Default to accountability.
Self-awareness is the golden ticket to controlling your destiny.
This tenet holds for both NFL management and retirement investors.
The NY Giants just completed another godawful season, going 4-13.
Amazingly, this was an improvement over the previous year’s 3-14 debacle.
A combined two-year record of 7-27 led to wholesale fumigation of the entire organization.
All major decision-makers are now history, and a search for new personnel to lead a cultural shift into a new era is underway.
Think again, the Giants installed their typical remedy of playing the blame game.
Instead of holding GM Joe Schoen and his underlings accountable, they fired the head coach, Brian Daboll.
The Giants have employed seven coaches over the last decade, during which they have had one of the NFL’s worst records. From 2015 to 2025, they have a 57-106-1 record for a .350 winning percentage.
What hasn’t changed is the meddling of ownership. The owner, John Mara, his brother Chris, and his nephew Tim all still occupy key decision-making positions. Dysfunction reigns. (John is currently undergoing treatment for Cancer. he is a good man, and he has our hopes and prayers.)
Family involvement has been a constant throughout one of the worst decades in Giant history. One would think a degree of self-awareness would emerge from the darkness. Self-reflection would prompt them to take a step back and hire competent professionals to manage the operation while they step aside.
But, Noooooooo
A search has begun for another new coach to add to the carousel of previous hires. No one would be surprised if, next year, another new GM were hired, along with his choice of Head Coach, after a dismal season.
The missing ingredient for this team isn’t a run defense; it’s a dearth of accountability and clinging to the past at the highest levels.
The data conclude that family inheritances tend to collapse by the third generation.
Giants beat writer Dan Duggan sums up the decline of a once-proud franchise.
While the monetary value of the team is a lofty $10 billion, it doesnt compensate for the fact that they have become a league laughingstock, and legions of loyal fans are this close to handing over their season tickets.
Instead of the Mara family celebrating winning the genetic lottery, they have used their wealth to enrich family members and cronies at the expense of their most important stakeholders- NYG fans.
Investors can learn a great deal about what not to do with their money from this definition of dysfunction.
At the top of the list is legacy doesn’t compound. The Giants won their first Super Bowl in 1987 and went on to triumph in three more, while losing one, over the course of those three decades. Things began to unravel after their last win in 2011 and have been on a downward trajectory (to be kind) since then. The same applies to once-great fund managers, legacy brands, and specific investment strategies that were successful during prior cycles.
Fund Manager Bill Miller’s Legg Mason Value Trust outperformed the S&P 500 for 15 years (1991-2005), earning him the title of investment legend. The tides turned when Miller drifted from his disciplined value style and severe underperformance in the late 2000s erased much of the prior excess return and his sterling reputation.
Teams and portfolios fall in a similiar fashion. Identity isnt reality, and stories aren’t repeatable systems.
Relying on past strategies or reputations to get you through changing times is a dangerous game to play.
The NFL and the financial markets don’t reward nostalgia.
On a side note, the NYG are currently trying to recruit John Harbaugh as their new coach. He is a proven winner and may finally revamp their outdated and ailing decision-making process. Giant fans are crossing their fingers that they won’t find a way to screw this one up.
