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Pastimes : Football Forum (NFL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (10139)	12/9/2001 2:30:20 AM
From: Augustus Gloop	Respond to of 45644

Today we lost another Football legend. NEW YORK -- George Young, the general manager who turned the floundering New York Giants into a two-time Super Bowl winner and was one of the NFL's top executives for more than two decades, died Saturday night after a short illness. He was 71. Young left the Giants after 19 years following the 1997 season and became the NFL's executive vice-president for football operations. He died in Baltimore, where he was born and where he began his NFL career in 1969 with the then-Baltimore Colts after teaching history and coaching high school football. George Young took over as Giants GM in 1979 and turned the franchise into a two-time Super Bowl winner. "He was in essence a teacher, both in the history class and in football who helped people at all levels," said commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who spent Thursday and Friday with Young in Baltimore. "No one cared more about the game of football than George Young. He loved it and lived it for his entire life. His contributions place him in the rare company with the legends of the game." Young won four executive of the year awards during his 19 years with the Giants, beginning in 1979, when he was recommended by then commissioner Pete Rozelle to squabbling team owners Wellington and Tim Mara, who couldn't agree on a new GM. That change came the Maras cleaned out the coaching staff and front office following one of the low points in team history -- The Fumble, which cost the team a game against the Philadelphia Eagles when quarterback Joe Pisarcik tried to hand off to Larry Csonka instead of taking a knee to clinch a victory. The ball was returned for the winning TD by Herman Edwards, now coach of the New York Jets. His first draft pick in 1979 was a little-known quarterback from Morehead State named Phil Simms. New York fans at the draft booed because they wanted Ottis Anderson, who went with the next pick to the Cardinals. Simms was the MVP of the Giants' first Super Bowl winner in 1987. Anderson, acquired as running back insurance in 1986, was MVP of the second champion four years later. When Ray Perkins, his first coach in New York, resigned in 1982 to succeed Bear Bryant at Alabama, Young hired little-known defensive coordinator Bill Parcells, to coach the team. And perhaps his most important acquisition was Lawrence Taylor, the Hall of Fame linebacker taken with the second overall pick in the 1981 draft. To outsiders, Young could seem crusty. He would answer the phone with a "What do YOU want?" But he always returned those calls and would spend hours a day on the phone with friend inside of football and out of it. And much as he loved the game, he would denigrate it. "I never draft anyone too smart," he used to say. "If he's smart, he can find something to do other than to play this dumb game." The son of a Baltimore tavern owner, Young graduated from Bucknell, then played one year in the NFL in 1950 for the Dallas Texans, precursors of the Baltimore Colts. As a high school coach, he got to know many of the Colts, including Don Shula, who hired him in 1969 as an assistant in the personnel department. He was the offensive line coach on the Colts team that won the Super Bowl after the 1972 season and offensive coordinator under Howard Schnellenberger in 1973 after Shula moved to Miami. Young went to Miami in 1974, working in the personnel department with Bobby Beathard, who became his good friend and rival. Beathard left for Washington in 1978, the year before Young went to New York and through the mid-'80s and early '90s, their teams battled yearly for the NFC East title. In Young's tenure, the Giants had a 155-139-2 record and made eight postseason appearances. Prior to Young's arrival, the Giants had not made the playoffs since 1963. Young was well over 300 pounds for most of his life. "I never draft a fat guy because I'm a fat guy and I know what it's like to get into shape." But after becoming ill a decade ago, doctors told him that he had to lose weight. He did -- dropping more than 100 pounds and looking so gaunt that we would greet people who were seeing a thin Young for the first time by saying: "I don't have cancer!" Young is survived by his wife, Helen Love "Lovey" Young. The Giants were in Dallas to play the Cowboys on Sunday. Giants spokesmen Pat Hanlon and Avis Roper did not immediately return messages left on their pagers. A telephone receptionist at the Renaissance Dallas Hotel said the team was not taking messages.