Wellington Mara, the owner of the New York Giants whose decision to support revenue sharing helped pave the way for the success of the NFL, died Tuesday. He was 89.
Mara, the oldest NFL owner and the patriarch of one of New York’s most influential families, died of cancer at his home in Rye, N.Y., less than a week after returning from the hospital.
NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue called him the “heart and soul” of the league and “a man of deep conviction who stood as a beacon of integrity.”
Mara made perhaps his most significant contribution to the league in the early 1960s when he and his brother Jack, owners of the richest team in the biggest market, agreed to a revenue-sharing plan that allowed franchises from smaller markets such as Pittsburgh and Green Bay to compete on equal financial footing.
The plan was devised by the late Pete Rozelle, then league commissioner, and Art Modell, then the owner of the Cleveland Browns and chairman of the league’s broadcast committee, which negotiated all the big-money TV deals.
Revenue sharing was going to happen only if Rozelle and Modell could get approval from owners Dan Reeves of the Los Angeles Rams, George Halas of the Chicago Bears, and the Mara brothers. Eventually, they all agreed to the plan.
“Wellington was a visionary, but he was also aware that he had the largest market in the league,” Modell said. “He knew if he’d come in, the others would follow.”
Mara became a fixture with the Giants when his father, Tim, and a partner, Billy Gibson, paid $500 for a franchise in the fledgling NFL in 1925. He worked his way up the ranks of the team, going from ball boy to scout to executive. He and his brother ran the team until Jack’s death in 1965. Tim was a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, and Wellington joined him in 1997, making the Maras the Hall’s only father-son combination.
When Jack’s son, also Tim, took over his late father’s share of the franchise, he and his uncle clashed on how to run the team. The feud grew so heated that they sat in adjacent owners’ suites, separated by Venetian blinds. When the Giants won Super Bowls in the 1986 and 1990 seasons, Wellington and Tim threw separate victory parties.
Wellington, who answered to “Well” and “Duke” – as in the Duke of Wellington – not only was a regular at the games but at almost every practice. His nickname also found a lasting niche. For years, the NFL’s official football was called “the Duke,” after Mara. He had final say on all the team’s football decisions, although he never was viewed as a meddlesome owner or a micro-manager. He stayed involved in the operation of the team for almost 80 years.
He often told of his recollections of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Giants were playing host to the Washington Redskins at the Polo Grounds.
“The Redskins were giving us a hard time, and I was wrapped up in the game,” Mara said in a 1997 interview. “The public-address announcer kept telling General So and So or Commander So and So to report to Governor’s Island or Washington immediately.
“I finally turned to our chaplain and asked, ‘What the heck is going on here?’
“He said: ‘Didn’t you hear? They’ve bombed Pearl Harbor.’
“I said: ‘Pearl Harbor? Who is Pearl Harbor?”‘
Mara soon learned about World War II firsthand, serving in the Navy for three years, his only years out of football.
In 1991, the Giants became the only NFL team with two equal ownership partners when Tim, suffering from terminal cancer, sold half the franchise to Robert Tisch, who had built the Loews hotel empire. Tisch, 76, was diagnosed with a brain tumor last year and has handed over many of his responsibilities to his son, Steve, an Oscar-winning producer who lives in Los Angeles.
The younger Tisch and John Mara, Wellington’s oldest son, have spent the past year working in tandem, with Mara handling day-to-day operations of the team and Tisch working on negotiations for a new stadium.
Always in the background, however, was Wellington Mara, easygoing and approachable.
“After games, you’d walk into the locker room and he’d be standing right there to shake your hand, win or lose,” running back Tiki Barber said.
In the Giants locker room after Sunday’s come-from-behind victory over the Broncos, players chanted, “Duke! Duke! Duke!” in honor of Mara.
Giants quarterback Eli Manning said he had been told by one of Mara’s grandsons the owner awakened in time to see the winning play, then smiled and went back to sleep.
