Ernie Accorsi, the former NFL general manager whose career stretched from central Pennsylvania to three pro franchises, has died. The New York Giants announced his death Sunday. He was 84.
Accorsi’s life in football began far from the executive suites that later made him famous. Born Oct. 29, 1941, in Hershey, he grew up playing on the fields across from the chocolate plant, he told the Patriot-News in 2009. As a teenager, he paid $2.50 to watch an NFL preseason game in Hershey in 1956, when Johnny Unitas made his pro debut.
He graduated from Hershey High School in 1959 and went on to Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Before moving into sports management, he worked as a reporter for the Charlotte News, the Baltimore Sun and the Philadelphia Inquirer. While covering sports, Accorsi broke the news of Wilt Chamberlain’s trade from the Philadelphia 76ers to the Los Angeles Lakers, and he later spoke with now-retired PennLive columnist David Jones about what it was like to watch Chamberlain play.
His ties to Penn State and Joe Paterno ran deep, too. Accorsi was friends with Paterno for more than 40 years and worked at Penn State as an assistant sports information director from 1969 to 1970 before he was hired by the then-Baltimore Colts. After Paterno’s death in 2012, he told PennLive’s Bob Flounders, “I can tell you that there wasn’t a day that went by during my time at Penn State that I didn’t learn something from that man,”
Accorsi’s NFL climb was a long one, but it ended at the top. He became general manager of the Colts from 1982-1983, then general manager of the Cleveland Browns from 1985-1992, and later general manager of the New York Giants from 1998-2006.
With the Giants, he left a lasting mark. He was the second general manager inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor, helped bring in coach Tom Coughlin and brokered the draft-day deal that brought Eli Manning to New York. The Giants credited Accorsi, by then retired, with their Super Bowl victory in 2007 and gave him a championship ring.
When he retired in 2006, Accorsi said he told the Giants, “I told them to trust each other and be good teammates, because there’s a championship in this room. Those are the last words I said to them. ... I just didn’t know it would happen this year.”
Across 16 years as a general manager, his teams reached the playoffs nine times and won six division championships.
Back home in central Pennsylvania, Accorsi was inducted into the Capital Area Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Hershey Hall of Fame in 2012. Even after his career took him elsewhere, Hershey stayed at the center of his identity. In retirement, he served as a speaker for the John Travers Awards, and in 2009 he said, “No matter where ever I lived, Hershey has always been home,”
His son Patrick, in a joint Facebook post with his family announcing Accorsi’s death, recalled a story from his teenage years. When a Hershey High School guidance counselor asked what career he wanted to pursue, Accorsi answered, “I am going to be the General Manager of the New York Yankees,”
The counselor tried to push him toward another path. Forty years later, when Accorsi was inducted into the Hershey High School Hall of Fame, he had the chance to set the record straight with that same guidance counselor.
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