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.
