TAMPA, Fla. | Dick Haley has been around this game for 50 years. He played. He coached for a few months. Mostly he has scouted football players &#8212; few have ever done it better. And if Dick Haley had to sum up, really sum up, what separates winning from almost, champion from contender, success from bankruptcy, well, he says it comes down to something basic.</p><p>&#8220;Some people,&#8221; he says, &#8220;really don&#8217;t know what &#8216;good&#8217; is.&#8221;</p><p>That&#8217;s all. That simple. People try to make it complicated, but Dick Haley has spent the years doing the opposite, making it as simple as possible. And that&#8217;s why it has worked.</p><p>Dick Haley, you probably know, is the father of Todd Haley, the Arizona Cardinals&#8217; offensive coordinator and the odds-on favorite to be the next head coach of the Chiefs. That&#8217;s how he is known this week, anyway. Truth is, for all these years, he hasn&#8217;t been known much at all. He has done his great work behind the scenes. He has been one of the great football men in NFL history, even if few people noticed.</p><p>&#8220;I think he&#8217;s the absolute best at what he does,&#8221; Todd Haley says. Now, of course, just about every good son should feel that way about his father. But Todd is talking now as a football coach. &#8220;This isn&#8217;t me talking,&#8221; he says. &#8220;This is everybody.&#8221;</p><p>He&#8217;s right. Football people everywhere will talk in hushed tones about Dick Haley. He is a Pittsburgh guy through and through. He grew up in Midway, about 20 miles outside of Pittsburgh, and he went to the University of Pittsburgh, and for most of his NFL career he played cornerback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was one of those undersized guys who made up for it with his sense of the game.</p><p>In his final year with the Steelers, the team asked him whether wanted to do some scouting. He figured: Why not? He just might make a living at this crazy game. And, as it turned out, he had a knack for it.</p><p>&#8220;Scouting is just like everything else,&#8221; he says. &#8220;It&#8217;s like playing or coaching. Some people are better at it than others. You can&#8217;t really explain why. Some people are just better.&#8221;</p><p>What has made Haley a great scout? He&#8217;s too modest to explain. But it probably had something to do with his Pittsburgh roots: He just knew what good was. He did not overthink it. He did not rely on a full imagination. He just saw what he saw.</p><p>&#8220;I would be around players, and I would hear people saying, &#8216;Oh this guy&#8217;s good,&#8217; or &#8216;Wow, this guy has a lot of talent,&#8217; &#8221; Haley says. &#8220;And, hey, I&#8217;m not always right. But I would think, &#8216;I don&#8217;t see that at all.&#8217; I mean, I know what good looks like.&#8221;</p><p>For instance, when he first came on as a full-time director of player personnel with the Steelers in 1971, he saw a linebacker at Penn State named Jack Ham.</p><p>&#8220;To this day,&#8221; Haley says, &#8220;Jack Ham is the best player I&#8217;ve ever seen, at any position. He was the most consistent guy I ever watched play the game.&#8221;</p><p>The Steelers took Jack Ham with their second-round pick. He&#8217;s in the Hall of Fame.</p><p>Then came the Steelers remarkable draft of 1974 &#8212; probably the best draft any team has ever had in NFL history. Todd Haley can still remember how his father would come home with film of college players. Todd was mesmerized by the way his father would glare at the film; to a 7-year-old it looked as if his father were looking into the future.