Biography
"No one cared more about the game of football than George Young. He loved and lived it for his entire life. He was the quintessential 'football guy' who had the unique ability to be at home in the locker room, board room or any room in his beloved Baltimore. His contributions to our sport place him in rare company with the legends of the game," Paul Tagliabue, Commissioner, National Football League.
George Young, New York Giants and NFL executive, who passed away a year ago this month, is posthumously awarded the 2002 National Football Foundation Distinguished American Award.
Young was a guy who never sought praise but was praised to an extraordinary degree by those who knew him. Ernie Accorsi, who met Young the first day he went to work for the Baltimore Colts and wound up not only his friend but the anointed successor as Giants GM, said, "The footprint he leaves is that there's only one George Young. His legacy is that when you say his name, those who knew and loved him will smile with their own recollections which will cover the spectrum."
Loved by friends and colleagues, but especially by his wife of 36 years, Kathryn Mary Love Reddington Young. "Lovey."
You wouldn't know it to look at him with those thick coke-bottle eye-glasses and a rolling frame around 300 pounds, but Young was a heck of a football player. After Calvert Hall College High School in Baltimore, he went to Bucknell where he started and starred at defensive tackle for three seasons, was captain of the 1951 undefeated team and made First Team Little All-America. He was selected to play in the Blue-Gray game and was picked in the 26th and final round of the 1952 pro draft by the Dallas Texans.
He almost made it. Young was the last player cut in training camp. Several other teams were open to give him a look, but Young had other priorities. He wanted to go back to Baltimore and teach. Over the next 15 years, he taught history (his life-long intellectual passion) and political science and coached high school football; first at his alma mater, Calvert, then at City College High School, where he was 60-11-2 in nine years. He won six state titles in that 15 year run.
As a coach, he was both disciplinarian and taskmaster. He always held his players, mostly lots of tough kids with tough lives, to a higher standard than they knew existed. He checked their report cards even before parents saw them. The kids had to wear coats and ties on game days. They did not hot dog when they scored. Michael Olesker, writing in the Baltimore Sun, remembered the day that City and Douglas were locked in an 8-8 tie on a wickedly muddy field playing through a raw and rough rain. As his team was driving for a game-breaking score, Young kept calling and yelling to get the attention of his star halfback, Tom Duley. His shouts finally pierced the weather and Olesker thought he'd hear Young holler out a secret go-all-the-way play. Instead he heard, "Duley, your shirt's not tucked in!"
When he wasn't teaching and coaching, Young would take time out to watch the Baltimore Colts practice under the tutelage of coach Don Shula. One day, in 1967, while Young was working on a paper called "The Eunuch System and Fall of the Chinese Empire," Shula asked him if he could put his work aside for a bit, look at some film of college players and evaluate and grade them. The coach and his staff were going to be busy with the Pro Bowl.
Young scoured 30 cans of film and his reports were a revelation. Shula immediately got Young to join the Colts evaluating prospective player personnel. Three years later, Young left his desk and hit the field as offensive line coach three games into the 1970 season. He revamped the line and helped the Colts win the Super Bowl that year. Shula and Young became close friends as well as colleagues. In 1973-74, Young became Baltimore's offensive coordinator. In 1975, he joined Shula in Miami as the Dolphins director of pro personnel and helped assemble three Super Bowl teams.
At that time, trouble was in the headline whenever anybody wrote about the New York Giants.
The coach had been fired, the director of operations had resigned and the ship was without a captain. The 50-50 owners of the team, Wellington and Tim Mara, could not agree on the person who should run the team. Commissioner Pete Rozelle made up a list for them that included George Young. For the first time in a long time, the Maras agreed on something and Young and Lovey found themselves packing the furniture and history books and moving to New York.
"The Maras had the courage to pick me out of the vineyard. I was no big name," Young later said. "I couldn't have worked for better owners or a greater franchise." He helped make it greater. His first hire was Ray Perkins as coach. His first draft pick was a relatively unknown quarterback from a relatively unknown school; Phil Simms out of Morehead State. Resounding boos were the welcome to Simms' name on draft day. "How can I let a room full of ignorance affect me?" Young reacted.
After an injury influenced career start, Simms went on to become arguably the greatest quarterback in Giants history. In the 1986 Super Bowl, Simms had a game quarterbacks don't even fantasize; 22 completions out of 25 pass attempts for 268 yards and three touchdowns; Giants-39, Denver Broncos-20.
During the 19 years Young ran the team, the Giants won 53% of their games (155-139-2), made eight postseason appearances, won four NFC titles and two Super Bowls. He was NFL executive-of-the year five times. Among the players Young signed, 23 made it to the Pro Bowl.
After he resigned from the Giants in 1998, Young became the NFL's Senior Vice President of Football Operations, the highest ranking football job in the League.
