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A NFL football team is a unique business in so many ways arniefez : 10/18/2021 12:32 pm : link : reply One of 32 operating in closed system semi designed to create equal opportunity for all 32 succeed while sharing equally most of the revenue generated by all 32. It's a public trust, a for profit business but privately owned. It's a monopoly. Pretty much every team is owned by egomaniac billionaires using their teams as a play toy. In the Giants case that only applies 50%. But every organization the size of an NFL team has a culture similar to every business from 100 employees to 100,000 employees. The Giants were started by Tim Mara in 1925. Tim had two sons Jack the oldest and Wellington. When Tim died Jack and Wellington each inherited 50% of the Giants. Jack had one son Tim J. Mara and Wellington had 11 children. Jack died just before the 1965 season and his 50% was left to Tim J. Mara. Tim J sold his 50% in 1991 to Robert Tisch who died in 2005 and left his 50% to his 3 children. Wellington died in 2055 and left his 50% to his 11 children. The 3 Tisch owners are each billionaires from their inheritance and own Loews Corp among other holdings. Steve is the Giants chairman and Jonathon is the Giants Treasurer. They do not appear to be involved with the day to day football team and seem to enjoy being billionaire owners from a distance. The 11 Mara owners own 50% of the Giants from their inheritance. The Giants are their family business. Their only business. The current Mara 11 are the third generation of Giants owners. The oldest John Mara is the CEO, The 3rd oldest Chris Mara is Senior Vice President of Player Personnel. Susan Mara is the 2nd oldest and her son Tim McDonnell was promoted to Co-Director of Player Personnel in May of 2021. Dave Gettleman is Senior Vice President and General Manager. In most NFL organizations player personnel falls under the GM who is the primary decision maker on all things on the field or the head of player personnel is the primary decision maker on all things on the field and the GM is more of an administrative/manage the cap position. The Giants have Kevin Abrams the assistant GM that was assumed to be the person that managed the cap and reported to Gettleman but Abrams was on the Jordan Raanan podcast and said he hasn't been the primary cap person for 3 or 4 years and has two people that work for him that do most of the cap management now and that he's working on being a talent evaluator to position himself for potential GM jobs. So let's recap the group leading the Giants player acquisition team CEO - owner SR VP Player Personnel - owner SR VP GM A GM Co D Player Personnel - owner Co D Player Personnel Coaching Staff If Gettleman is retired/fired which looks inevitable now and the Giants hire a new GM how much authority will that person have? Gettleman was an awful choice. No other NFL team would have hired him as their GM. It seems from public reports the Giants GM has a lot of influence and a loud voice in their team building strategy room but three of the other people in that room own the team so how much actual authority does the GM have? No way for anyone on the outside to know. Apparently on the post game show yesterday Bob Papa the corporate voice of the NY Giants on their home station asked how do you fix this? So back to corporate culture. The plague of nepotism and cronyism is where an NFL team is no different than any other business. The rot of "this is how we've always done it" is no different than any other business. The third generation ownership challenges are no different than any other business. Quote: One of the most difficult transitions that a family business must make is from the second to the third generation. It's not just that the third generation, accustomed to wealth and privilege, is likely to spend the business into bankruptcy. They also have a very difficult time getting their acts together and providing the leadership necessary for the business to survive. In the third generation, there are typically many more family members who would like to work in the company. The cousins have grown up in different households and may have far different styles and points of view. There may be extremes of personality and huge disparities in competency as well as in financial need. There may also be lingering feelings of competitiveness or memories of past injustices carried over from the second generation. In "family-first" businesses, family needs are primary. Business decisions that might generate family conflict are avoided. Members of the second generation are paid equally and share in all key decisions. Family ownership is zealously guarded and nonfamily managers tend to be regarded as "the help." If the company has a board of directors, it is likely to consist of family members who gather informally, perhaps with an attorney or accountant. At the other extreme are "business-first" family businesses, which let children who want to work in it know that they must measure up to company norms and values that are above the needs of the family. The children may be told that they can't work in the business unless they are at least as good as professional managers, and that they will be paid for the job they do rather than who they are. In a business-first company, nonfamily members have considerable power and influence. The company is likely to have a board of directors with people from outside the company on it that meets regularly in formal sessions. It appears from the outside the Giants have operated as a "family-first" business since Ernie retired and ended the George Young corporate culture that had been eroding since Wellington stepped back before he died and and John Mara became much more involved in the day to day. So to Bob Papa's question how do you fix this? Either John Mara has an epiphany and retires his brother along with Gettleman and asks Tim McDonnell to relinquish his position as Co-Director of Player Personnel and the three of them use their league contacts to hire a football president a modern day George Young and own the team instead of run the team. I think the odds of Powerball are better. I've rooted for the Giants since I was 6 years old, I'm almost 70 now and there's been 4 great highs but they've been out numbered by way more of the deepest lows. I know most of you totally disagree with this and that's fine. This is just my way of dealing with a losing decade when I don't have many left. I'll be rooting for the Giants and the Bears to lose every game they play except when the Giants play the Bears and then I'll decide who I want to win based on draft position. I get that most of you can't think that way. But losing and disasters have been the only thing that creates change with Mara family. The bigger the disaster the greater the change. Lose them all. Bring on the change. [url=https://www.familybusinessmagazine.com/challenge-third-generation]The Challenge of the Third Generation[/url) |
Mara steps in and tries to make everyone happy which only made it worse.
What I think he needed to demand was
1. Find better OL that can protect our two tIme SB QB.
2. Don’t tell our two time SB coach how to coach.Find him the players he needs.
One of the best traits of a leader is being forceful and applying stress when needed. Most of the attention went to TC and Eli but to me Mara should have cleaned house in the front office and scouts long ago.
Put people in charge. Let them do the job. Hold them accountable. Watch practice and kick trash cans when needed.
Football is cyclical and an owner is a good owner until he isn't. The Giants are no different.
They draft well. Hire good coaches who are leaders and are patient with them.
One thing they seem to commit to is keeping the OL and front 7 strong to build around.
Most of the Giants years of struggle are rooted in letting both of these Giants staples erode.
In a lot of ways when both are at a peak they are pretty similar.
Sadly, he succumbed to being a puppet of ownership annual change of approach whim, accomplishing little; building a team in the image of the current coach, which changed every 2 years, and may again.
So much for stability.
And here we are, facing another rebuild with likely no player here still here 3 years from now, even the good ones.
When Sherman was finally fired (serenaded out the door by a stadium singing "Goodbye Allie), who was the next coach? Former player Alex Webster.
Wellington actually went outside the organization to hire Bill Arnsparger, who was a failure for 3 years, all serving under Robustelli. Interestingly, Arnsparger was a success everywhere else, in Miami, at LSU and at Florida. His only failures came with Wellington's Giants. When Arnsparger was fired in mid-season in 1976, John McVay was promoted to head coach, and stayed until the post-Fumble, Rozelle-ordered house cleaning brought in George Young, who brought in Ray Perkins.
The GM job? He kept Ray Walsh as GM, originally hired in 1947, all through the 60s until 1973. Replacement? Ex-player Robustelli, who was running a travel agency in Stamford, Connecticut. He held the job until the post-Fumble housecleaning.
Then a new round of loyalty kicked in. Yes, Perkins's successor, Bill Parcells, worked out just fine on being promoted to the job when Perkins bolted for Alabama. Handley, Reeves, Fassel and Coughlin: all had Giants roots. I include Reeves because of his connection to Tom Landry.
And more of the same pattern of promotions from the "family" at the GM position: Young to Accorsi to Reese.
Loyalty is a virtue. Blind loyalty is folly. Wellington got lucky with Parcells and Coughlin and Accorsi. But his son John spent decades absorbing the lessons of loyalty without noticing its costs. And here we are.
Landry said that he could have been HC but chose to move back to Texas. He wanted to move back to Texas and we never really had a chance of his becoming the Giant head coach.
From his autobiography:
"...Wellington Mara called me into his office to say that he'd okayed the Dallas NFL groups plan to approach me about their head coaching position. But first he wanted me to know that when Jim Lee Howell took his planned retirement soon, Id be first in line to become head coach of the New York Giants. I listened again, but while I felt warm toward my good friend Wellington, and while I appreciated this expression of confidence, Alicia and I had pretty much decided the '59 season would be our last in New York. It was time to take our family home to Texas for good."
Another interesting quote on the topic from Wellington
From the book "The Landry Legend"
"I offered him the head coaching job for the Giants." said Mara....
"Tom said he'd loved his years with the Giants, but that he had a firm offer from the new expansion Houston team and that he thought he'd thought he just go back to Texas.
"Being an NFL Man, this worried me. I was aware of Tom's capabilities, and, if he wasn't going to coach our team, I certainly didn't want him going to the AF. So I got in touch with Tex Schramm and strongly recommended he hire Tom for the Dallas expansion team."
Mara can't in good conscious fire GMs when they aren't really making decisions. Said the same when Reese was fired.
Mara can't in good conscious fire GMs when they aren't really making decisions. Said the same when Reese was fired.
I remember saying something similar with Reese. I often felt Mara was too close to some of the decisions so even if they didn't work out he still thought the original reasoning was sound since he was privy to the process that led them to it.
That's one reason ideally the owner should distance himself from much of the football decision making so he can better objectively judge the results. If you are part of the thought process and buy into it you too easily look for fluke reasons it didn't work rather than it was simply a bad decision.
When Sherman was finally fired (serenaded out the door by a stadium singing "Goodbye Allie), who was the next coach? Former player Alex Webster.
Wellington actually went outside the organization to hire Bill Arnsparger, who was a failure for 3 years, all serving under Robustelli. Interestingly, Arnsparger was a success everywhere else, in Miami, at LSU and at Florida. His only failures came with Wellington's Giants. When Arnsparger was fired in mid-season in 1976, John McVay was promoted to head coach, and stayed until the post-Fumble, Rozelle-ordered house cleaning brought in George Young, who brought in Ray Perkins.
The GM job? He kept Ray Walsh as GM, originally hired in 1947, all through the 60s until 1973. Replacement? Ex-player Robustelli, who was running a travel agency in Stamford, Connecticut. He held the job until the post-Fumble housecleaning.
Then a new round of loyalty kicked in. Yes, Perkins's successor, Bill Parcells, worked out just fine on being promoted to the job when Perkins bolted for Alabama. Handley, Reeves, Fassel and Coughlin: all had Giants roots. I include Reeves because of his connection to Tom Landry.
And more of the same pattern of promotions from the "family" at the GM position: Young to Accorsi to Reese.
Loyalty is a virtue. Blind loyalty is folly. Wellington got lucky with Parcells and Coughlin and Accorsi. But his son John spent decades absorbing the lessons of loyalty without noticing its costs. And here we are.
Andy thanks for chiming in with this history and perspective..
Whats that saying about history? If you don’t learn from it, you are doomed to repeat it. Like you said, “And here we are.”
There's a great story of Vince inviting Wellington to dinner before the 1961 championship game and leaving him at the restaurant 25 miles from his hotel.
From the great Dave Anderson of The NY Times:
As in Vince Lombardi.
Originally, the street was known as Highland Avenue, but in 1968 it was renamed for the legendary coach who led the Packers to five National Football League championships, including the first two Super Bowls, before dying of cancer in 1970 after taking command of the Washington Redskins.
But the name Lombardi Avenue haunts the Giants because Vince Lombardi, hired by the Packers in 1959 after five seasons as the Giants' offensive coordinator, was the coach that Wellington Mara, the Giants' co-owner then and now, thought he could bring back to the Giants in 1960 and again in 1961.
Mara was under the impression that the Giants had more or less lent Lombardi to the Packers until Jim Lee Howell retired as coach. But when Lombardi didn't return, it created what Mara now calls a "sore subject, both ways." It also changed the history of the Giants and the Packers.
"In those years an assistant coach's contract was a contract; he wasn't allowed to just leave a team to be a head coach somewhere else," Mara was saying now. "As I remember, Vince had two years on his contract when the Packers called after the 1958 season to ask permission to talk to him."
"I talked to Dominic Olejniczak and Fred Strawbridge of the Packers' executive committee," Mara recalled. "I gave them permission to talk to Vince, but I told them I'd like the same permission if I ever wanted Vince to come back."
At age 44, Lombardi was obsessed with getting a head-coaching job after a decade on the Army and Giants staffs. The year before, he had spurned the Philadelphia Eagles.
"I convinced Vince that the setup there wasn't good; he wouldn't have complete control," Mara said. "But the Packers offered complete control as coach and general manager."
"I called Vince to offer him the Giants job," Mara said, "but he told me, 'I don't think I've fulfilled my obligation to the people here.' I asked him to think it over. He called back and said, 'I'd really be running out on the people here if I left.' It became a sore subject, both ways."
Talk about a what if? What if Lombardi was the Giants HC & GM until 1970? What if George Young listened to Parcells and took Reggie White in 1984 instead of an OL who refused to play for the Giants? I think it's interesting to look back and wonder.
Confronting Some Haunting History on Lombardi Avenue - ( New Window )
The first was on Dec. 31, 1961, when a vibrant cast of characters representing the league’s smallest and largest cities met for the N.F.L. championship.
Lombardi, a Brooklyn-raised New Yorker, gave a warm welcome when the Giants party rolled into the Northland Hotel the Friday before the game.
“My writers are here,” he shouted, referring to the New York press corps representing a dozen newspapers and wire services. Lombardi embraced Arthur Daley, a columnist for The New York Times, who was a longtime Giants enthusiast and fellow Fordham alumnus.
The night before the game, Lombardi took his Fordham classmate Wellington Mara out for dinner at a restaurant 25 miles away in Appleton, to get away from the small-town nosiness of Green Bay. Mara, who ran the Giants’ football operations, hired Lombardi as an assistant in 1954 and had encouraged him to take the Green Bay appointment in 1959.
They had a pleasant dinner. Then Lombardi suddenly signed the check and left, telling Mara to find his own way back to the hotel. Mara was shocked.
“It was a long cab ride,” he told the Lombardi biographer Michael O’Brien years later.
n Previous Title Game, Giants No Match for Lombardi’s Packers - ( New Window )
We know he will not willingly do this. Not sure how far into the toilet the franchise must go before the other owners start to say something. If you lose some of that NY TV revenue, that impacts all of the owners. With the Giants and Jets having the worst team records in the past 4 years, they are no doubt losing TV ratings too.
Thank you for this.
Mara needs to hand over the reigns and be an owner instead of trying to be a football guy.
If he wants to keep Chris Mara on payroll, fine- that's totally up to him. But he should not be involved in personnel decisions.
They probably love the Giants and want to be part of the team they own, but they probably also are very uncomfortable with the idea of working anywhere else. And I doubt most of the Maras who have jobs with the Giants are in a position to just retire and collect owner checks.
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turning over operations to outside people should cost the Maras next to nothing, in fact a better team might actually make them money. This is not about money, it's about ego.
I think we shouldn't overlook fear as a motivation. These aren't old men. What would they do if they go out into the work world and have to compete for jobs, and are held accountable for their performance?
They probably love the Giants and want to be part of the team they own, but they probably also are very uncomfortable with the idea of working anywhere else. And I doubt most of the Maras who have jobs with the Giants are in a position to just retire and collect owner checks.
They still own the team, no? Both John and Chris are in their 60's. They have plenty of money. Johns net worth is 500 million. I'm sure Chris is very well of as well, considering his brother is part owner of a multi billion dollar org.
This isn't about money, or salaries, etc. If it was, they wouldn't be writing checks for guys like Leo, Golladay, Jackson etc. These guys want to win. They want their "family business" to do well. And if they want to make that a reality, they'll step away and let people actually qualified to make football decisions to do so.
Fair point...
Football is cyclical and an owner is a good owner until he isn't. The Giants are no different.
Don't know how old you are Steve, but this is nonsense. The Giants climbed out of more than a decade of misery and won their first two Superbowls only after Wellington was forced to step back and turn football decisions over to George Young. That model of owner non-involvement continued under Accorsi. After Wellington died it was a few years until John began to assert himself, and it was only in 2011 that Chris became VP of Player Personnel, and it has been all downhill since then.
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Giants fans have always complained about the Giants ownership, until their way manages to win some Super Bowls and then there is a period of time where the Mara's are lauded for being one of the better owners, and then it repeats all over again.
Football is cyclical and an owner is a good owner until he isn't. The Giants are no different.
Don't know how old you are Steve, but this is nonsense. The Giants climbed out of more than a decade of misery and won their first two Superbowls only after Wellington was forced to step back and turn football decisions over to George Young. That model of owner non-involvement continued under Accorsi. After Wellington died it was a few years until John began to assert himself, and it was only in 2011 that Chris became VP of Player Personnel, and it has been all downhill since then.
I've been a fan since the early 1960's so I've seen and lived through it all. And I don't know how any fan that has lived through it and is objective doesn't say that many Giants fans have gone saying that the Mara's are horrible owners to saying they are great owners multiple times based on whether or not they were in their Super Bowl era's. I mean come on that's literally what has happened.
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The Giants and the Packers, two of the N.F.L.’s oldest franchises, have played each other 54 times since 1928, but Sunday’s National Football Conference championship game was only the second of the matchups in Green Bay, Wis., with a title at stake.
The first was on Dec. 31, 1961, when a vibrant cast of characters representing the league’s smallest and largest cities met for the N.F.L. championship.
Lombardi, a Brooklyn-raised New Yorker, gave a warm welcome when the Giants party rolled into the Northland Hotel the Friday before the game.
“My writers are here,” he shouted, referring to the New York press corps representing a dozen newspapers and wire services. Lombardi embraced Arthur Daley, a columnist for The New York Times, who was a longtime Giants enthusiast and fellow Fordham alumnus.
The night before the game, Lombardi took his Fordham classmate Wellington Mara out for dinner at a restaurant 25 miles away in Appleton, to get away from the small-town nosiness of Green Bay. Mara, who ran the Giants’ football operations, hired Lombardi as an assistant in 1954 and had encouraged him to take the Green Bay appointment in 1959.
They had a pleasant dinner. Then Lombardi suddenly signed the check and left, telling Mara to find his own way back to the hotel. Mara was shocked.
“It was a long cab ride,” he told the Lombardi biographer Michael O’Brien years later.
n Previous Title Game, Giants No Match for Lombardi’s Packers - ( New Window )
Arnie, great stuff! Thank you for sharing.
It's been a sore spot for Giants fans for years, poking fun at Chris for prioritizing horses over the team. When there is little known about what he does and how he goes about it, this is a very public and obvious red flag.
The one question you have to ask in this instance is -- if someone with his title in another organization chose to attend the Derby instead of the draft, what would happen? I think we all know the answer to that question. It just goes to show how deep this problem runs.
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In comment 15421999 Bill in UT said:
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turning over operations to outside people should cost the Maras next to nothing, in fact a better team might actually make them money. This is not about money, it's about ego.
I think we shouldn't overlook fear as a motivation. These aren't old men. What would they do if they go out into the work world and have to compete for jobs, and are held accountable for their performance?
They probably love the Giants and want to be part of the team they own, but they probably also are very uncomfortable with the idea of working anywhere else. And I doubt most of the Maras who have jobs with the Giants are in a position to just retire and collect owner checks.
They still own the team, no? Both John and Chris are in their 60's. They have plenty of money. Johns net worth is 500 million. I'm sure Chris is very well of as well, considering his brother is part owner of a multi billion dollar org.
This isn't about money, or salaries, etc. If it was, they wouldn't be writing checks for guys like Leo, Golladay, Jackson etc. These guys want to win. They want their "family business" to do well. And if they want to make that a reality, they'll step away and let people actually qualified to make football decisions to do so.
Amen.
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turning over operations to outside people should cost the Maras next to nothing, in fact a better team might actually make them money. This is not about money, it's about ego.
I think we shouldn't overlook fear as a motivation. These aren't old men. What would they do if they go out into the work world and have to compete for jobs, and are held accountable for their performance?
They probably love the Giants and want to be part of the team they own, but they probably also are very uncomfortable with the idea of working anywhere else. And I doubt most of the Maras who have jobs with the Giants are in a position to just retire and collect owner checks.
There are 11 siblings in John's family. Only 2 (plus John's nephew)have jobs in the football operations end of the business as far as real titles. I don't know how the rest of the family derive their income- do they give themselves weekly checks as owners? The Mara's are not responsible to shareholders. Everyone in the family could be handed a bullshit title and salary if they need it. Just stay the hell out of the football decisions.
Same goes for DBs. We have wasted so many picks there. But letting the DEs and pass rush deteriorate is malpractice that may be killing the DBs.
I’ll keep saying it - controlling the line of scrimmage is the cost of entry for success. Until we can do it on both sides we’ll never get consistent play from the skill players. It’s a house built on a play dough foundation.