Insightful Young Left a Lasting Impression

Ernie Accorsi didn’t want to make a fuss. It was 1982, and he had just been promoted to general manager of the Baltimore Colts. He needed to move into a new office, and quietly recruited a couple of friends to help him lug furniture. He waited until everyone had left the facility.

Then, mid-move, the phone rang. The caller didn’t give his name. He didn’t need to.

“Has the procession begun?” asked the voice.

Amazing. Even when he was miles away, George Young always knew what was going on. He loved being the keeper of the inside scoop.

Young, the legendary executive who left an indelible mark on the NFL, died over the weekend at a Baltimore hospital from a rare brain disorder. He was 71.

At Young’s funeral Tuesday in Baltimore, his hometown, friends and family reminisced about the onetime history teacher who, among many other accomplishments, helped transform the struggling New York Giants into two-time Super Bowl champions.

“I never, ever made a decision in my career without talking to him first,” said Accorsi, who succeeded Young as general manager of the Giants in 1998. “George prided himself in finding things out before anybody else.”

That was evident in the way he evaluated players and resisted the impulse to blend into the crowd the way a lot of scouts do. In 1979 draft, for instance, the Giants needed a quarterback, and the popular choice was Washington State’s Jack Thompson, the “Throwin’ Samoan.” Young dismissed him as a “media pick” and instead reached for Phil Simms, a then-unknown quarterback from tiny Morehead State in Kentucky. Simms was a Super Bowl hero. Hear much about Thompson?

Young won five executive-of-the-year awards in 19 years with the Giants, in 1997 moving on to become the NFL’s vice president for football operations. There were more powerful executives under Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, but Young was the highest-ranking football man. Until a decade ago, when a bout with cancer persuaded him to lose 100 pounds, Young weighed more than 300 pounds for most of his life.

He was a solid lineman at Bucknell who played the 1950 season for the Dallas Texans, then was released before his second season. After he was cut, he took a job as a junior-high history teacher. He was so enthralled with the job, he turned down contract offers from the Colts, Steelers and Packers the following season.

Young got back into pro football when Don Shula hired him as an assistant in the Colt personnel department in 1969, and was promoted to offensive line coach, then offensive coordinator over the next four seasons.

By that time, Shula was in Miami and hired him to help run the personnel department in 1974. Bob Griese, the team’s star quarterback, remembers Young’s astoundingly thorough scouting reports. They were color-coded and written as if Young had crawled into the head of the opponent.

“He just knew people,” Griese said. “He would tell you that this defensive tackle was a librarian. I’d say, ‘What do you mean, a librarian?’ He’d say, ‘He’s like a librarian; all he wants to do is keep quiet and read all day.’ His descriptions were unforgettable.”

Those who knew Young best say he had an uncanny ability to judge the credibility of people almost instantly. Phonies didn’t stand a chance.

In his eulogy, Tagliabue quoted Young’s college roommate and closest friend, Nick Schloeder: “George could read you. He knew what you were, and knew what you weren’t.”

Young had terrible vision and wore Coke-bottle lenses for most of his life. Legend has it that when he was playing for the Texans, there was a scuffle for a fumble. Thinking he had the ball in his sights, Young mistakenly pounced on someone’s helmet and nearly wrenched off someone’s head.

He couldn’t see you, but he could see right through you.