The Packers’ season ended weeks ago, but Green Bay still will be represented when the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots play in Super Bowl 60 on Feb. 8.
Seahawks general manager John Schneider graduated from De Pere Abbot Pennings in 1989, a school that along with Premontre and St. Joseph Academy merged to form Green Bay Notre Dame in 1990.
Patriots general manager Eliot Wolf graduated from Notre Dame in 2000.
When Wolf was hired by New England in 2024, one of the people he brought in was Casey Belongia, a 2010 Ashwaubenon graduate who is a national scout for the Patriots.
Two GMs from the same high school family tree facing off for a Super Bowl title? It doesn’t get much better than that.
“I think it’s awesome,” Wolf said. “It’s really unique. I know he went to Pennings and I went to Notre Dame, but we both kind of went to the same high school.
“I mean, what are the odds of that? I would be curious if that has ever happened in the history of the league. It’s really cool for my dad [Pro Football Hall of Fame executive Ron Wolf] as well. The two scouting systems that the two Super Bowl teams have are kind of basically his system. That’s a testament to the fact that it works. It’s pretty unique and fun.”
Wolf and others might be surprised to learn that there has been one other instance in which two GMs from the same high school met in a Super Bowl.
It happened in Super Bowl 23 in 1989, when the San Francisco 49ers played the Cincinnati Bengals.
The 49ers’ GM was John McVay and the Bengals’ GM was Paul Brown, two men who both graduated from Massillon Washington High School in Ohio.
Wolf and Schneider aren’t only connected by where they went to high school.
Schneider got his first shot in the NFL because of Wolf’s father, and Eliot Wolf learned plenty from Schneider when the two worked together in the Packers’ front office.
It’s not uncommon for Wolf to still seek Schneider’s wisdom.
“He has a lot of experience in different settings and in many ways that I don’t,” Wolf said. “Definitely look to him for advice on different areas of things that I could use some help with.”
Wolf and Schneider are at the highest level of their profession, and part of what shaped who they are is a childhood spent in Green Bay.
John Schneider values hometown roots
Schneider was a self-described football geek growing up. When William and Sandra Schneider had to punish the youngest of their six children, the best course of action was to take away his football cards.
Schneider loved those cards. He made teams with them, almost like a GM would even though he didn’t realize it at the time. He made trades with himself. This player for that player. He memorized the statistics on the back of the cards. Jersey numbers and the colleges, too.
Working in an NFL front office wasn’t the dream while at Notre Dame Elementary or Pennings.
It was to be the next Walter Payton, the Chicago Bears legendary running back he grew up idolizing even though Payton played for the big rival of his hometown team.
Schneider did his best impression of Payton during his junior and senior seasons at Pennings.
He was small but strong, the undisputed best tailback and unquestioned leader of the team who graduated as one of the school’s all-time leading rushers.
He was instrumental in leading the Squires to the WISAA playoffs as a senior in 1988, which was quite the turnaround after going 3-7 the previous season.
Playing for Pennings coach Al Groves was fun for Schneider, and for good reason.
To this day, friends and former teammates Pete Opichka and Tom Benkowski still give Schneider grief for all the carries Groves gave him.
Schneider valued his time playing for the Squires.
“Al knew how passionate I was about it," Schneider said. “My dad was a team doctor. It was a really special time.”
His final high school game was a 14-7 quarterfinal playoff loss to Stevens Point Pacelli at Goerke Field in Stevens Point.
The tears flowed as the pads came off afterward. Not just because the seniors wouldn’t play another game, but because they believed they were good enough to win a title.
It seemed possible, considering they pulled a big upset earlier in the season against Milwaukee Marquette, a team that ended up repeating as the Class A state champion that fall.
It was Schneider who delivered the dagger, scoring a touchdown in overtime. It was one of the coolest moments of his playing career.
“He was a tenacious runner,” said former Pennings teammate and longtime local high school baseball coach Andy Conard, who was a tight end, defensive end and punter for the Squires. “When you looked at him stature-wise, he wasn’t very big. He kind of personified the old saying that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog. He ran hard. I just remember how much John tried to model his game, his training regimen, everything, after Walter Payton. Walter wasn’t the biggest guy in the world, either, but they both ran with the same tenacity and the drive.
“John was all football. He loved it. That was the way he played.”
It would be easy to romanticize Schneider all these years later, to say he was the leader of the bunch and a great teammate.
It just happens to be true.
“He had an infectious personality,” Conard said. “He was just always enthusiastic and just an easy guy to approach. An easy guy to talk to.
“He was just such a hard worker. You knew he put a lot into it. You knew his training regimen was real. There was nothing put on with John. You had the utmost respect for him, not only as a person but the way that he prepared and the way that he practiced and the way that he trained.”
Schneider still had dreams of being the next Payton when he went off to play in college at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
While a shoulder injury ended his career after one season, his future scouting ability was evident.
He started to evaluate everything he watched while sidelined.
That one teammate was faster than him. That another teammate broke a lot of tackles.
A friend on defense complained he wasn’t getting enough playing time. All Schneider saw was his buddy missing a bunch of tackles and being slow to react.
“That’s kind of like how it started just from an evaluation standpoint,” Schneider said. “And, then, obviously I just loved ball. I was always eating and watching as much as I possibly could. The Sporting News had an article on every team. I couldn’t wait to get that. Read every article. Anything I could devour.”
After Ron Wolf was hired as the Packers’ GM in 1991, Schneider learned he had gotten his start by writing letters in the early 1960s to NFL teams, including one to Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis.
Schneider decided to do the same.
But each letter he wrote to Wolf got him nowhere.
The Schneider family happened to be friends with Dr. Pat McKenzie, who had been hired by the Packers in 1990.
McKenzie gave Schneider the phone number for Wolf.
Wolf often answered his phone at work on the weekends, which wasn’t uncommon for executives with no secretaries in the building.
It all led up to Memorial Day weekend in 1992.
On that Sunday, Schneider dialed Wolf’s number after one of his friends convinced him to make the call.
It was a scary moment, to say the least.
“Oh, dude, I was so intimidated,” Schneider said. “He still intimidates me.”
It was the call that kick-started his life in the NFL. The rest, as they say, is football history.
Dougherty column: Packers GM Ron Wolf's legacy alive and well in Super Bowl
Schneider has been the Seahawks’ GM since 2010, and at times it has been like trading his football cards.
He made 284 roster transactions his first year and more than 200 his second.
On Feb. 2, 2014, he became a Super Bowl champion GM.
Not bad for the kid from Green Bay.
Schneider’s third trip to the Super Bowl as a GM is a little bittersweet.
His father died in October. He was 90.
William was as accomplished in the medical field as his son is in football. He practiced orthopedic surgery from 1967 to 1994 and was the chief of surgery at St. Vincent Hospital from 1988 to 1990.
His lofty résumé is about as long as a book.
“My dad was an amazing person,” Schneider said, fighting back tears. “He was highly successful in anything he did, and his work ethic was off the chart. I think he’d be proud of the way I dove into the power of prayer and work ethic. I tell people all the time the two greatest gifts my folks ever gave me were my work ethic and my faith and the confidence to pray on things.
“Since my dad has passed, I know he is with me more now than he was when he was here. In pregame, the butterflies and the nervousness and the anxiety and all that, I’m not saying I don’t have it. But I can legitimately tell it has dissipated, and I know that he’s with me and watching over me. Like, ‘I know you are stressed out. You got this.’ It has been really neat.”
Eliot Wolf follows in father’s footsteps
Wolf moved to Green Bay midway through fourth grade after his father was hired by the Packers with four games remaining in the 1991 season.
The first documented evidence of his potential football future came in fifth grade, when Wolf and his classmates were asked to write what they wanted to be when they grew up.
Wolf didn’t put a professional athlete or coach or even an astronaut.
He instead wrote that he wanted to be an NFL scout, which perhaps wasn’t that surprising considering what his dad did for a living.
His determination only got more serious each time Wolf attended draft meetings as a child.
“I thought he was just a football junkie, if you will,” Ron Wolf said. “He really enjoyed sitting in there listening and watching and all that. But I never realized it was going to eventually become his career or livelihood.
“What’s amazing to me is here we’ve got this little town of just over 100,000 people and two guys playing such a prominent role, both attended school there. To me, that’s remarkable. Two Green Bay guys. Unbelievable.”
Much like Schneider years before, the young Wolf made a talent evaluation of himself while playing football at Notre Dame.
He concluded that as an undersized wideout, a career on the gridiron wasn’t in the cards.
“I might have been undersized, but I’m not sure how tough I was, either,” Wolf said. “I never even thought I was going to play in college. Really, at any point I can remember, it was always kind of getting into the front office and just being around the scouts and being around football.”
That already was obvious to those around him at Notre Dame.
Former Notre Dame athletic director Ken Flaten coached Wolf at the lower levels of the football program when Wolf arrived in high school in 1996.
He was a nice kid who displayed an uncanny knowledge of college and professional players.
Flaten often would overhear Wolf and his fellow 2000 graduate and friend Adam Madson break down players, just like a GM.
“They were nuts,” Flaten said.
But in a good way.
Flaten envisioned a future executive in his pupil, a lot more than a future Pro Bowl wideout.
“He was good, but he was small,” Flaten said. “I think he looked at it that way, that if he was going to advance in that game, he was going to advance in the career he took.
“He worked hard. … You could absolutely see it.”
Wolf was part of the last Notre Dame football team that was part of WISAA before it joined the WIAA in 2000.
He had the opportunity to observe and play for legendary coach John Nowak. Class was in session every day, not just Friday nights.
“I thought one of the cool things Coach Nowak did relative to some of the other coaches in the division and the area that we played against was that he was a multiple scheme guy,” Wolf said. “We would have different game plans for each week, offensively and defensively.
“I always thought that was probably pretty unique to the area. I don’t know what it’s like now, but it was pretty unique to the area at the time. It was always kind of fun going in that Monday to get the new game plan.”
Wolf’s time at Notre Dame and his years in Green Bay are why he is the person, and NFL GM, he is today.
“One hundred percent,” Wolf said. “I was there from fourth grade through high school, and then I came right back after college working for 14 more years with the Packers.
“It’s a great community. I still have tons of close friends there. Matter of fact, I am going to see some of them at the Super Bowl, which is kind of cool. It has really shaped me as a person. The football in the community is obviously a really big part and that is, and was, a huge part of my life. It’s great people and a great place to visit.”
Green Bay Notre Dame still a special place for John Schneider and Eliot Wolf
Wolf and Schneider don’t get an opportunity to follow Notre Dame much during the season, but both are aware of the Tritons.
Wolf heard about former standout James Flanigan playing at the University of Notre Dame.
Schneider heard about a star running back the Tritons have and was impressed to learn Kingston Allen set the state’s single-season rushing record in 2025.
Three of Schneider’s nephews were standout running backs in high school at Notre Dame, just like their uncle.
Steven Dennis rushed for 1,379 yards and 17 TDs as a senior in 2008.
David Ihlenfeldt was an all-state selection when he rushed for 2,170 yards and 22 TDs in 2009.
Nate Ihlenfeldt was the best player in the area when he rushed for a combined 4,016 yards and 61 TDs in 2015 and 2016.
Schneider was a big high school sports advocate while in Green Bay and remains one to this day.
“I always wanted to kind of help out, kind of mentor in any way I possibly could,” he said. “I wanted young men to play football, because I think there is so many life lessons. It’s self-sacrifice. It’s work ethic. It’s relationships. Playing for the man next to you. It’s confidence.
“It’s the ultimate team sport.”
John Schneider, Eliot Wolf on opposite sides this week
Schneider and Wolf had a text chain going throughout the season, which included another good friend in Patriots executive Alonzo Highsmith, another former Packers personnel executive (2012-17).
They have wished each other luck each step of the way.
Now, Schneider and Wolf finish the season together on the biggest stage in sports.
“It’s really cool,” Schneider said. “I’ve known him so long, I feel like an older brother. I was the youngest of that group of those guys [with the Packers]. John Dorsey. Ted Thompson. Reggie McKenzie.
“So, he kind of hung with me a lot. He’d always be asking me, ‘Can you go downstairs and play basketball?’ I’d go down and I think I had a part in teaching him how to dribble and do breakaways. And then he sat in all of our meetings. It was really special, man. It was really special.”
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Super Bowl GMs John Schneider, Eliot Wolf value their Green Bay roots
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