millennium, nothing of consequence in the NFL passed without Rooney’s quiet approval. He stood for what was right. He was the last guardian of the NFL.

When the money-grubbers wanted to expand the regular season to 18 games, Rooney pointed out that two additional meaningless games played by non-competitive teams would kill interest in their home markets. You think 3-13 was bad enough? Imagine 3-15. This reasoning resonated long before concern about player safety and mounting injuries took over the conversation.

When the NFL rounded out to 32 teams and realignment was a hot-button issue in 2002, Rooney argued that long-time rivals Browns, Steelers and Bengals should be joined by the Ravens – the renamed team Art Modell absconded to Baltimore.

New Browns owner Al Lerner and President Carmen Policy lobbied hard for Buffalo or Indianapolis or Houston to remove the stigma of reliving – twice a season -- Lerner’s participation in Modell’s move. Rooney prevailed, and it has proved the best division configuration.

Cleveland’s best friend: When Modell blindsided Cleveland and the NFL and signed a secret deal to move the Browns to Baltimore in 1996, Rooney was as devastated as any Browns fan. I vividly recall him speaking to me while wiping away tears at the first league meeting to sort out the mess that Modell had wrought.

Like Tagliabue and others in the NFL office, Rooney knew there was no legal recourse to block Modell. He and Ralph Wilson, late owner of the Buffalo Bills, were the only owners to stand up to Modell when the formality of a league vote came to the floor.

Even though it couldn’t block Modell’s intention, Rooney’s “no” vote was an emotional blow to Modell, who considered the Rooney family long-time friends. Modell actually said Art Rooney was “turning over in his grave” at the thought of his son, Dan, voting against the Browns’ move. Any cordial relationship between Modell and Rooney ceased to exist at that point.

Rooney pledged his support to replace the old Browns with an expansion franchise when the majority of owners had no appetite for adding an odd 31st franchise. And then he swung his support to Lerner’s ownership bid, which Modell had bitterly opposed. Rooney felt that Lerner and Policy gave Cleveland the best chance of restoring the Browns to prominence.

One day while covering the ongoing story, I received a call from Rooney. He gave me his home phone number and said to call him whenever I had a question about the long process ahead for Cleveland. He said he wanted to make sure Browns fans received the most accurate news of what was happening.

“Basically, I’ve always tried to do what’s right,” Rooney said to me in an interview when he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000. “I thought and still feel that Cleveland is a very, very important city for this league. Cleveland’s a special town like Pittsburgh. A place with great fans, the best fans in the world.”

Yes, Rooney wanted to preserve his team’s greatest rival, the team that had played the Steelers twice a year since the Browns joined the NFL in 1950. And although the Steelers would dominate the Browns like no other time in their shared history, Rooney yearned for the day the Browns would be restored as a vibrant, worthy rival.

In 2007, the Steelers turned 75 years old and Rooney, then 76, co-authored an autobiography. That was the year in which the Browns, out of nowhere, won 10 games and fielded an offense ranked in the top 10 of the league.

One day a copy of Rooney’s book arrived in the mail. There was a long hand-written inscription that read, in part, “The Browns are doing well. I told you they were okay and would be competitive.”