Following his ninthseason in the front office of the New York Giants, and his 35th year in profootball, Ernie Accorsi retired last month. He has been in the middle of someof the biggest trades in professional football, and his career has spannedsports writing, public relations and the front office.
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| Ernie Accorsi |
After his graduation fromWake Forest in 1963, Accorsi served in the U.S. Army before getting his startin sports as a reporter for the Charlotte News. He later wrote for theBaltimore Sun and the Philadelphia Inquirer before moving to the athletic departmentsat St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and then Penn State.
Accorsi began his NFLcareer in 1970 as public relations director for the Baltimore Colts and workedon Pete Rozelle’s staff in the league office in 1975 before rejoining the Coltstwo years later as assistant general manager. He resigned as GM in 1983 afterdrafting John Elway and learning that the club had traded him. He also was GMand executive vice president of the Cleveland Browns, where he engineered thecontroversial acquisition of Bernie Kosar, for seven years.
Accorsi recently sharedstories of his career and offered some thoughts for the future withSportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh.
Favorite vacation spot: Europe. My motherwas born in Tuscany. My father, although he is of Italian descent, was born inParis. I love exploring my roots and World War II sites in Europe.
Favorite singer: FrankSinatra
Favorite song: “The Great Pretender,” byThe Platters
Favorite book: “North Toward Home,” byWillie Morris
Favorite movie: “Field ofDreams”
Favorite quote: Browning’s “A man’s reachshould exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
Most influential people in career: JoePaterno at the beginning, Pete Rozelle in the middle and Wellington Mara at theend.
Regrets: I don’t second-guess myselfbecause I’m in a decision-making position and I make the call. My biggestregret in sports is that I did not see Ebbets Field.
Lookingback on your 35 years in the game, what’s the most memorable story for you?
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The deal that brought Bernie Kosar to
Cleveland was a highlight for Accorsi. |
Accorsi: Probably it was the transaction, trade and drafting of Bernie Kosar in Cleveland. We made a trade for a supplemental draft choice from Buffalo for the possibility of drafting him, and Minnesota had traded with Houston for their conventional draft pick in order to obtain him. The NFL changed the rule after that so that you couldn’t trade for a supplemental choice in advance. 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 — I’d say that probably was the most significant thing I was involved in from a business standpoint.
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, NFL and Major League Baseball), the three commissioners had all been former reporters or PR men. It was really the way you had to crack the business. … 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 — that was not an unusual avenue. So, I just immediately went to the media business. 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.
You grew up in Hershey, Pa. Did you see Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game?
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. … 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, Pa.!
When I got back to the dorm, I called my parents. My mother answered the phone and 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.
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Hershey native Accorsi didn’t see Wilt’s
100 in his hometown, but his dad did. |
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. And the only way to replace them is through the draft. So, not only do you have to draft well, but [the draftees] have to play faster.
What’s the best thing about working in sports?
Accorsi: Edward Bennett Williams called it “contest winning.” I guess with him it was winning 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.
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-’70s 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?
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.
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. … 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.
