One-on-One With Ernie Accorsi

Published in SBJ March 1, 2007

Following his graduation from Wake Forest in 1963, Ernie Accorsi served in the U.S. army before getting his start in sports business as a reporter for the Charlotte News. He later wrote for the Baltimore Sun and the Philadelphia Inquirer before moving to the athletic departments at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and then Penn State. Accorsi began his NFL career in 1970 as public relations director for the Baltimore Colts, worked on Pete Rozelle’s staff in the league office in 1975 before rejoining the Colts two years later as assistant G.M. He resigned as G.M. in 1983 after drafting John Elway and learning that the club had traded him. He was G.M. and executive vice president of the Cleveland Browns (where he engineered the controversial acquisition of Bernie Kosar) for seven years. Following his ninth season in the front office of the New York Giants, and his 35th year in pro football), Accorsi retired in January of 2007.

Q. Your friend Pat Williams said that among all your gifts, you are "the best storyteller in sports."
Accorsi: I don't know about that. He likes my stories, but he's known me a long time.

Q. Looking back on your 35 years in the game, what’s the most memorable story for you? 

Accorsi: That’s a real tough question. Probably it was the transaction, trade, and drafting of Bernie Kosar in Cleveland that caused the league to change a rule. We made a trade for a supplemental draft choice from Buffalo for the possibility of drafting Bernie Kosar, and Minnesota had traded with Houston for their conventional draft pick in order to obtain Kosar. When we made that trade, [Houston] challenged it with the league office, saying that I was trying to circumvent the rules because I could not get a trade with Houston. 

Q. Why could you not get a trade with Houston?

Accorsi: Houston and Cleveland were in the same division, and very rarely did teams in the same division trade with each other. They wouldn’t trade with me. I had tried, but they wouldn’t, so they traded their first pick to Minnesota to get Kosar. Kosar had the option, because he had been scheduled to graduate in less than three years, to go in the conventional draft or wait and go in the supplemental draft. [The Oilers] felt we were influencing him because he was from Ohio. Well, there was a hearing, and what the commissioner—who was Pete Rozelle—did was he upheld both trades and left it up to the player to either file in advance for the regular draft or wait until that deadline expired, in which case he would be (once he graduated after the first session of summer school) eligible for a supplemental draft. He let the deadline expire, and so Minnesota’s challenge to try to defeat our trade didn’t take effect and we got him. 

Q. And that caused the NFL to rewrite the rule?

Accorsi: The NFL changed the rule after that so that you couldn’t trade for a supplemental choice in advance. Not that it was illegal, but they changed the rule after that. Bernie took us to five straight playoffs and three championship games in five years. So, I’d say that considering the results of that trade—the fact that it really brought that franchise back into prominence and got us on the brink of the Super Bowl three times—that probably was the most significant thing I was involved in from a business standpoint.   

Q. You entered and learned the business from a reporter’s perspective. How did that help prepare you for the front office? 

Accorsi: When I graduated from Wake Forest in 1963, in the three American-based major sports (the NBA, the NFL, and Major League Baseball), the three commissioners had all been former reporters or P.R. men. It was really the way you had to crack the business because the NFL did not have scouting staffs. They might have had one scout, but most of the time the coaches did that. There were not that many general managers. It was the owner and the coach. So, there were not a lot of opportunities in front offices in pro football; baseball had a little more. 

Q. A lot has changed since then.

Accorsi: In those days, because of the relationship between the media and the clubs, which was quite different from what it is now—it wasn’t quite as adversarial then—that was not an unusual avenue. You would get in the media, [the teams] would hire someone from the media, usually in P.R. or in some facet of the front office, because there really were not scouting jobs.

Q. You thought you would work in MLB, though, not the NFL?

Accorsi: My dream was to be a GM in baseball. I grew up in the ’50s, when baseball was the dominant professional sport. So, I just immediately went to the media business. Pat [Williams] was a little more fortunate. He got a break right away after he played a year or two of minor league baseball. He got a general manager’s job in the low minors. In retrospect, I should have done the same thing because it was baseball I wanted to get into. I had to overcome a bias my whole career from people in football who did not go that way, who might have had a different opinion of the media and who started off as coaches. But it gave me an edge in that I always understood that the media had a job to do. 

Q. How would you characterize your relations with the media?

Accorsi: Listen, I don’t like to be criticized publicly any more than any other human being. But I understood that that was part of the business. Rarely did I ever take it personally because I had done the same thing. I had criticized athletes, coaches, general managers, and draft choices, and I never felt it was personal. A lot of times they took it personally. And I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to do that if I ever got into a position of being a principal. And most of the time I was able to fulfill that promise to myself. For the most part, I had good relations with the media.   

Q. You started out as a reporter. How do you assess the state of sports writing today?

Accorsi: It’s different. The cliché is that Watergate changed everything when [journalism] became more investigative. I was a reporter right before that. When I broke into the business, you were more intent on being a lyricist. You were anxious to see what Red Smith thought of a game and how he wrote about it. You wanted to break stories, especially if you were a reporter. But the columnists, more or less, almost put it to music, and it was wonderful to read. There isn’t as much of the emphasis on the lyricism today. There’s more emphasis on what information is being uncovered. There’s more reporting. There’s more digging at stories. The behind-the-scenes rumors, or things of that nature are more important than how well you write it.

Q. You broke a big story in 1968 for the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Accorsi: That was the biggest story of my life when I broke the Wilt Chamberlain trade from the 76ers to the Lakers.

Q. You grew up in Hershey, which was the unlikely site of a memorable NBA game and record.

Accorsi: I lucky enough as a kid growing up in Hershey. There was a great old hotel there. We had the Eagles training there. We had an American Hockey League team. We had all the big bands at the Starlight Ballroom. So, we had a lot of people and entertainers come through there. Consequently, the newsstand had all the papers from the east coast—and there were a lot more papers then. It was run by a guy who was one of my father’s best friends, and he would let me sit there on the steps behind the newsstand and read the papers,. I would go there every day and read Red Smith or Jimmy Cannon and have the opportunity to be influenced by them.

Q. Did you see Chamberlain’s 100-point game in Hershey? 

Accorsi: No, I was a junior at Wake Forest. I had been to the ACC tournament semifinal that night at Raleigh and was driving back to Winston-Salem with my fraternity brothers, six of us in a car. We were listening to the rock music of that time on the car radio, and they broke in with the news. When I heard Hershey, I figured there was a fire or explosion at the chocolate factory. Why else would Hershey command such national news!

Q. What did you think when you heard what happened?

Accorsi: My first thought then was, well, I missed it. My second thought was of my father, who went to all those games. And he was the all-time leave-early-to-beat-the-traffic guy, which was ridiculous. In Hershey, Pennsylvania! When I got back to the dorm, I called my parents. My mother answered the phone and immediately asked, “What happened?” I said, “I just want to know: Did he stay?” And for once, he did. I had this vision that he walked out when Wilt scored his 90th point to beat the crowd. 

Q. A lot more people than were present for the game claim to have been there. 

Accorsi: Oh, 25,000 did [claim that]. I guess there were about 4,000 at the game. They played a couple of games there every year. They would draw 4,000. Very rarely did they draw 4,000 in Philadelphia. They did for the Celtics maybe, but otherwise drew 3,800 or 4,000. The team trained in Hershey, so they would play games there. I even saw NBA double-headers there. The NBA wasn’t what it is today. 

Q. You rewrote the football quiz in the movie Diner, didn’t you? 

Accorsi: I didn’t know who [the director] Barry Levinson was. I was in Baltimore and they came to town to do this movie. They wanted to re-create the 1959 [NFL] championship game. They asked us if they could get uniforms made the way they were then. I said, “We still wear the exact same uniforms.” They showed me portions of the script, and there were questions in that quiz that I changed. It has now become legendary that I wrote the quiz. I did not.  

Q. It’s the most memorable scene in the movie. 

Accorsi: It is. And I always said that if the quiz was on the level, she [the prospective bride] wouldn’t have passed. 

Q. Jerry West said, “For the people who are fortunate enough to be able to work for franchises, there’s a tremendous amount of gratification in helping to build a team. It’s a challenge every day.” What was the biggest challenge for you? 

Accorsi: The biggest challenge ironically was the least heralded. I had multiple playoff teams in both Cleveland and New York. And both franchises got to the conference championship game. But the biggest challenge was…I was an assistant general manager with the Colts. Bob Irsay fired the GM and gave me the job late in summer before camp. We had very little resources. My predecessor had traded Bert Jones and John Dutton, both all-pros, and I had nothing but a scrappy bunch of rookies. There was a strike. We played only nine games and the team went 0-8-1. 

The next year, we went 7-9. No team had ever won seven games in a season after a winless season the year before. And we came within a whisker, just a whisker, of going 9-7. We lost two excruciating heartbreakers. That was the biggest challenge: to try to put something together with very limited resources. It was almost like Rice in the old Southwest Conference playing against Texas and Texas A&M. You had very little chance. But that was a team I was very proud of because it did scramble its way to seven wins. 

Q. That was the last team in Baltimore Colts history. 

Accorsi: That was 1983. I was in the job a little over a year. The rumor was that the team would move. I didn’t want to be a part of it. Growing up within 80 miles of Baltimore, I had rooted for that team. The owner had also traded the rights to John Elway without my knowledge. Consequently, I just didn’t feel there was a commitment to win and I resigned. I got a job with the Cleveland Browns. But that was the biggest challenge: to try to put something together with very limited resources. 

Q. You once said that if the Colts had kept Elway and signed him, the franchise might still be in Baltimore. 

Accorsi: I think so. He claims he never would have signed. Of course, no one will ever know. We had a waiting list for season tickets and then all of a sudden it depleted before I became GM down to about 28,000. And I’m convinced that had Elway signed, season tickets would have doubled and there would have been an excitement around the town that probably would have kept him there and maybe inspired him. The city needed a new stadium, but that might have inspired the popularity to change in a political climate to build a new stadium. 

Q. When you became GM of the Giants in 1998, your predecessor, George Young, said, “He knows who to talk to and he knows who not to listen to.” 

Accorsi: George always said that. I think I know people. Some people are smart and some people are not so smart. Some have high intelligence and not great instincts. I don’t know how smart I am, but I’ve always been blessed with the instincts of knowing people. I usually can spot a genuine person and a non-genuine person quite quickly. I think that’s what George was referring to.

Q. I read that you said you always loved the draft part of the business the most. Why? 

Accorsi: Well, because…there’s no exact science but there’s such a brotherhood to it. I have great empathy for the scouts. They are the unsung heroes of the franchise. For the most part they live in different parts of the country. They don’t see the team play. They’re on the road from August until February. If they’re at a college campus on a Saturday, they have to scramble on Sunday to find a sports bar that has the Giants game on satellite. They’re sitting there in a tavern with their careers on the line like all of ours, quietly watching with a bunch of fans who are just rooting, and their livelihood is at stake. They may scout 1,000 players and we may not draft any of them. 

Q. The fans know the players and the coaches, but not the scouts.

Accorsi: It’s sort of a lonely life, and when they all come together in April to gather and study the prospects and rate them in meetings, it all culminates in incredible tension in two days at the draft. It’s not even the tension of “Am I going to make the right choice?” It’s the tension of “Are the players that we really want, are they still going to be there for us to pick?” You have differences of opinion, but there’s just a bonding that occurs that different with the coaches. The coaches are in the action, they’re on the field. They get a lot of praise and a lot of criticism.

Q. And the scouts?

Accorsi: The scouts get very little praise and the only criticism is as a group. So, it’s a whole different concept. When you have these people that basically you depend on so much for their expertise in that room, it’s a high that a lot of people don’t experience because it doesn’t translate as tangibly as coaching does, which is out in front of 80,000 people with the crowd cheering. These people, the scouts, basically walk through their lives in anonymity, but they mean the world to us as a franchise. There’s just that feeling for those two days that’s hard to put your finger on to try to explain. 

Q. You have been through 35 drafts, with the big names being Kosar, Elway and, most recently, Eli Manning. Any sleeper gems that you are most proud of?

Accorsi: Earnest Byner, in the 10th round [in 1984 by the Cleveland Browns], turned out to be an outstanding player. Just recently, Osi Umenyiora, whom [the Giants] picked out of Delta State in the second round in 2003. People laughed at the pick. They thought it was a reach. But what difference does it make if you want the player and think he’s going to be outstanding? Does it make any difference where you pick him? The only thing that determines is how much money the guy gets. Get him if you really believe in him. There have been others, but those two are bookends at the two ends of my career. 

Q. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said that you have to draft well because your most efficient use of the salary cap is with younger players. 

Accorsi: Very, very profound statement. Because you can’t re-sign all your veteran players. It’s economically impossible under the cap. The only way you’re ever going to be able to deal with the cap is to understand that you’re going to lose players. Those of us who were carryovers from the pre-free agency/pre-salary cap era tried that. It didn’t work. We all got in salary-cap trouble the first couple of years, George Young included, because we tried to operate the way we always did, which was to re-sign all your players. 

You can’t do that. You have to designate the priority list and say, “We’re going to let these guys go.” Well, if you do that—and you have to do that—you’re going to create holes on your team, and the only way to replace those vacancies is through the draft. So, not only do you have to draft well, but [the draftees] have to play faster. The old days of “Well, we have five years to get this player ready” are gone. 

Q. You don’t have much time for development.

Accorsi: You can’t afford to wait that long. By that time, they’re free agents. You have people who have to step in and play. You need to draft well and the coaches need to develop them faster. I’ve always felt the coaching position is a teaching position anyway, and there’s even more pressure on them now to develop these players and get them ready to play because free agency and the cap cause you to lose players. 

Q. The salary cap sometimes requires hard choices. What was your toughest personnel decision? 

Accorsi: Oh, I had so many players that I had to let go. Joe Jurevicius, who was one of my first draft choices [with the Giants] and turned out to help Tampa Bay win the Super Bowl, was really tough. Morten Andersen, the great kicker, who will probably go to the Hall of Fame. I could not sign him. He said he was willing to wait but I told him, “It’s your age. I cannot afford to call you and say, ‘Look, I made you wait and now you don’t have any place to go.’” I had to let him go because I didn’t know if I’d be able to raise the money. 

Q. And you had to choose between Chad Bratzke and Michael Strahan on the Giants.

Accorsi: Bratzke had 16 or 17 sacks with us. I had two all-pro defensive ends, Bratzke and Strahan, and I had to pick between the two. Now, I picked the right one, but I told his agent—the same agent, by the way, for both—Tony Agnew, “I cannot even compete for him because then I won’t be able to re-sign Strahan.” Here was a player we drafted down the line and the coaches did a great job of developing him, and now we developed him for someone else. It breaks your heart. It flies in the face of the whole concept of this business, but there’s nothing you can do. 

Q. You were with Bill Belichick in Cleveland, where he was not successful. What did he learn in Cleveland that he applied in New England?

Accorsi: You’d have to ask him that. Art Modell and I hired him. I was with him for one year. I don’t really think he failed in Cleveland. We hired him in ’91, and by ‘94 they were a playoff team, and then in ‘95 they moved. That team needed to be rebuilt. We had been in three championship games in four years and five straight playoffs, and it had gotten old and he had to rebuild it. And when I left, he basically was the sole manager and coach. I think he was in the process of being successful there. I don’t know what he learned, but I know one thing: I had interviewed him in ’89, and we had pretty much made up our mind. I’ve always told him that interview led to us hiring him two years later, he was so impressive. The decision essentially had already been made to hire Bud Carson in ‘89. 

Q. What did you see in Belichick at the time?

Accorsi: You could tell there was something special about him. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I was smart enough to realize he was going to be this great. You hope that. But you could tell there was something special about Belichick. One of the reasons, I guess, is his heritage with his father. You just had this impression that at whatever age he was then—in his 40s, I guess—that he had prepared for that moment from the time he was about seven years old. Here was a career coach. Not someone who had tried playing, failed or retired, and then decided to get into coaching. That was not the case with him. You could see that he had planned that from day one. What he learned [in Cleveland] I don’t know. He would have to answer that. But he’s one of those people that’s going to get better and learn because he’s a student of the game and he’s so smart.  

Q. What’s the best thing about working in sports? 

Accorsi: Edwin Bennett Williams called it “contest winning.” I guess with him it was wining a trial, and then he became the owner of the Redskins. There’s no high like the moment when you’ve just won a game. You watch the players file into the locker room and you look at each one’s contributions. The euphoria in the locker room after a win, particularly on the road, because there is no sensation like silencing the road crowd. And then you are together for the trip home. There’s nothing like that plane ride home after a great victory. 

Q. What’s the biggest change in the business of football since you became part of it?

Accorsi: It’s easy to say free agency. That’s structural and that obviously has changed it. If you took what I consider one of the greatest teams in history, personnel-wise, the mid-seventies Steelers, there was no way they could have kept that team together. The salary cap would not have permitted it. They would have lost two or three Hall of Famers. They would have had to. They had, what, eight or nine? 

Q. What about changes to the game itself?

Accorsi: To me, the biggest difference in the game are the scripted mass substitutions. It looks like rush hour at Penn Station: players coming on the field and players coming off the field. You have these coaches with what I call the “Denny’s menu” [color-coded play charts]. And you have quarterbacks pointing all over the place and driving you crazy because the clock’s running down and you’re thinking, “Get the snap. Get the snap.” It has just become a very high-tech, very intelligently directed game. 

Q. The game was different when you first joined the NFL. 

Accorsi: I love the game the way it was. There was a uniformity and a beauty to it. You had the two backs behind the quarterback. You had a flanker and a split end. You had a 4-3 defense. Everything was neat. Because of that it became a match-up game. It became an athletic game. I have to beat you all day or you have to stop me all day. Those days are gone. It has now become a scheming game.

Now it’s more substitutions, change of pace, disguising defenses…I know this: The late Jim Finks, who is in the Hall of Fame as a general manager, came within a few votes of becoming the commissioner. He was determined to limit substitutions to try to make the game more of a match-up game. 

Q. You alluded earlier to the “Denny’s menu.” What about the coaches we see now in every sport who are afraid of lip readers? They hold their play card up to their mouth to hide what they are saying.

Accorsi: Oh, yeah. I’ll tell you an incident that actually won the divisional title for us in 1977. We had an assistant coach named Bobby Colbert, who had been the head coach at Gallaudet school for the deaf in Washington. He had been educated in lip-reading. There’s a science to it. That was the only way he could communicate with his players. 

We were losing to the Patriots in the last game of the season, in a game we needed to win to win the division. If we lost, we’d be out of the playoffs. We had third-and-18 at our own 12. Their defensive coordinator was yelling, “Double safety delayed blitz.” Colbert read his lips with binoculars, got the word to [Colts quarterback] Bert Jones, who checked off and threw a pass down the middle of the field to Ray Chester for an 88-yard touchdown. That basically broke the game open and won the championship for us. 

Q. I wonder how many coaches know that story. 

Accorsi: That is an extreme example from a person who had tremendous expertise in it. But now teams have so many coaches—some have 21—that they have people assigned on binoculars to try to read lips. They do! You used to send the plays in with players. Now the offensive coordinator or the head coach is calling the plays in his headset. The quarterback is listening to it in his headset and the coach has to mouth it [the play call]. That’s why he’s obscuring his face. 

Q. The catcher in baseball now covers his mouth with his mitt when he visits the pitcher on the mound. 

Accorsi: I know. That’s how complicated it’s gotten (laughing). 

Q. In referring to what you called the “Super Bowl hangover,” you said, “It’s a one-game huge event. When you lose it, the emotional setback is incredible.” But you have seven months to recover from that hangover. 

Accorsi: Yeah, but that doesn’t do you any good. I was in four championship games and lost three of them. And that is a devastating effect, too, because you’re one game away from the Super Bowl. I realized that when I came to the Colts in 1970 and they were still reeling from the loss in Super Bowl III. Granted that was probably the most devastating of all Super Bowl defeats because that was the first one the NFL lost to the AFL, it was Joe Namath rubbing it in and the Colts were 17-point favorites. 

Q. You don’t see the same aftereffects in baseball.

Accorsi: There are teams that celebrate pennants. You go to training camp in Lakeland this spring and I’m sure it will say “Home of the American League Champion Detroit Tigers.” They don’t do that in football. Because it’s a one-game thing, and if you lose, you’re almost branded a loser even though you’ve just played in the Super Bowl. If you’ve played in the World Series, you’re heralded for that. If you lose the Super Bowl, you’re not. 

Q. The Bills, for example?

Accorsi: Look at poor Buffalo. Four straight Super Bowls! They should go down in history as one of the great dynasties ever. And no one even talks about them other than they lost four straight Super Bowls. So that’s what I mean. And seven months doesn’t do you any good because when I got to the Colts, they still had the hangover. 

Q. What’s in the water in western Pennsylvania? The area has produced Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Joe Montana, and Dan Marino.

Accorsi: I’m a Pennsylvanian, but I’m from the eastern part of the state. And Pennsylvania’s like two different states. There’s no correlation between the two. You’re either from Philly or from Pittsburgh, basically. There’s a toughness, especially in the Pittsburgh of their era, when it was a tough, smoky steel town. I remember driving in the ’50s. We had gotten lost and looked down on some of those towns in the Monongahela Valley into Pittsburgh, and you saw all these flames in the air shooting out from the steel mills and the coal mines. These were the sons of those people. A lot of them were big families. A lot of the fathers died young because of the lung diseases from the mines. They just were tough people. 

Q. That’s an indispensable asset for a quarterback.

Accorsi: To me, it’s the most mentally tough position in all sports. I’m not talking just from an intelligence standpoint. I’m talking from a toughness standpoint. And I don’t think it was an accident. A lot of these guys were ethnic guys, first generation. Their parents were immigrants or, at the very least, their grandparents were. I have all the respect in the world for western Pennsylvania. 

Q. Al McGuire said, “Super intelligent people can’t be good athletes. They’re too aware.” 

Accorsi: I know what Al was getting at. They’re probably not as coachable (laughing) because they question too much, and sometimes you don’t want to be questioned as a coach. What he means is, “Go do this. Don’t ask me why. I’m the coach. I’m telling you go do this and do it this way.” But I don’t buy that. Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus are the two greatest golfers of my lifetime, and they’re both super intelligent, in my opinion. Elway was very intelligent. So was Unitas. 

Q. About your retirement, Pat Williams also said, “I’m wondering if, a year from now, does he get antsy? Does he make a grand return?” What about that?

Accorsi: No, I won’t. There are so many things I want to do that I’ve not been able to do. It’s not that you’re indispensable 24 hours a day. But you have to be on call 24 hours a day. I tried to go to Europe in 2001. By the time I landed and drove to the place I was staying in Tuscany, one of our players got in an automobile accident and another decided to have foot surgery in June, which was going to knock him out of the first half of the season. 

Q. Not a restful trip, I’m guessing?

Accorsi: My vacation was already ruined. When you have children, you’re never going to have personal piece of mind. But I want professional piece of mind. I don’t want that burden weighing on me all the time. My basic passion is baseball. But I’ve never lost a golf ball in the autumn leaves, and I just want to do it once. Meaning, since I was a kid, I’ve never got the chance. October is the best time to play. And believe me, I’m sure I’ll lose plenty.

Postscript

I reached out to Ernie in December of last year after Eli Manning's final game in Giants Stadium. The Giants fans saluted their two-time Super-Bowl-winning quarterback with a warm, appreciative ovation at the conclusion of the game, and I congratulated Ernie for the professional and personal qualities he had recognized in Manning when he drafted him. I said that I hoped he, too, shared in that much-deserved salute to a great champion.

Q. That send-off the Giants fans gave Eli was so warm and so well-deserved. I hope that you were there to witness that tribute to a giant among Giants. A Giant because of what you saw in him.

What a pro and a class act Manning has always been. Never complained to the press after the ridiculous and insulting benching by McAdoo for Geno Smith and for Jones this season. Never criticized a coach or a teammate in public. Stood up and took the heat every time. Toughness so underrated. Never missed a start due to injury despite taking a beating behind the recent offensive lines. And what were his first words on the field after the game yesterday? The win was important to the team and for my teammates. What a leader!

As professional and classy and historical in the very best sense to the Giants as Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera were to the Yankees. How fitting that he rose to the occasion once again and heard the cheers. A two-time Super Bowl MVP who outplayed Brady and a Hall of Famer on and off the field. I can only imagine how proud you must be.

Congratulations to both of you.

Accorsi: I really appreciate your kind thoughts and words. Even though I have Italian blood, I’ve never been very emotional, but I must admit to tears rolling down my cheeks. What a good soldier. He [Manning] showed up every day, went to work, played every game, never complained or showed up a teammate, always acted with class, and won two championships. 

A clutch player under the most extreme pressure. As good as he was In beating [Tom] Brady twice [in the Super Bowl], he was extraordinary in two championship games at Green Bay and San Francisco. In Green Bay’s excruciating cold, refusing to wear a glove; and being beaten into the ground repeatedly in San Francisco but getting up and winning the game. I can’t imagine being associated with a better professional. 

Thank you for thinking of me. I hope that was the finale and he can walk away now. I can’t imagine him in another uniform.

Personal

Date & Place of Birth: October 29, 1941 (”39 days before Pearl Harbor”) in Hershey, Penn. 

Education: Wake Forest (1963)

Favorites

Vacation spot: Europe. My mother was born in Tuscany. My father, although he is of Italian descent, was born in Paris. I love exploring my roots and World War II sites in Europe. 

Singer: Frank Sinatra 

Song: “The Great Pretender,” by The Platters. 

Book: North Toward Home, by Willie Morris

Movie: Field of Dreams

Best sports movie: Pride of the Yankees 

Worst sports movie: The Babe Ruth Story. I don’t think I could ever buy William Bendix as Babe Ruth.

Quote: Browning’s “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” 

Last book read: Johnny U, by Tom Callahan and The Precious Present, by Spencer Johnson, which Rick Pitino recommended.

Second-guesses/regrets: I don’t second-guess myself because I’m in a decision-making position and I make the call. My biggest regret in sports is that I did not see Ebbets Field. 

Collections: Too many things. Old game balls, for one. But there are two collections that show you my interest in history. I chipped off pieces of the Berlin Wall and brought them back for people as gifts. And I brought back and have in a jar sand from Omaha Beach, where the 29th infantry division landed. I had been a member of the 29th (not in World War II), and I brought a lot of that sand back and gave it to some of the old G.I.s who were still around 20 years ago who had landed there from Maryland. 

Most influential people in career: Joe Paterno at the beginning, Pete Rozelle in the middle, and Wellington Mara at the end.

Most underrated player: Bernie Kosar. He’s probably going to just miss the Hall of Fame. He made five straight playoffs and carried us on his back and people forget about how good he was. He was a great player for five years. He hurt his elbow and was never quite the same and had somewhat of a short career.