Scott Woodruff has been the Grand Rapids Rampage’s general manager of business operations for almost every year of the franchise’s 10 years of existence.

He’s seen it all, from an ArenaBowl title to a 1-15 season.

Now as general manager of the Rampage, Woodruff has the football operations side to deal with also. That makes him the one stop for decisions on the direction of the franchise.

“This has been my goal for years,” Woodruff said. “When I came back here a year and a half ago this was kind of the goal. We had some things on the business side that needed my attention and so the last 18 months I’ve been the general manager of business operations and we got to the point where we got some of those things on track.”

That left the football side of the Rampage to work on. Woodruff wanted to get started on that part right away.

“I sat down with (owner) Dan DeVos and (chief operating officer) Scott Gorsline and said ‘Well, it’s kind of a funny time, but if there’s benefits to be derived from doing this why wait until after the season?’” he said.

Woodruff said he will be responsible for “the team performance, the coaching staff, the players, the salary cap and the complete football operations budget.””

However Woodruff wasn’t going to make changes right away.

“Because it’s the middle of the season, all I want to do is create an environment where we can win as many games as possible and make a run at the playoffs,”” he said. “I’m not trying to step in and meddle or make changes. I’m doing a lot of evaluating so that if there’s anything we need to do after the season to do things differently that’s fine. But I’m evaluating and trying to create the environment that’s conducive to winning now.”

Woodruff also didn’t see any changes he would make in the future.

“That would be unfair,” he said. “I really want to take the remaining months of the season to do a full evaluation before I do anything,” Woodruff said.

Woodruff spent the 2005 season with the Chicago Rush before returning to the Rampage  for the 2006 season. He began his arena football career in 1997 with the Portland Forest Dragons.