Ernie Accorsi

Ernest William Accorsi Jr. (born October 29, 1941) is a former American football executive. He served as the general manager of three teams in the National Football League (NFL): the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, and New York Giants. Education and early career A 1963 graduate of Wake Forest University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and membership in Theta Chi. Accorsi served in the U.S. Army before getting his start in sports as a reporter for The Charlotte News. He later wrote for The Baltimore Sun and The Philadelphia Inquirer before moving to the athletic departments at Saint Joseph's University and then Penn State. He served as Penn State's Assistant Sports Publicity Director in the late 1960s. Pro football career Accorsi began his NFL career in 1970 with the Baltimore Colts as its director of public relations, and worked on then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle's staff in the league office from 1975 before rejoining the Colts two years later as an assistant general manager. Baltimore Colts Accorsi was promoted to general manager of the Colts in 1982. The Colts finished 0–8–1 in the strike-shortened 1982 season, thereby earning the right to select Stanford University quarterback John Elway with the first overall pick. Elway, however, refused to play for Baltimore, and using leverage as a draftee of the New York Yankees baseball club, forced a trade to the Denver Broncos. However, it was not Accorsi, but the team owner Bob Irsay who made the trade. “If another team wanted to draft [Elway], it would have had to fork over three first-round draft picks in exchange. That was Accorsi's price. When no other team met it, the Colts drafted him. Elway said the Colts had wasted a draft choice. He would play baseball. 'I covered minor league baseball when I was a sports-writer,' Accorsi said. "Elway wasn't going to give up a chance at the Hall of Fame to play in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is exactly where he would have been sent. If we'd been patient we could have signed him." Instead, Irsay traded him within a week, without consulting either Accorsi or [then head coach Frank] Kush. Denver gave up its own No. 1 pick in 1983 (offensive lineman Chris Hinton), its first pick in the 1984 draft and quarterback Mark Herrmann.