Football - Giants Hire Jerry Reese As General Manag

The New York Giants have hired Jerry Reese as their general manager, making Reese only the third black general manager in the history of NFL.

The last four years, Reese has been serving as the team’s director of player personnel. He was considered the favorite in-house candidate to take over from Ernie Accorsi who retired after holding the post for nine seasons.
The other black general managers in NFL are Ozzie Newsome of Baltimore and Rick Smith of Houston. There is no doubt that there are several black men who have considerable say. The most notable is Rod Graves of Arizona, who is designated senior vice president – football operations. Then there is Ray Anderson who was the vice president of the Atlanta Falcons for four years before he decided to move to NFL to become senior vice president of football operations.
The last season saw the most ever black head coaches in NFL with the number being seven. However, two coaches, Dennis Green of Cardinals and Art Shell of Oakland, were fired after the season was over. A point to be noted is that Art Shell has remained with the Raiders front office.
Critics of NFL minority hiring policy have generally praised NFL for increasing the number of minority coaches, though they have said that the league should do more to increase minority representation in the front office.
Reese is a graduate from University of Tennessee at Martin. He joined the Giants in 1994 in the scouting department after working as a coaching staff at the university. As a director of player personnel, Reese oversaw all aspects of college scouting and had most of the responsibility for the draft. Previously, Reese had served for three years as an assistant director of pro personnel.