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The Football Diner Big Interview:
Tom Callahan
Author – The GM
interviewed by Sam Monson
7/12/2007
For the 2006 season, retiring New York Giants GM, Ernie Accorsi, invited Tom Callahan into the front office of the organisation. The result of that experience appears in his book: ‘The GM’. Inside the pages of this book is both an account of the rollercoaster 2006 New York Giants season, and an insight into the life of one of the NFL’s great characters, a dying breed of NFL brass that began life as football fans, football writers, and worked their way up through the system.
This book provides insight that’s rarely glimpsed in the NFL, a look behind the scenes in one of the league’s top franchises. Callahan had unfettered access to the front office, locker room and players during the season, and as such is able to tell stories that regular sports writers don’t get the chance to. The book is a must for all Giants fans, as well as anybody interested in the inner workings of an NFL franchise, but the star of the book is Ernie Accorsi himself.
As Tom Callahan, the author, is quick to point out, the book is Accorsi’s story, and is well worth the read for the dozens of anecdotes alone. This is a man whose life has been dedicated to football, and who has been around some of the game’s great characters. The book provides insight into Accorsi the man, but also shows what his life was like as the GM of the Giants, and what it means to him to be stepping back from football into retirement.
The league as a whole will certainly be a poorer place just for his loss.
 On ‘The GM’ and its subject, Ernie Accorsi
FD:
Thanks for taking the time out to talk to us Tom.
Tom Callahan:
No problem.
FD:
We’ve just got through your excellent book here at the Diner and thought we’d get in touch to talk to you about it.
Tom Callahan:
Well thanks; it feels to me that it’s more Ernie Accorsi’s book than mine. It was a strange collaboration because he didn’t have any say, you know, I didn’t tell him what I was doing as I went, he didn’t read it until it was finished, and he had no veto power, so he had to just trust me. Basically I just tried to get out of the way as much as possible and let him talk.
FD:
What did Ernie think of the book when it was all finished?
Tom Callahan:
Well I think he liked it. I think he had mixed feelings about it. He hasn’t helped to sell it, and I completely understand that, because he’s afraid that interviewers will go straight to the criticisms of the coach. You know, he was very candid with me, and now that he’s gone, he doesn’t want to be on the radio second guessing the new GM, which I completely understand and respect him for, but it means we had to pass on a lot of things that would have been good for the book. For example the Today Show wanted him to talk with Tiki Barber, and he wouldn’t do it. But it’s great, because he tells everyone who calls the book’s completely true, and I can’t talk to you about it! Which is great. The ex Giants coach, Jim Fassel, the guy before Coughlin, called him up to see if it was true that they wanted to hire Parcells instead of him, and Ernie said, Jim, everything in that book is true. Why, are your feelings hurt that we wanted a guy who’s won two Superbowls instead of you? You know Ernie’s a very frank guy.
FD:
He certainly comes across that way in the book; do you think the NFL is running out of guys like that now?
Tom Callahan:
 I just don’t think a guy like that could succeed now, I mean a guy with his background he was a sportswriter. There won’t be any sportswriters running teams anymore. It was such a small job once. You know, it was 4 or 5 guys in a front office doing everything. He’s one of the last guys. The original success of the NFL was under the stewardship of Commissioner Pete Rozelle, and Rozelle was like the PR guy of the University of San Francisco. He used to write stories in the school paper when he was there. Then he went to the Los Angeles Rams, and he was the PR guy there! And he ended up as the commissioner. Well commissioners these days are lawyers, and a guy like Rozelle who had to worry about selling tickets, and getting guys in newspapers print agents and promoters they’re not going to rise to the head of the NFL anymore. So Ernie’s really the last of the Rozelle types, so from that sense there’s not going to be anymore. I don’t think there’s anybody in the league like him right now. A few people have asked me whether this book is kind of a legacy for Ernie, but his legacy is that he has the respect of everybody in the league, which is unheard of. It’s a business where there isn’t much respect.
FD:
Do you think that’s because of his honesty in the way he operates?
Tom Callahan:
Yeah I think so. He’s very much a pupil of Joe Paterno, that was the guy he fashioned himself after. He kind of stands for things that don’t really exist anymore. The funny thing is, when he first read the book and I’m sure there were things in there that were harsh, that he would have changed, and some things that I forgot to put in that he would have put in but the only thing that he said to me after he read it was can you take out some of the ‘fucks’? My mother would turn over in her grave.
On being inside the Giants’ organisation for a year
FD:
A true gent! So what was it like Tom, being so involved in the inner workings of an NFL team?
Tom Callahan:
It was interesting, because I’d been around football teams before. I was a newspaper columnist in Cincinnati and in Washington, and I travelled all the way for years with the pro teams of those towns. In Cincinnati, because there were only two newspapers, I travelled with the team. You know, I literally sat in first class and Paul Brown would look over my shoulder as I was writing my story on the way home. But I was never in the Front Office. I’d never walked the hallways after a big win or a big loss. It was interesting how emotionally involved everybody was. It isn’t just a business to these guys. The people in the Front Office are despondent after losses, and the GM is kind of the only guy who can’t get caught up in it, he’s too busy repairing the roster, trying to find, you know, a left tackle.
FD:
It must be very tough trying to separate the emotion, and the business…
Tom Callahan:
I think it is. These days, and days ahead, the GM is basically an executive, a guy sitting in an office. But the old GM was basically a scout, and he’s emotionally involved, he’s pent up. As you noticed from the book that Ernie couldn’t stand to watch the game from the press box, largely because the writers are full of wise cracks. If he spent too much time in the press box he’s be in fist-fights all the time. So he’s downstairs in the tunnel, watching the game, and it’s a very helpless feeling, because he has no say. He’s brought all the players there, and he’s hired the coach, but once the game starts he’s like a director in the back of a Broadway play there’s nothing he can do about it. I get emails from him all the time, and you know, he’s not missing that part of it! But I’m sure he’ll miss the game as time goes on, he loves the game.
On Eli Manning
FD:
A large part of the book, and indeed the New York Giants, circles around Eli Manning. What are your thoughts on Eli..?
Tom Callahan:
 It’s funny with Eli, it’s the type of guy he is, you know, in New York New York wants their QBs to be Joe Namath. They want him to be kissing starlets, and getting drunk at their own bars, but Manning’s so understated. Maybe it’s the function of having a father that was a star, and a brother that is a star, but Manning is maddeningly boring. The funny thing is though, that Johnny Unitas told me once that he thought it was part of being a pro to be studiedly dull. There was a writer for the morning paper in Baltimore, a long-time sports writer called Cameron Snyder, he’s like 90-something, still alive but not working anymore and Unitas told me I never walked off a professional football field without first thinking of something dull to say to Cameron Snyder. That’s the way Eli is.
FD:
And Ernie has tied himself to Eli with ‘that trade’…
Tom Callahan:
You’re right; Ernie has tied himself to Eli, because he gave up a big price to get him. It was his decision, he gave away all kinds of draft choices, he passed on 3 QBs, one of whom has already won a Superbowl, and one who the people in football have kinda realised that the guy in San Diego isn’t good enough. The public hasn’t realised that yet, but the people in football at least everyone I talk to – say that he doesn’t get the ball there quick enough, and he’s been having kind of a rocky year this year.
FD:
The entire San Diego team’s been having kind of a rocky year this year!
Tom Callahan:
Yeah, but they’re in such a bad division they almost have a bye into the playoffs! But it’s true, Ernie’s kind of married to Eli. I didn’t say this in the book, but I think that Eli might be a guy who needs to succeed somewhere else. Like Jim Plunkett he won Superbowls in Oakland, but he failed in San Francisco and he failed before that in New England. Some guys need to fail somewhere first. New York is such a down place they love him now, but the first interception and they’ll hate him again. Eli of course has the extra burden of his big brother. But the reason I kind of gravitated towards Eli in the book, and over the season, is the players like him!
FD:
That’s something that’s not talked about too often.
Tom Callahan:
Exactly. You know, the players are willing to whisper to you if they don’t like a guy, and the players that counted on the Giants team, the real leader of that team is the Centre Shaun O’Hara, and there’s an O-lineman named Rich Seubert these are the guys. There’s no point talking to writers or to fringe guys about the players, you had to hear from the real guys, and the real guys, like Eli. His receivers, Plaxico Burress, I could tell that Eli and he had a relationship. When I got them talking about each other, it was very telling, on both sides. When I was around the Redskins, there were players that hated Joe Thiesmann important players! When he first got there, and he was a third string guy to Sonny Jurgenson and Bill Kilmer, both Sonny and Billy hated him. They hated the kind of guy he was. It wasn’t that they hated the player; they thought he had some ability, but they thought he was a complete asshole. He had some success there, but the players never loved him.
FD:
So the team chemistry is good in New York?
Tom Callahan:
Plaxico Burress, Amani Toomer, the guys Eli’s throwing to, Jeremy Shockey and Jeremy Shockey is like this big kid, a lot of people in town think what a baby this guy is, and it’s true he refers to himself as a wild child, and he is, but the players who matter, say he’s a good person, and he’s trying hard. He’s a hell of an athlete, and he’s trying hard, he’s hurt all the time, but he’s a great guy in practice. Nobody looks at practice, and I can understand why, but if you just go enough to watch them play together, you can see how they feel about Eli, and how he feels about his players. The thing I try to bring out in the book, is they were basically too hurt to compete last year. They had too many injuries. In the NFL you’re not supposed to talk about injuries, but it’s ridiculous not to. When you’re missing 6 out of 11 guys on Defense, and your Left Tackle breaks his leg. They were 6-2 when he broke his leg, and that kind of ended their season. Amani Toomer, his bread and butter short down receiver, he went down, but New York never noticed that, they figure everyone gets hurt, so they blamed Eli.
On Tom Coughlin and Tiki Barber
FD:
It seems that the New York media has the same kind of attitude towards Tom Coughlin.
Tom Callahan:
So many guys wanted him fired. A lot of sports writers were mad at the team at the end of last year because they all said he was going to be fired, it was bad for their column, they didn’t want to be wrong. He really came within a membrane of being fired too. The Giants don’t fire guys lightly, but he was going to be fired if they lost their last game, and they really could have lost the Redskins were 6 points down and had the ball in the final two minutes. If the Redskins had won that game he’d have been fired that decision had been made, I know that for a fact.
FD:
Wow.
Tom Callahan:
 So the writers were disappointed he wasn’t fired, and now they’re going better. He was frightened by almost losing his job, because he’s not a guy who’s gonna be hired anywhere else, and he’s not a TV guy, so he could see the end of his football life he’s nearly 61, and he panicked. So he came in this year and took the team bowling in the pre-season, and all the players were kind of looking at each other, you know..? He’s formed this kind of committee of leaders, and given them some say, he’s trying to change, and I think that’s had some effect. I’d have fired him last year if it had been me, and I liked him. He’s a high quality person, and a lot of those guys aren’t. There’s something about head coaching… there’s a few great citizens like Joe Gibbs, but there are a lot of reprobates, like Bellichick and Parcells, I don’t know what it is, but the nature of Head Coaching seems to attract a lot of low lives. Coughlin’s a gentleman, a real clean liver.
FD:
So what do you make of the impact of Tiki Barber’s retirement?
Tom Callahan:
I think it helped them actually, that Tiki retired. He was a great player, and he was never a problem for the Giants last year even though he announced his retirement, cos he was a great player, but the problem was they had 2 and a half of those guys in the locker room: Tiki, Michael Strahan and Pierce Pierce wasn’t as bad as the other two, but two of them walking around the locker room like they’ve won eight Superbowls, and they hadn’t won any. It’s ok to have one of those guys, but two of them is too many. With Tiki gone, and Michael Strahan is the last imperial figure in the locker room, but he’s kind of stepped behind two or three other pass rushers. Strahan’s one of the greatest pass rushers in the history of the league, this is his 15th season, which is unheard of as a pass-rusher, and he’s a wonderful player, but he’s not the best pass rusher they have anymore, that’s Osi Umenyiora, and a guy called Justin Tuck is probably better than Strahan too. There are a couple of other guys Strahan’s maybe the second, third or fourth best pass rusher now, even though he’s still pretty good, and it’s better to have a guy like that as the second best, rather than the best. So that’s worked for them. They’re still so injured though, and in some ways I blame Coughlin for that, his teams are always injured, they always have been. They lost Derrick Ward recently with a broken leg, but they haven’t been hurt on the line like they were last year.
FD:
What do you think Coughlin needs to do to be safe this year?
Tom Callahan:
I don’t know, it’s hard to read Mara now. He wasn’t fired last year when they made it to the playoffs for the second straight time, well they’ve virtually made it now they’re 8-4.
FD:
They’re pretty much guaranteed one Wild Card spot at this stage.
Tom Callahan:
If they’re not competitive in that Wild Card game, and it looks like this is as far as he can take you then he might be gone. Everyone thinks Bill Cowher is going to sit out and then come back, but I don’t think he’ll go to New York, from what little I know him. It wouldn’t surprise me if, at the end of the year, Joe Gibbs calls a press conference and tells everybody that he’s stayed too long at the fair, and he was a great coach, but since he came back, he’s been a beat behind. He’s been bad at the little things, where he used to be the best at them. I just have a feeling he’ll go, and if he does, I think Cowher could land there. Cowher’s got his eye on the Carolina job though. They’ve been going bad, and I think John Fox’s days are numbered. Cowher’s the kind of guy who’d rather be in kind of a second tier town. So I don’t think there’s an obvious alternative to Coughlin. Last year they would have gone after Charlie Weis. But Weis has had this horrible year at Notre Dame, and suddenly he’s not as attractive looking as a possibility. I kind of figure within the next couple of weeks, if it becomes obvious that they’re heading to the playoffs, that Mara might tack another couple of years onto his contract.
FD:
How did Coughlin react to the book, or to you being around?
Tom Callahan:
Well maybe Tom’s regretting being as candid as he was. I wondered when I was talking to him if he wondered if I was only interested in Accorsi. Because he’s there bearing his soul, talking about the writers, and his life in football, but I liked him. The closer you get to him the better he seems.
FD:
He does come across quite well in the book.
Tom Callahan:
Yeah, I think so. Ernie’s tough on him. You know, Ernie’s mad at him, and there’s a few exchanges in there between Ernie and he that are tough, but you know, Ernie hired him. Mara and Ernie were in unison on who was #1, but they disagreed on who was #2. Ernie would have taken Charlie Weiss #2. I think Mara would have preferred Lovie Smith. Romeo Crennel was 4th on both of their lists. Ernie and John disagreed on who was second.
FD:
Do you think Ernie Accorsi still believes what he told the team when he left that there’s a championship in that room?
Tom Callahan:
Probably because he’s such an optimist. When he told me he was going to address the team I told him to go and do it and then write down what he said. When I saw that I asked him you mean an NFC Championship, right?, and he kind of looked at me with this sour look, you know…
On the Wembley game
FD:
How was Ernie involved in the Giants coming to London, or the planning of it?
Tom Callahan:
Well he was involved in the planning. He was one of the last ones who wanted to keep NFL Europe alive. It was an alternative, a place to play. He liked it. Even though most of the coaches would rather have the guy there, working with them, but Ernie told me that certain guys, especially quarterbacks…the only reason they didn’t send their QB is because he’s a 300lb guy!… but you look at a guy like Kurt Warner.
FD:
Brad Johnson…Jake Delhomme…
Tom Callahan:
Yeah, exactly, I mean Jake Delhomme came within an inch of winning it all. So Ernie was in favour of it basically as a place to play more than thinking of it as a way to grow support overseas. Ernie likes going to the UK, he plays golf, and has played St Andrews. He thought the London thing was great, but you know, he kind of predicted what would happen. He told me you know, the field over there is used to 160lb guys. Now we’re gonna put 300lb guys, with equipment on, on top of that, I don’t know how that field’s going to handle that, and of course the field didn’t handle it very well. Ernie was there when the Bears played there, with the Refrigerator Perry, and he said the people were there from beginning to end. I figured people would be bored of the game, but he told me people were there from the first until the last.
FD:
 Yeah, same thing this time, the stadium never emptied despite the game.
Tom Callahan:
The players said you couldn’t play, Eli said you couldn’t throw the ball at all; you had no idea where it was going.
FD:
He threw a few passes to prove that alright!
Tom Callahan:
Nobody had any footing, and it was kind of like a joke in the end, which is a shame, because they didn’t really get to see a game. I was on the phone to Strahan about something else and he told me the players loved it, they all went on tours and things. He said they were all teasing Brandon Jacobs, saying he said where’s the Eiffel Tower. He said he never really said that, but we were telling all the writers he did!, and he said after a while he was a little pissed off about it.
On signal stealing and ‘Camerga-gate’
FD:
Another interesting thing in the book was when Ernie told a story from his time with the Baltimore Colts, about a lip reader stealing signals, which is pretty topical with the whole Camera-gate thing this year.
Tom Callahan:
Well that’s why the coaches call plays behind that big plastic card. I’d never heard that before. I always assumed though, because the NFL is so duplicitous, that that went on. There was a coach in San Diego, who had been a Giants player during their glorious 50s, named Harland Svare, and he was convinced that Al Davis had put microphones in the locker rooms. He would be in the shower room going from fixture to fixture screaming Fuck you Al Davis!
FD:
Priceless!
Tom Callahan:
Players used to talk about that. I was with Jack Murphy, a great old sportswriter they named the stadium after him for a while, before they realised you could name stadiums after products and make money and we were talking to Al Davis years ago, and Jack told him about this story, and Al looked at him and said it wasn’t in the shower fixtures. His face was lit with mischief. I’m not surprised that kind of thing happened. I’m always amazed that they’ve been able to pipe in the signals to the QBs helmets. The way things are, I can’t believe that there isn’t somebody out there trying to pick up those signals! The thing about the New England thing that was most interesting to me was the degree of the penalty. To fine Belichick $500,000, and to fine the team another $250,000, and to take away a number 1 draft choice, to me that tells you what the league thinks of it that it was a significant unfair advantage, not just something small.
FD:
Did Ernie think the Camera-gate thing was a storm in a teacup?
Tom Callahan:
I think he did yeah. Because of his experience, and the whole lip-reader thing, I think he mostly shrugged. But the other thing is he’s a Belichick guy. The PR guy of the Giants despised him, who had to deal with him when he was an assistant with the Giants. When he was reading the book, he sent me an email after he’d got to the part of the book when Ernie said he loved Bill Belichick saying I hate that son of a bitch, I can’t believe anybody loves him!. But you know Ernie gave Belichick his first job. The thing about Bellichick that people forget is that he got into football as Ted Marchibroda’s assistant. Not an assistant coach, his assistant! Like his secretary. The guy who went and got coffee for Ted Marchibroda. His first couple of jobs in football he didn’t have a salary, he was like a bum, hanging around the Baltimore Colts. But his father was a long time Annapolis guy, and I’m sure Ernie crossed his path a lot, when Ernie was in Baltimore. Ernie has a weakness for the Military Academies anyway, but Ernie likes him. I’ve run across a million people who respect him you have to respect him but not many people who like him. But Ernie does, so he would naturally shrug off this sky-gate thing I think.
FD:
Tell us about the drive charts that appear in the book.
Tom Callahan:
Well the games didn’t really matter to me that much, but I figured since I was there for the season I gotta tell them a little bit about games that matter. It seemed like the quickest, most concise way of doing it, rather than long descriptions of series or plays. When I did Unitas (Another bestseller by Tom Callahan!), there was the ’58 Championship game, early in his career. In that book, I did the same thing, and I used every play in the game, but I broke it up, using Raymond Berry talking for the Colts, and Sam Huff talking for the Giants. But it was the same kind of drive. The ’58 game was important enough that I put them all in.
On what’s next for Tom Callahan, and winning $72,000 on a bet
FD:
Any other projects in the pipeline Tom?
Tom Callahan:
Sure, I’m just near finishing the proposal for my next one, but I’ve been kind of stalling, because I don’t want to be stuck doing it for September. It’s only peripherally about sports, but I won’t bore you with the details.
FD:
Any other little anecdotes you’d like to share with the Diner?
Tom Callahan:
Well, I have a publisher in Scotland, Mainstream, and I’ve done a couple of books that they’ve bought. One year, they have this award that they give out, called the William Hill Book of the Year. I was shortlisted for a book I wrote 7 or 8 years ago. They picked 5, and they had this little poll. I ended up losing. But the great thing about it was, the 4 also-rans, got a free bet, for I think 850 at William Hill, and a leather bound copy of your book. So I put my money on Phil Mickelson to win The Masters and won $72,000. 40,000! I would never put a nickel down of my own money, but it was a free bet!
FD:
That’s the kind of win that turns people to gambling!
Tom Callahan:
Yeah, I know. I gave it to my kids, it was money I never counted on, and never saw, but it was great fun.
FD:
OK Tom, thanks for stopping by the Diner, and thanks for the great read!
Tom Callahan:
Thanks, good talking to you!
“The GM” is available to purchase from Amazon
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