Beathard Agrees to Join Chargers : Pro football: Former Redskins’ general manager has not signed deal, but says he will end one-season TV career and become San Diego general manager.
Former Washington Redskin executive Bobby Beathard, 52, who moved to San Diego last summer for a reason, announced on NBC-TV Sunday that he has verbally agreed to become the Charger general manager.
Sources close to him said he will finalize his deal Tuesday with Charger owner Alex Spanos, and will officially start the job Wednesday. Then, it becomes a question of how many Redskin scouts he brings with him.
Sources have said Dick Daniels, Washington’s director of player personnel, will join the Chargers after this year’s college draft, and Redskins’ college scout Bill Devaney will be courted, too. Beathard also will be teaming up with good friend Dan Henning, the former Redskin assistant who took the San Diego head coaching job last February and finished 6-10 this season.
Steve Ortmayer was the Chargers’ general manager through 15 games this year. It was no secret Spanos coveted Beathard and vice versa, as soon as Beathard resigned as the Redskin general manager last May.
Sources have said that Beathard had a standing offer from Spanos from as far back as 1986 and that Beathard decided before he left the Redskins that he’d end up in San Diego. Beathard, a Californian who owns a home in the San Diego beach community of Leucadia, admitted last year that he began wanting to live in San Diego as far back as 1987.
Sources said Beathard, upon resigning from the Redskins, thought about joining the Chargers this season. But sources said he told Redskin owner Jack Kent Cooke, at the time of his departure, that he wanted about a year off. And sources said Beathard stayed out the entire season, and signed instead with NBC, to keep his word with Cooke. But Beathard, in an interview with the Associated Press, said Sunday: “When I made the decision to leave Washington, the closer I got to leaving the more I was convinced I just wanted to sit out a while, just be out of it. I don’t know how to explain that feeling. It’s just the way I felt.”
With NBC, he appeared on “NFL Live,” the weekly pregame show and delivered inside league information. He said Sunday he expects to finish his commitment and will appear for the last time on NBC next weekend. “I found out during the season that I did miss football, although I’ve had a lot of fun” on NBC, he said.
The Chargers have already fired all of Ortmayer’s scouts, according to published reports in San Diego, and that includes personnel director Chet Franklin and director of college scouting Les Miller. However, all of the draft material they gathered this year for the Chargers will be left behind. Moreover, Beathard did some scouting last week at the Blue-Gray game in Alabama.
Redskin sources are adamant that scouts Daniels and Devaney won’t be let out of their contracts until after the April draft, when their contracts will expire.
Charger defensive coordinator Ron Lynn said a year out of the front office makes Beathard a more valuable commodity.
“He has spent a lot of time in the NFC,” Lynn said. “He has a lot of feel for people available. He had a year off, and I’m sure he spent that year studying the players in the league, seeing what’s transpiring, and would be able to make some good judgments about the people out there.”
Charger Coach Dan Henning was out of town Sunday, but said last week Beathard, an acquaintence of 25 years, should be hired.
“I would be disappointed if it’s not Beathard,” Henning said. “I consider that 1,000 times better than hiring someone I don’t know.”