UFCW Local 1529
Standing strong for working families
Powering · Labor Education
Jerry Reese
The first Black general manager to win a Super Bowl — and he is still from Tiptonville.
Twenty-three years with the New York Giants. Two championship rings. A spot in the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. And a non-profit he co-founded in the county of 7,000 people that raised him, where the real measure of the man shows up — in a summer feeding program, a student award and an adult education class in a town most of America has never heard of.
Where it starts
Tiptonville is not a stop on the way to anywhere
Lake County sits in the northwest corner of Tennessee, pressed between the Mississippi River and Reelfoot Lake. It is one of the smallest and poorest counties in the state. There is no interstate through it. Nobody passes through Tiptonville by accident.
In 1980 the Lake County Falcons won the 1-A state championship, and Jerry Reese was on that team. In a county that size a state title is not a trophy in a case — it is the thing people still talk about at the gas station forty years later. Every kid who came up behind him measured himself against what happened that season.
From there: the University of Tennessee at Martin as a player, then eight years back at UT Martin as an assistant coach. He did not go from a small town straight to a corner office. He went from a small town to the bottom rung of the profession and climbed every single step of it.
The climb
Scout. Personnel director. General manager.
1963
Born in Tiptonville
July 22, 1963 — Lake County, Tennessee. Population under 5,000, up in the northwest corner where the state runs out of road at Reelfoot Lake.
1980
State champions
Played for the Lake County Falcons' 1-A state championship team. A county that size does not win much; that year it won everything.
1986–93
UT Martin
Played for the University of Tennessee at Martin, then came back as an assistant coach — eight years learning the game from the other side of the whistle.
1994
Giants college scout
Hired by the New York Giants to scout college talent. Entry level, miles of highway, nobody's idea of glamorous.
1997
Pro scout
Moved to evaluating pro talent — the work of knowing exactly what a roster is and is not.
2004
Director of player personnel
Running the Giants' personnel operation and building the board the franchise drafted from.
Jan 16, 2007
General manager
Succeeded Ernie Accorsi as GM of the New York Giants — the third African American ever hired as an NFL general manager, after Ozzie Newsome and Rick Smith.
Feb 2008
Super Bowl XLII
The Giants beat the undefeated Patriots. Reese became the first African American general manager in NFL history to win a Super Bowl — in his first season on the job.
Feb 2012
Super Bowl XLVI
Beat New England again. Two rings in five seasons. From 2007 to 2011 the Giants went 49–31 with three playoff trips.
Dec 2017
Twenty-three years
His run with the Giants ended in December 2017 after 23 years in the building — 90–82 in the regular season, 8–2 in the postseason. Two of those postseason wins were Super Bowls.
History made
February 3, 2008
The Giants beat an 18–0 New England team that was being measured for the title of greatest in history. When the clock hit zero, Jerry Reese became the first African American general manager ever to win a Super Bowl. It was his first season in the job. He had been hired eighteen days into 2007 — only the third Black GM in the history of the league, after Ozzie Newsome and Rick Smith.
The roster that did it was largely his. His first draft class in 2007 produced seven players who went straight into the rotation, several of whom were on the field for the title:
In April 2008 the team was received at the White House. Four years later the Giants beat the Patriots again in Super Bowl XLVI. Two rings in five years, built by a man who learned to evaluate talent driving between college towns with a notebook.
On the record
Two-time Super Bowl champion
XLII and XLVI, both over the New England Patriots.
Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame
Inducted for a career that started on a 1-A field in Lake County.
UT Distinguished Alumni
Named among the University of Tennessee's 100 Distinguished Alumni.
Honored by the Tennessee General Assembly
A joint resolution of the state legislature recognized his Super Bowl XLVI championship.
Mike Swift
Torey Currin
Jerry Reese
Kevin Bradshaw
John Swift
Never forgot where he came from
He went back to Lake County
Plenty of men who make it out send a check at Christmas. In 2014 Jerry Reese co-founded Team 4 Success with Bill Michaelcheck, founder of Mariner Investment Group — another Lake County native who made it a long way from Tiptonville. Two men from the same small county, from completely different worlds, aimed at the same problem: the children coming up behind them.
Team 4 Success is a 501(c)(3) working on educational disparity and youth leadership in Lake County, built to break the cycle of poverty where it starts. Roughly 98 cents of every dollar the organization spends goes into the programs themselves. His wife, Gwen Reese, serves as treasurer. He serves as co-chairman — not as a name on the letterhead.
STAR Student Program
Recognizing and developing Lake County students who show up and do the work.
Summer camps
Keeping kids learning and supervised through the months school is out.
Summer feeding program
Meals for children over the summer, in partnership with Tennessee State University.
Adult education
Partnered with the Tennessee College of Applied Technology so parents can finish too.
From Lake County
Two men from Lake County, TN
A boy from a town of 4,000 grows up to run an NFL franchise, and he still makes room on the sideline for the people he came up with. That is the part of the story the record books leave out.
Media Library
Watch him and read the record
Everything below is hosted by the people who shot it — the Giants, the networks, the halls of fame and his own organization. We embed what they allow and link straight to the rest, so the photographers and broadcasters keep the credit and the rights. Nothing here is copied onto this site.
Jerry Reese on the 2016–2017 New York Giants
A full sit-down interview published by YES Network. He talks roster building, handling criticism and the job itself — in his own voice, at length.
Giants official video archive · giants.com
Eleven years of press conferences, draft previews and state-of-the-team briefings, still posted by the team. These play on the Giants' own site.
Photo & record archives
tshf.net
Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame
His 2008 inductee profile, plus the Hall's own induction-weekend photo and video archive.
tshf.net
Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame · multimedia archive
Induction galleries and ceremony footage. The Hall will pull specific images on request: (615) 242-4750.
utmsports.com
UT Martin Athletics Hall of Fame
His Skyhawks profile — defensive back 1981–84, two-time All-Gulf South Conference, team MVP, inducted 1995.
utmsports.com
UT Martin football archive
The athletics roster archive page for his playing years.
our.tennessee.edu
University of Tennessee · Distinguished Alumni feature
The UT system's own written and photo feature on him as a distinguished alumnus.
nwtntoday.com
Northwest Tennessee Today — 2011 commencement
Hometown paper coverage of him giving the UT Martin commencement address in May 2011.
teamfoursuccess.org
Team 4 Success — About & Our Team
The organization he co-founded in 2014, with its own photos of the programs and the people running them.
wikipedia.org
Wikipedia · Jerry Reese
The sourced career record — dates, titles and citations you can follow back to the originals.
commons.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia Commons image search
Freely licensed photographs, if and when any are uploaded. This is the one archive whose images can be reused.
Have a photo or a clip of Jerry from Lake County that is not here — a game, a gala, a camp, a speech? Send it and we will add it to this page with your credit on it. Family and hometown photos are the ones the archives never have.
"I grew up watching him. Ever since he helped the high school football team win a state championship, every kid wanted to be like him. Of course there were others — but Jerry was and always has been a standout in a league of his own. Still today he remains in a league of his own. I know his entire family. He is a name we should never forget, not only for what he did in the NFL but for his humbleness and his dedicated service to giving back and never forgetting where he came from."
— Kevin Bradshaw, LaborEducation.org
Why he is on this site
A league of his own
This app is mostly about working people — contracts, apprenticeships, safety, the right to organize. Jerry Reese belongs in it for the same reason any of it belongs here: he is proof of what comes out of a place people write off, and proof of what a person does with it afterward.
He did not get handed the Giants. He scouted. He drove. He learned the whole trade from the bottom and then did something nobody who looked like him had done before. That is the same road a young person takes out of a Memphis high school into an apprenticeship — start at the bottom of a skilled trade, learn it completely, and end up in a league of your own.
The difference between a star and a hero is what happens after. Jerry Reese went back to Lake County. Everything above is public record. The part that is not written down anywhere is the part the people who grew up there already know.
Career facts drawn from public records, the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, the University of Tennessee and Team 4 Success's own materials. Personal recollection is Kevin Bradshaw's own and is marked as such.
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