NFL.com surveys the management structures of the NFC North teams, including, of course, the Packers:

Owner: N/A
General Manager: Ted Thompson, 9th Year
Head Coach: Mike McCarthy, 8th Year
Other front-office notables: Mark Murphy, President and CEO; Russ Ball, Vice President of Football Administration; Eliot Wolf, Director of Pro Personnel; Brian Gutekunst, Director of College Scouting; Alonzo Highsmith, Senior Personnel Executive.

Who’s really in charge? Ted Thompson’s say-so in Green Bay is about as strong as any GM’s influence in the league. The Packers tried a coach-driven model after Thompson’s mentor, Ron Wolf, retired — giving the keys to Mike Sherman. Thompson left Green Bay to serve as the Seattle Seahawks‘ vice president of football operations for five years. But in 2005, the Packers brought back Thompson with the title of general manager and returned to the method they implemented through the 1990s. Thompson hired head coach Mike McCarthy in his second year on the job. McCarthy reports to Thompson, who reports to Mark Murphy. And Murphy is overseen by the board of directors for the publicly held club.

The Packers are considered a model NFL franchise, but they didn’t get there without some luck. The drafting of Aaron Rodgers, for instance, only occurred after Thompson’s attempts to trade down failed, leaving the club to take the highest-rated player on its board at a position that wasn’t of immediate need. But the system has been good in Green Bay, largely because those in charge of different departments are experts in those areas and are able to put egos aside.

Thompson can be a demanding boss. Standards are high and don’t bend much. But it has worked. Great success has led other clubs to raid Green Bay; Joe Philbin was hired away from McCarthy’s staff, and John Schneider, Reggie McKenzie and John Dorsey were poached from Thompson’s crew. Guys like Eliot Wolf, Alonzo Highsmith and Brian Gutekunst have been relied upon to step up. Russ Ball, who’s garnered some interest as another GM candidate, has become a right-hand man to Thompson in handling the contractual side. Suffice it to say, many teams envy how smoothly things run in Green Bay.

An outside perspective from an NFC general manager: “It’s all football, all the time there. The majority of the revenue goes right back into the team. There isn’t an owner saying, ‘OK, this year, if we make $7 million, I make $4 million, and $3 million goes back into it.’ It all goes right back into the organization, into improving the team, into hiring coaches, or, on the business side, investing in the building itself. There’s no owner, but there’s a successful group of businessmen that the president and GM have to sit with, and talk about their direction. The only way it goes bad is if the committee feels like they have a lot of juice in football decisions. But normally, they’re just a great resource in how they grow the business, and also to keep a gauge on Ted and Mark and Mike and whether they’re doing a good enough job.”

As an owner who knows some Executive Committee members, it seems obvious to me that the Packers are run the right way in every visible way. The Executive Committee represents much of the best of Wisconsin’s business acumen, so for Murphy to not listen to them would be stupid. And the Packers do not make stupid moves.

Murphy’s predecessor, Bob Harlan, was not a football guy, and wasn’t hired to be a football guy. His job was to hire the football guys and let them do their work until Harlan determined they weren’t working out. (Harlan fired Wolf’s predecessor, Tom Braatz, and signed off on Sherman’s hire as coach, promotion to general manager, demotion from general manager, and firing as coach.) Harlan’s more important role was to shore up the Packers’ business end, because the Packers were not necessarily a model franchise from the business end. The results are obvious, and things have not slipped on the business end under Murphy.