The announcement was greeted with a shrug and a yawn: The New York Giants were elevating one of their coordinators, taking an obscure name and installing him in the most important job on one of the NFL’s foundation franchises.
“Always hire a guy you know,” George Young said on Dec. 15, 1982, and it was good that George Young knew who Bill Parcells was that day because outside of Oradell, N.J., there weren’t a whole lot of people, Giants fans or not, who could have picked Parcells out of a lineup.