White helped put title back in Titletown

Reggie White was fond of saying God told him to go to Green Bay in 1993 to sack both sin and quarterbacks.

White was the first big-time free agent to switch teams, shocking the NFL when he left the Philadelphia Eagles and picked the Packers over San Francisco.

Not only did "The Minister of Defense" help restore the glory to Green Bay and the title to Titletown, but he proved to other players, particularly blacks, that Wisconsin wasn't a winter wasteland.

And Green Bay embraced him. White said he didn't know what was better, playing in a town with such a deep history of great football players, or in front of all those bare-chested cheeseheads.

"Brett (Favre) is the icon here, but this is still the house that Reggie helped build," fullback William Henderson said Sunday, hours after learning of White's stunning death at age 43.

Before White's arrival, Green Bay was the place coaches threatened to send malcontents, the NFL's very own Siberia.

While White was being wined and dined, he'd ask team executives to point out the inner city where he could minister on his off days. The Packers had no such blight to show him, so general manager Ron Wolf and coach Mike Holmgren feared their courtship was futile.

"I told him, 'You're already a great football player. Come here and you'll be a legend,'" Wolf recalled Sunday night.

Sure enough, White, who combined size, speed and strength like no defensive lineman before him, would find a way to mix his faith with football in Wisconsin.

"That's what changed the football fortunes of this franchise. It was huge," team president Bob Harlan said. "Everyone thought the last place he would sign was Green Bay and it was monumental because not only did he sign but he recruited for Green Bay and got guys like Sean Jones to come here. He sent a message to the rest of the NFL that Green Bay was a great place to play and before that this was a place people didn't want to come."

After a quarter century of futility, the Packers rose again, reaching the Super Bowl twice and winning it all after the 1996 season when White set a record with three sacks in the Packers' 35-21 win over New England.

"He had a lot to do with my success in the National Football League," said Holmgren, now coach in Seattle. "He was just a wonderful player, first of all. Then as a person, he was just the best. ... I'm a better person for having been around Reggie White."

It was a common sentiment, shared across a stunned NFL on Sunday.