An oral history of one of the NFL’s most storied franchises, We Are the Giants is the complete story of the New York Giants as told by the men who built it. Based on exclusive interviews with the greatest players in team history, from Pat Summerall and Phil Simms to Y. A. Tittle, Sam Huff, and many others, this book is a must have for any Giants fan. Richard Whittingham is the author of more than 30 books, including the ESPN 10-part series tie-in Rites of Autumn and the definitive histories of the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants, and the Washington Redskins. He collaborated on projects with Joe DiMaggio, Sir Edmund Hilary, and Life magazine. He lives in Chicago. Dave Buscema is an award-winning sports author and journalist who covered the Giants’ last two Super Bowls. He is the author of Game of My Life New York Yankees: Memorable Stories of Yankees Baseball . He lives in Astoria, New York. Wellington Mara was the owner of the New York Giants for nearly 50 years. We are the Giants! The Oral History of the New York Giants By Richard Whittingham, Dave Buscema Triumph Books Copyright © 2014 Richard Whittingham All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62937-009-5 Contents Foreword by Wellington Mara, 1. College Days, 2. Joining the Giants, 3. Game Time, 4. Giants They Were, 5. Memories, 6. Coaches, 7. Enemies Remembered, 8. More Memories, 9. Off the Field, 10. After the Game Is Over, Acknowledgments, CHAPTER 1 College Days FRANK GIFFORD at USC It had been a great experience at USC. My coach at Bakersfield High School, a man by the name of Homer Beattie, had played for USC and at that time he was certainly one of the most important persons in my life. He got me going in the right direction academically as well as on the football field. I hadn't been the greatest of students. He felt I could possibly play for USC, and he knew I would have to qualify on both levels if I were to be accepted at that school. After my fourth year at Bakersfield, USC did indeed offer me a football scholarship, but I was deficient in a few academic units and I had to make them up. So I went for a year to Bakersfield Junior College and then moved on to USC. At USC, they never really could find just what to do with me. I had played offense and defense in high school and ended up a T-formation quarterback my junior year. I played safety on defense. And in my senior year they switched to a wing T and I became a running back. Then in junior college we had an offense where I both ran and passed the ball. So, at USC I didn't exactly fit anywhere in particular. For two years I played defense.Then in my senior year they brought in a new coach, Jess Hill, and he designed an offense that was pretty much suited to me, a single wing and a wing T, and I was sort of the focus of it, running and passing and receiving. He also had a fine staff with Mel Hein and Don Clark, who would later become head coach at Southern Cal. And it made a big difference. We were 3–7–0 in 1950, my junior year, and won our first seven games in 1951. The fifth game that we won that year was over the University of California, and at the time they were ranked number one in the nation and had a thirty-nine-game winning streak. Well, after that all the bells went off and we jumped from nothing to something like fourth or fifth in the nation. Suddenly the press and the media were all over the campus, and a week later I was being photographed for All-American. It was the weirdest thing — we all kept wondering how it happened so fast. We didn't go to the Rose Bowl because we lost our last three games that year, but I did play in the East-West Game and the Senior Bowl. As I learned later, Wellington Mara had scouted both those games. Mel Hein had told him to take a close look at me. That's really how they scouted in those days. There weren't any combines or things like that, or even scouting departments for the individual teams. People like Wellington Mara relied on coaches they knew, former players, and they listened to their recommendations. LANDRY at Texas It was in the summer of 1950 when I officially joined the Giants. I was twenty-five years old at the time, a little old for a rookie in the NFL, but there were several things that had come up before my entering the NFL. I had attended the University of Texas after playing football in high school down in south Texas along the border there, in a town called Mission. There was an oilman in our town who was a Texas U. graduate, and he was the one who got me an interview with the university. In those days, D.X. Bible [also known as Dana Xenophon Bible] was the coach there, and they had a tremendous program under him. That was around 1941 and 1942. They were anticipating a national championship in 1941, and Life magazine featured them in a big article as the nation's top team. After that they lost three games. I came there the next year, and D.X. Bible was still the coach. I play