Legendary Mara family teamed with Tisches to uphold Giants' tradition
GLENDALE, Ariz. - John Mara was standing inside this silver spaceship disguised as a football stadium earlier this week, watching his Giants and relishing their Super status. On his right hand was the 1956 NFL championship ring that belonged to his father, Wellington.
"It's the only ring I ever saw him wear," said Mara, whose helmeted family heirloom, handed down from father to son to grandson, will challenge the Patriots here tomorrow night. "That was his favorite team. Those players were special guys."
Wellington was 14 when his father, Tim, who'd bought the Giants for $500, handed over the club to him and older brother Jack during the Depression. When he died three Octobers ago, John took over as president, continuing a thread of football DNA that goes back to 1925, when the NFL was still one level above a park league.
Along with the Rooneys of Pittsburgh and the Halases of Chicago, the Maras are one of pro football's First Families. And although the Tisches bought half of the club in 1991, the Giants' tradition, identity, and values have carried the Mara imprint for more than eight decades.
"We do have our own way of doing things, which a lot of people would call old-school," says Mara, who's the oldest of Wellington's 11 children. "We're still very much a Mom-and-Pop operation. We're not quite as up-to-date as a lot of other franchises are. This week, we've taken our entire office staff down [to Arizona], including spouses and family members. We started doing that back in 1986. It was always important to my father and it's important to me, too."
It was the Giants' rich history and tradition that convinced billionaire businessman Preston Robert Tisch to buy in. "My father was born in Brooklyn and grew up in New York," says son Steve, the Hollywood producer who is the club's chairman and executive vice president. "He was a definitive New York guy who worked in New York and socialized in New York. Buying the Giants literally was a dream come true for him."
The Giants weren't just New York's team, they were New England's team, too. "I used to watch Y.A. Tittle, Jim Katcavage, Frank Gifford, and Dick Modzelewski," says Patriots owner Bob Kraft. "When the Patriots were founded, I became a Patriots fan. But there was always a little residual special feeling towards the Giants."
When the TV era arrived in the mid-1950s, turning pro football into a marquee sport and a Sunday addiction, the Giants became America's Team. Between 1956 and 1963, New York played in six title games and its stars - Gifford, Sam Huff, Roosevelt Brown, Andy Robustelli, Rosey Grier, and the rest - became household names.
Wellington Mara was the patriarch, both during the glory years and the empty autumns that lasted from the mid-1960s until the '80s, when the Giants went 17 years without making the playoffs. "We went through a lot of rough years," his son says. "My father wasn't always this revered figure. Back then, there were days when he was hung in effigy."
The public ridicule and rancor made the '80s renaissance, with its two Super Bowl crowns, particularly satisfying. Stability at the top counted for something. But when the Maras sold half the club to Tisch, the franchise was at a crossroads. What if the families couldn't agree on a common vision? But they did.
"I don't know how you possibly could have found a better fit," says tight ends coach Michael Pope, who has been with the Giants for their last four Super Bowl appearances. "The Tisches are professional people, they're honorable people. They very much understand that the Giants are a class operation. The Maras didn't like the things that made the back page of the newspaper. Wellington would much rather have been on page 13 and the Tisches are very much the same way. They're behind-the-scenes people, but they're avidly interested in how this team does, but also how it is portrayed."
After the elder Mara and Tisch died within three weeks of each other in 2005, John and Steve stepped in and quickly agreed on a path forward. "We're two very different families, but John and I pay a lot of attention to getting it right," says Tisch. "There's a tremendous sensitivity as to how to keep a 50-50 partnership workable, functional, and productive."
Especially with a new stadium in the works in the Meadowlands. The Giants' operation will only get bigger. "Once, you could walk down the hall and know every person by his first name and their kids names, too," says Pope. "Now, I don't even know who some of them are."
With Tim Mara's $500 franchise now worth close to $1 billion, the Mom-and-Pop days are dwindling. "We will lose that over time," Mara concedes, "but we'll try to hang on to it as long as possible."
This year's improbable run to the title game had a satisfying throwback feel to it, especially when the Giants upset the Packers in overtime in their Green Bay freezer. New York was pounded there, 37-0, in 1961 and lost to the Packers the next year, too. "It was always something that stuck in my father's craw," says Mara.
So it was bittersweet for the son to come down to the locker room at Lambeau Field and accept the NFC trophy, and bittersweet, too, for him to walk into the stadium here, wearing his father's most cherished ring. "I would have loved to have him standing here instead of me," John Mara was saying. "But he would have enjoyed this season and he would have loved this team. All those tough games we won on the road, are you kidding? He would have loved this because it was so unexpected."
John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com. 