The woman behind the man who built the New York Giants

By Craig Ellenport

I doubt many of Peter King’s readers knew who Lovie Young was when they read the news in this week’s MMQB column that she had passed away last Thursday. She was the widow of the late George Young, architect of the New York Giants teams that won two Super Bowls under his reign as general manager.

I never met Lovie Young, but I did have the honor of talking to her just a few weeks ago. Though she was weakened by cancer, she was very gracious and offered her time to speak with me for a book project that focuses on how her husband built the Giants, almost from the ground up, when he was hired just two months after the debacle known as “The Miracle at the Meadowlands.”

There was never any doubt that Lovie was extremely proud of George, and his storied NFL career really had nothing to do with that. George was an incredibly popular high school coach and educator in Baltimore long before he drafted Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor, long before he hired Bill Parcells, long before he laid the foundation that has kept the Giants successful long after he retired.

Lovie explained to me that George got his NFL break in the late ‘60s, when then-Baltimore Colts head coach Don Shula needed someone to evaluate players on film for him. Shula was impressed with George’s work, enough so to offer him a job with the Colts in 1968.

“But George had been so big in Baltimore and so popular, that I didn’t really think it was that big a deal,” said Lovie. “Isn’t that strange? But it’s true.”

Ten years later, after serving a number of roles under Shula with both the Colts and Miami Dolphins, Young was hired as GM of the Giants. It was never a job George aspired to, Lovie said. “He wasn’t interested (in being the boss),” she said. “He was interested in the franchise. The franchise was the thing that always fascinated him about the Giants. He always said, ‘Remember, they don’t love me, they don’t love you. They love the team.’”

One Giants player who did love both George and Lovie Young was Hall of Famer Harry Carson (and he wasn’t even drafted by George; he was already on the team when the Youngs came to town). Carson developed a close bond with George. He spoke at his funeral in 2001 and continued to speak with Lovie on a regular basis after that.

“One thing that really stands out is that his wife would always be at the airport,” Carson told me when I interviewed him about George for the book. “Regardless of what time we would come in from playing a game, she would be there to meet him. And I’d think, ‘How did this fat, bald guy with these big glasses… how did he snag this woman?’ And she’d love him so much that she’d be at the airport after every away game to pick him up. I thought, he must really be smooth, there must be something else to George.”

There was an awful lot to George, for which Giants fans can be eternally grateful. One of them was a strong woman by his side.