Well I discovered I was using the wrong mac address. 
Also i added "ethtool -s vmnic0 wol g" to "/etc/rc.local.d/local.sh" above "exit 0" where vmnic0 is the name of the phycical nic esxi chose.
That command would persist the nic in wol mode and respond to magic packets across reboots and runs at start up.
VMware KB: Modifying the rc.local or local.sh file in ESX/ESXi to execute commands while booting