Maybe an article that [MENTION=265]SackExchange[/MENTION] will like. Not sure if you're into military history though.
Jets GM sees plenty of parallels in his dual loves of running a football team and studying war history
FLORHAM PARK, N.J.—Two decades before Mike Maccagnan became the New York Jets’ general manager, he was a scout for the Washington Redskins, surveying players in the Northeast and South. On his trips through the cradle of the Civil War, he’d bring along books about the battlefields near his route. If he had time, he would stop at one and spend a couple of hours there by himself.
Maccagnan’s most vivid memory was made one evening after a visit to his favorite battleground, a hill called Little Round Top in Gettysburg, Pa. As he walked to his car, he noticed thousands of fireflies swarming around him.
“I remember thinking to myself, it was one of those little personal, interesting experiences where you’re going to remember it for a long time,” Maccagnan said. He stared at the glowing insects and wondered whether the soldiers, who fought for three days at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, had seen them, too. “I thought to myself at some point that maybe they were out there literally walking to get food or moving formations around to re-solidify aspect of the lines,” Maccagnan said, “and maybe in the middle of the night were thinking about what may come tomorrow and then happened to notice all the fireflies around.”
Maccagnan, who was hired by Jets owner Woody Johnson in January to lead the team’s front office, grew up with two “borderline obsessions”: football and war history. The former became a career. The latter continues to be a passion he indulges, despite his diminished leisure time, by reading books and watching the History Channel after his wife, Betty, falls asleep.
Maccagnan, who is 48, has quickly won over many Jets fans with decisive off-season signings (like All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis) and trades (receiver Brandon Marshall and now-starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick) that should drastically improve the team after last year’s 4-12 disappointment. But he remains little known. That’s in part because he has never led an NFL franchise until now, and in part because of a demeanor that his former high-school football coach and classmates describe as mild-mannered and reserved.
Maccagnan grew up in faculty housing at the Peddie School, a private day and boarding high school in Hightstown, N.J., where his father, Vic, was the dean of students and a history teacher. One of his early passions was the NFL Draft. He asked his parents to videotape games from the United States Football League, a second-tier circuit that ran from 1983 to 1985, so he could watch them over and over, and try to determine which players were NFL-quality.
“I used to fill up little notebooks of little scouting notes,” Maccagnan said. “I remember my father was always thinking, ‘Get a better hobby, because what are you going to do with that someday?’”
Maccagnan was also a star football player at Peddie, playing on the offensive and defensive lines. He earned a reputation as a ferocious hitter. “This guy would just level you in practice,” said a former teammate, Christian Barth, now a lawyer and writer in Milford, Conn. “It was to a point where you wouldn’t want to go against him in practice.”
His other boyhood passion was war history (not unlike New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, whose father was an assistant coach at Navy). The Maccagnan household was stuffed with books on the subject, and Mike started reading them. He also played war-strategy board games, such as Axis and Allies, and some inspired by the Napoleonic Wars, with his friends.
“That’s what I really enjoyed, not really the low level or small-unit level, but more the very macro, more strategic level of understanding how battles unfolded and how campaigns unfolded,” he said.
Maccagnan ended up playing football at Trinity College, a Division III school where he majored in economics, though he said he sometimes wishes he had gone with history. He applied to be a Wall Street financial analyst, but took an internship with the Redskins instead. Afterward, he became a scout for the now-defunct World League and then the Canadian Football League’s Ottawa Rough Riders. That’s where he met Betty, who was working with the team part-time.
When the Redskins hired him as college scout in 1994, it landed him not only a full-time NFL job, but also a home in an area rife with significant Civil War sites. “Heck, 10 miles down the road from where we live was the two battles of the First and Second Bull Run in Manassas,” Maccagnan said.
He believes that his dual loves of running a football team and studying war history are related: Preparing for a military campaign is not unlike preparing for a football season. But Maccagnan, whose older brother, Vic Jr., is a retired colonel who spent 28 years in the Army, was also careful to say football was trivial compared with the military.
“You know full well that at some point in time you’re going to have injuries and adversity,” Maccagnan said. “You have to constantly try to fix, stopgap, plug, whatever to get to the end of the season, ideally into the playoffs or the championship game. As you go into it, I do think very much you realize what you can change and what you can’t change beforehand.”
‘That’s what I really enjoyed, not really the low level or small-unit level, but more the very macro, more strategic level of understanding how battles unfolded and how campaigns unfolded.’
In his scant free time these days, Maccagnan will switch over to the History Channel, Discovery Channel or American Heroes Channel to get his war-history fix after Betty falls asleep. “I’ll stay up with her sleeping next to me and I’ll watch my military shows when she’s sleeping,” he said.
At first, his favorite subject was the Napoleonic Wars, fought in the early 1800s by French emperor Napoleon and an array of European enemies. “Napoleon was very much ahead of his time in terms of how he conducted warfare,” Maccagnan said, detailing how Napoleon ordered his soldiers to march in narrow columns, allowing for greater maneuverability, rather than in wide rows, which maximized firepower but limited mobility.
Then the Civil War became equally fascinating. “You went from a smoothbore musket in the Napoleonic area to a rifled barrel in the Civil War, which caused not only the killing power but the range of killing power to be much further,” he said. “It gave an advantage to the defense… As a result, what happened was in the Civil War, you found where the Confederacy, to a degree, fought more of a defensive battle.”
No historical figure, though, stands as tall in his mind as that short, 19th-century French emperor. Asked whether Jets fans should be concerned that he is such a fan of Napoleon, Maccagnan chuckled.
“Oh, I don’t know. At the end of the day, everybody likes the idea of fighting against all odds. That’s what you want. You want to achieve whatever you can achieve, or your goals and ambitions, but to do it against the long odds is an impressive thing,” he said. “Napoleon, from certain viewpoints, was an underdog. I like the idea of being an underdog. I root for the underdog, quite frankly.”
Jets GM sees plenty of parallels in his dual loves of running a football team and studying war history
FLORHAM PARK, N.J.—Two decades before Mike Maccagnan became the New York Jets’ general manager, he was a scout for the Washington Redskins, surveying players in the Northeast and South. On his trips through the cradle of the Civil War, he’d bring along books about the battlefields near his route. If he had time, he would stop at one and spend a couple of hours there by himself.
Maccagnan’s most vivid memory was made one evening after a visit to his favorite battleground, a hill called Little Round Top in Gettysburg, Pa. As he walked to his car, he noticed thousands of fireflies swarming around him.
“I remember thinking to myself, it was one of those little personal, interesting experiences where you’re going to remember it for a long time,” Maccagnan said. He stared at the glowing insects and wondered whether the soldiers, who fought for three days at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, had seen them, too. “I thought to myself at some point that maybe they were out there literally walking to get food or moving formations around to re-solidify aspect of the lines,” Maccagnan said, “and maybe in the middle of the night were thinking about what may come tomorrow and then happened to notice all the fireflies around.”
Maccagnan, who was hired by Jets owner Woody Johnson in January to lead the team’s front office, grew up with two “borderline obsessions”: football and war history. The former became a career. The latter continues to be a passion he indulges, despite his diminished leisure time, by reading books and watching the History Channel after his wife, Betty, falls asleep.
Maccagnan, who is 48, has quickly won over many Jets fans with decisive off-season signings (like All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis) and trades (receiver Brandon Marshall and now-starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick) that should drastically improve the team after last year’s 4-12 disappointment. But he remains little known. That’s in part because he has never led an NFL franchise until now, and in part because of a demeanor that his former high-school football coach and classmates describe as mild-mannered and reserved.
Maccagnan grew up in faculty housing at the Peddie School, a private day and boarding high school in Hightstown, N.J., where his father, Vic, was the dean of students and a history teacher. One of his early passions was the NFL Draft. He asked his parents to videotape games from the United States Football League, a second-tier circuit that ran from 1983 to 1985, so he could watch them over and over, and try to determine which players were NFL-quality.
“I used to fill up little notebooks of little scouting notes,” Maccagnan said. “I remember my father was always thinking, ‘Get a better hobby, because what are you going to do with that someday?’”
Maccagnan was also a star football player at Peddie, playing on the offensive and defensive lines. He earned a reputation as a ferocious hitter. “This guy would just level you in practice,” said a former teammate, Christian Barth, now a lawyer and writer in Milford, Conn. “It was to a point where you wouldn’t want to go against him in practice.”
His other boyhood passion was war history (not unlike New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, whose father was an assistant coach at Navy). The Maccagnan household was stuffed with books on the subject, and Mike started reading them. He also played war-strategy board games, such as Axis and Allies, and some inspired by the Napoleonic Wars, with his friends.
“That’s what I really enjoyed, not really the low level or small-unit level, but more the very macro, more strategic level of understanding how battles unfolded and how campaigns unfolded,” he said.
Maccagnan ended up playing football at Trinity College, a Division III school where he majored in economics, though he said he sometimes wishes he had gone with history. He applied to be a Wall Street financial analyst, but took an internship with the Redskins instead. Afterward, he became a scout for the now-defunct World League and then the Canadian Football League’s Ottawa Rough Riders. That’s where he met Betty, who was working with the team part-time.
When the Redskins hired him as college scout in 1994, it landed him not only a full-time NFL job, but also a home in an area rife with significant Civil War sites. “Heck, 10 miles down the road from where we live was the two battles of the First and Second Bull Run in Manassas,” Maccagnan said.
He believes that his dual loves of running a football team and studying war history are related: Preparing for a military campaign is not unlike preparing for a football season. But Maccagnan, whose older brother, Vic Jr., is a retired colonel who spent 28 years in the Army, was also careful to say football was trivial compared with the military.
“You know full well that at some point in time you’re going to have injuries and adversity,” Maccagnan said. “You have to constantly try to fix, stopgap, plug, whatever to get to the end of the season, ideally into the playoffs or the championship game. As you go into it, I do think very much you realize what you can change and what you can’t change beforehand.”
‘That’s what I really enjoyed, not really the low level or small-unit level, but more the very macro, more strategic level of understanding how battles unfolded and how campaigns unfolded.’
In his scant free time these days, Maccagnan will switch over to the History Channel, Discovery Channel or American Heroes Channel to get his war-history fix after Betty falls asleep. “I’ll stay up with her sleeping next to me and I’ll watch my military shows when she’s sleeping,” he said.
At first, his favorite subject was the Napoleonic Wars, fought in the early 1800s by French emperor Napoleon and an array of European enemies. “Napoleon was very much ahead of his time in terms of how he conducted warfare,” Maccagnan said, detailing how Napoleon ordered his soldiers to march in narrow columns, allowing for greater maneuverability, rather than in wide rows, which maximized firepower but limited mobility.
Then the Civil War became equally fascinating. “You went from a smoothbore musket in the Napoleonic area to a rifled barrel in the Civil War, which caused not only the killing power but the range of killing power to be much further,” he said. “It gave an advantage to the defense… As a result, what happened was in the Civil War, you found where the Confederacy, to a degree, fought more of a defensive battle.”
No historical figure, though, stands as tall in his mind as that short, 19th-century French emperor. Asked whether Jets fans should be concerned that he is such a fan of Napoleon, Maccagnan chuckled.
“Oh, I don’t know. At the end of the day, everybody likes the idea of fighting against all odds. That’s what you want. You want to achieve whatever you can achieve, or your goals and ambitions, but to do it against the long odds is an impressive thing,” he said. “Napoleon, from certain viewpoints, was an underdog. I like the idea of being an underdog. I root for the underdog, quite frankly.”
