Al Ward (October 24, 1927 – January 3, 2021) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

executive who served as the

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of the

New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The J ...

from 1975 to 1977. Before becoming the Jets general manager, he had been the vice president of administration to

Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisi ...

General Manager

Tex Schramm Texas Earnest Schramm Jr. (June 2, 1920 – July 15, 2003) was an American football executive who was the original president and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys franchise of the National Football League (NFL). Schramm, usually referred to ...

. Ward began his pro football career as director of public relations for the

American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...

when it was based in

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...

, from 1960 through 1962. When the league moved its offices to New York, Ward became director of public relations for the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma an ...

and the Cotton Bowl until rejoining the AFL in 1965 as director of promotions. He joined the Cowboys after the 1965 season as director of public relations and became assistant general manager to Schramm in 1966. He was named vice-president in 1972. After seeing Jets secretary

Connie Carberg Connie Carberg (' Nicholas; born 1950/1951) is a former American football executive. In 1976, she became the first female scout in the National Football League (NFL), working in the New York Jets' scouting department from 1976 to 1980. Early y ...

's abilities to judge players on their skills, in 1976, Ward gave her a full-time position in the scouting department and she became the NFL's first female scout in history.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Al 1927 births 2021 deaths National Football League general managers New York Jets executives American football executives American football people from Texas People from Brownsville, Texas