Team builder Beathard heads into Hall of Fame

Published 3:16 am Wednesday, August 1, 2018

FORMER WASHINGTON REDSKINS general manager Bobby Beathard speaks at a news conference at the Redskins NFL football training camp on July 30, 2016, in Richmond, Va. Beathard loathed first-round draft picks and reveled in taking chances on players from out-of-the-way colleges. It was a formula that paid off with two victories in four trips to the Super Bowl as general manager of the Washington Redskins and San Diego Chargers, and earned him a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Bobby Beathard loathed first-round draft picks and reveled in taking chances on players from out-of-the-way colleges.

It was a formula that paid off with two victories in four trips to the Super Bowl as general manager of the Washington Redskins and San Diego Chargers.



He also loathes dressing up, meaning the gold blazer he’ll wear when he’s inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame won’t get much use after Saturday night’s ceremony.

“I don’t think I’ll be wearing it many places except there,” Beathard said. “I don’t think I’ll be going out to dinner with that coat on.”

That’s Beathard, 81, who always was more comfortable dressed as a Southern California beach bum. In jobs ranging from scout to general manager, he helped build seven Super Bowl teams for four franchises, including four winners, during a career lasting nearly four decades.

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Beathard was so low-key that when Kevin Gilbride was hired as Chargers coach in 1997 and insisted that everyone wear a coat and tie on road trips, even the GM, Beathard reached into his pocket on one trip and found an NFL schedule from 1989. That had been the last time he wore a blazer, when he worked on NBC’s pregame show.

Beathard certainly didn’t need a blazer for scouting trips to small colleges, or to bodysurf in his beloved Pacific Ocean, run the Boston Marathon or have a few beers once a week with his buddies in Franklin, Tennessee, where he’s lived for several years.

But he’ll have to wear one Saturday night.

His presenter will be Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs, hired by Beathard with Washington before the 1981 season.

“I would have had one of my sons but I think it was more appropriate to have Joe,” Beathard said. “We spent a long time together.”

Gibbs, inducted in 1996, coached the Redskins to victory in two of the three Super Bowls the Redskins reached in the 1980s. Those are the teams Beathard is best-remembered for building.

He also built the San Diego Chargers’ only Super Bowl team, which was routed by San Francisco in the 1995 game.

He began his career as a part-time scout for the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963 before leaving to scout in the AFL. He returned to the Chiefs in 1966, when they played in the first Super Bowl. In 1972, Beathard was hired as director of player personnel for the Miami Dolphins, who won consecutive Super Bowls.