{"id":1006278,"date":"2026-09-20T22:39:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T22:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1006278\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T22:39:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T22:39:46","slug":"an-ode-to-my-friend-and-ultimate-sports-fan-ernie-accorsi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1006278\/","title":{"rendered":"An ode to my friend and ultimate sports fan Ernie Accorsi"},"content":{"rendered":"

This one hurts. This one stings. Ernie Accorsi was a great many things in a full, vibrant life that spanned 84 years before that enormous heart of his was stilled at last Saturday night.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

He was a sports fan. He was a sports writer. He was a sports executive. He provided the questions for the \u201cColts Quiz\u201d that Eddie gave his fianc\u00e9s on the eve of their wedding in \u201cDiner.\u201d\u00a0He was first an acolyte, then a co-worker and later a close friend of the great John Unitas, of whom Ernie once said: \u201cGod had a good day the day He came up with Johnny U.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was also a gentleman, and exceedingly good company, and it was my privilege to call him a friend for the last 30 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The stories are what come flowing back in these sad hours, so many stories, all of them told in a way only Ernie could tell them, or involving Ernie in a way that only he could have made them turn out the way they did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi speaks to the media at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Monday, Jan. 3, 2005. Jeff Zelevansky for NY Post<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one:<\/p>\n

This was 20 or so years ago, because Ernie was still the GM of the Giants then. I received a call from my friend John Feinstein.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you have Ernie Accorsi\u2019s number?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a long-held protocol that a reporter will only ask another reporter if they will share a number if the subject in question would be a willing recipient of a call or a text. A lot of today\u2019s sports figures ask one question before any other when receiving such a call \u2014 \u201cWhere\u2019d you get this number?!?!\u201d \u2014 and then it\u2019s 50-50 whether the next sound you hear is dial tone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I told John that not only would Ernie be delighted to talk to someone vouched for by me, but he might keep him on the phone an extra hour or two. Ernie read every sports book published in the last 75 years or so; I told John he probably would be able to recite \u201cSeason on the Brink\u201d and \u201cA Good Walk Spoiled\u201d back to him from memory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So imagine my surprise when about an hour later I received a call from something I\u2019d never seen before: an irate Ernie Accorsi, who was yelling at me by the time I picked up and only got louder and angrier.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just got a call and they said they got my number from you and they said they were \u2018John the Fan.\u2019\u00a0How could you give my number out to fans?\u201d<\/p>\n

I told him, Ernie, I swear, I did no such thing. But I had given the number to John Feinstein.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Former New York Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi is honored during the Ring of Honor ceremony at halftime of a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the New York Giants, Monday, November 14, 2016, at MetLife Stadium. Charles Wenzelberg\/NY Post<\/p>\n

There was silence. He hung up. And about two hours later he called me back, sheepishly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when I got that call? I was annoyed because he was in a tunnel or something and had bad service. I heard \u2018John the Fan.\u2019\u00a0But what he said was \u2018I\u2019m John Feinstein, and I\u2019ve been a fan of yours for years.\u2019 But the part between \u2018John\u2019 and \u2018fan\u2019 fell into the ether somewhere. Sorry about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t stop laughing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have called back earlier \u2026\u201d he said \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 but you\u2019ve been on the phone with Feinstein the last two hours, haven\u2019t you?\u201d I helpfully said, finishing his thought.\u00a0And there was more laugher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes. That was Ernie. That was the man who\u2019d helped take the Cleveland Browns within an inch of their first Super Bowl (three times) and later would drive the Giants to the doorstep of a third Super Bowl title before handing the reins over to Jerry Reese.\u00a0Throw in his long history with the Colts, and you know why Accorsi was so pleased when he told me the day of his retirement: \u201cColts, Browns, Giants. Only the classics for me!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe you can take a breather and come back to work for the Packers as an intern,\u201d I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cleveland Browns General Manager Ernie Accorsi, right, and team owner Art Modell sit on the sideline before a preseason game against the Buffalo Bills at Rich Stadium in Orchard Park, New York, on August 24, 1985. The Browns defeated the Bills 31-28. Getty Images<\/p>\n

He laughed then offered a story (or course). He figured there would never be a reason that would force him out of the employ of the Colts, the team he\u2019d grown up rooting for in Hershey, Pa., acquiring the knowledge necessary for Eddie\u2019s fabled Colts Quiz. Except on May 2, 1983, he was at his home watching a Celtics-Bucks playoff game on TV when there came a special report on the screen: Robert Irsay, his boss, had just fallen for John Elway\u2019s bluff and traded John Elway to the Broncos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t remember a lot about what happened next,\u201d Ernie said, \u201cexcept I threw my remote control across the room and that the Bucks beat the Celtics that night to win the series.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was Ernie Accorsi. He was a sports guy to his soul and he was my friend. I already miss him terribly.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This one hurts. This one stings. Ernie Accorsi was a great many things in a full, vibrant life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1006279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048],"tags":[215,214,53,2086,3724,117418,7,56,6,9,2833],"class_list":["post-1006278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-buffalo-bills","tag-bills","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-bills","tag-buffalobills","tag-eli-manning","tag-ernie-accorsi","tag-football","tag-new-york-giants","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117305774129946555","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1006279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}