More than 10 years passed between Mike Singletary's last tackle as a player and his first day as an NFL assistant coach.

What the heck was he waiting for?

"We have seven kids," Singletary said. "I wanted to make sure my kids knew who their father was. I never considered winning Super Bowl trophies being more important than being a Super Bowl Dad.

"Being on the football field, this is easy. Being a parent, that's difficult. I didn't want to leave my wife by herself."

Eventually, though, Kim Singletary turned to her husband and issued the two words that were a decade in the making. "It's time," she said.

The 49ers said the same thing this week, anointing Singletary as their newest leader — and their latest hope for turning around the foundering franchise. The first African-American coach in the 63-year history of the franchise makes his debut on Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks at Candlestick Park.

Team executives fired Mike Nolan on Monday and promoted Singletary, the great Chicago Bears linebacker in his sixth season as an assistant coach.

Like so many others around the NFL, Singletary can trace his coaching footsteps back to Bill Walsh. Even during Singletary's time off to raise a family — call him Papa Bear — he was taking side trips to prepare for his second career.

He sought out coaches, executives and referees and quizzed them about everything from leadership to timeout management.

Nobody was more helpful than a certain white-haired 49ers genius. If Walsh happened to have a few spare hours, Singletary would come to the Bay Area to meet him for dinner. Never mind that Singletary lived in Chicago at the time.

"I've got more notes from Coach Walsh than I do any other coach," Singletary, 50, said. "To this day, I don't know why he took the time with me. He just walked me through everything. So, I'm very appreciative of him. I'm very thankful for him giving me that time."

The 49ers can only hope that Singletary's second career goes as well as his first. He earned his way to 10 Pro Bowls in a 12-year career that began in 1991.

The middle linebacker was the NFL defensive player of the year in '85 and '88, making him just one of six players to win the honor multiple times.

Singletary is just the 20th Hall-of-Fame player to become a head coach. The only one of them to win a Super Bowl just happens to be Singletary's old Bears coach: Mike Ditka.

"He'll be a good coach because he's an outstanding person," Ditka said in a phone interview last week. "He'll get the most of his players because he'll give them focus, he'll give the direction and he'll give them discipline — maybe the kinds of things they need."

As a player, Singletary was famous for his hyper-focused eyes, a pair of floodlights that scanned the field in constant search of someone to tackle.

In his first week as the 49ers head coach, those famous eyes got plenty of help from his mouth. The man can talk. Singletary can command a room with soft tones or loud ones, with serenity or fire.

He is such a gifted orator that we worked as a motivational speaker during his sabbatical from football. 49ers linebacker Takeo Spikes said last week that even people who couldn't stand football would be strapping on their helmets after 5 minutes of listening to Singletary. Offensive lineman Jonas Jennings called it a "double scoop of intensity."

Buddy Ryan, the former Bears defensive coordinator, said it was the same thing when Singletary was a player.

"He'd give these speeches in the locker room and have everybody crying," said Ryan, now 74 and living in Lawrence, Kentucky. "He's a smart guy and he's going to be a great head coach."

Singletary unleashed a fire-and-brimstone beauty after running his first practice Wednesday. With the team gathered around him at midfield, he bellowed, "I need tickets! I need tickets!" at a volume that almost certainly violated a county noise ordinance.

Singletary was trying to get 49ers players to envision the day friends and family would be calling them for passes to playoff games.

Isn't that kind of thing a bit corny for the NFL?

"Some people when they speak, it feels rehearsed," said longtime 49ers linebacker Jeff Ulbrich. "But with him, it comes from the heart.

"I wouldn't call the speeches rah-rah. He's not saying, 'Let's go out and win one for The Gipper.' He's saying: 'This is what success looks like.' He's giving you something to visualize."

Born the youngest of 10 children, Singletary's father was a minister and his mother a housewife. By his own admission, he was a smart-alecky youngster but he grew to embrace the noble concepts of discipline and sacrifice.

Tim Ryan, a former Bears defensive lineman who now lives in San Jose, recalled Singletary as the hardest working superstar he ever saw, the type who would be the first into the film room and the last to leave. "He was a Hall of Fame player because of his Hall of Fame dedication," Ryan said.

In advance of his debut, Singletary used the word "humble" a lot. But he also acknowledged that it hasn't always been the case. When he started down the coaching path, he figured his superstar status would put him on the coaching fast track.

To his surprise, he had to slog his way up just like everybody else. About the only benefit of the doubt he got was last week, when he skipped the coordinator level to become a head coach

"I was never a coordinator before I got the job either," Ditka said. "Who cares? The job is not about Xs and Os anyway. It's about people. Mike is going to put people in the best position to succeed."

Singletary's first job was the relatively lowly post of coaching inside linebackers for the Baltimore Ravens in 2003. That's where worked under the supervision of a defensive coordinator named Mike Nolan.

When Nolan was hired by the 49ers on Jan. 19, 2005, it took him all of two days to bring Singletary with him.

Overall, this was his sixth season as an assistant, his fourth with the 49ers. Openly eager for a head coaching job, he generated interest from the Dallas Cowboys, San Diego Chargers, Atlanta Falcons and his alma mater Baylor University — but never got an offer.

As an African-American trying to bust into the coaching ranks, there were moments of frustration. But John Wooten, who heads an organization to promote black NFL coaches, reminded Singletary that experience — not ethnicity -was the biggest factor holding him back.

"As good a player as he was, and as good a coach as we think he's going to be, the point is that he'd only been assistant for a few years," said Wooten, 71, a former Cowboys executive and the chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance. "We said, 'Mike, there are coaches who have been at it for 15-20 years — black and white — who haven't even had an interview yet."

As usual, the key was Walsh. The former 49ers coach had been an early advocate for minority coaching candidates, creating an internship program to bring in black assistants and hiring future head coaches such as Dennis Green and Ray Rhodes.

The Fritz Pollard Alliance pushed, too, helped aspiring coaches such as Singletary prepare for interviews, create game plans and understand the nuances of the job.

"Bill Walsh is the guy who put this all in motion," Wooten said.

As Singletary made the rounds, quizzing Walsh and others running an NFL team, he always asked about the balance between job and family. He learned a few strategies that will soon be put to the test starting today, just like his on-field play calls.

Singletary's oldest child is 22, his youngest is 10 and there are about two years between each of the other five.

Kim Singletary may have said, "It's time" and nudged her husband back toward football.

But he has no plans to abandon his old life for his new one and stop sleeping in the office.

"You know, I've got nothing against that, I mean if that's what other coaches want to do, then that's them," Singletary said. "I just think the most important thing for me is to know who I am and what it is I want out of life and where I'm going.

"I want to go to the Super Bowl. I want to win many Super Bowls. I want to win championships. I want to do all of those things.

"But not at the expense of my family."