Robert Thomas Lustig (July 12, 1924 – November 5, 2005) 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 wi ...

executive who worked for the

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

from 1960 to 1979. A business associate of Bills owner Ralph Wilson from 1948, Lustig began his tenure with the Bills in 1960, primarily working as a contract negotiator. He was promoted to team vice president in 1964, and became

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 ...

in 1967. Under his leadership, the Bills drafted O. J. Simpson number one overall in the 1969 NFL/AFL Draft, and built

Rich Stadium Highmark Stadium is a stadium in Orchard Park, New York, in the Southtowns of the Buffalo metropolitan area. The stadium opened in 1973 as Rich Stadium and is the home venue of the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL). It was kno ...

in 1973. He left the Bills in 1979 to work for Ralph Wilson's insurance agency in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

. Lustig attended the University of Detroit, where he played baseball, and served in the 104th Infantry Division of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Lustig died on November 5, 2005, at the age of 81.

References

Buffalo Bills executives National Football League general managers 1990 deaths 1920s births People from Chicago Detroit Mercy Titans baseball players University of Detroit Mercy alumni United States Army personnel of World War II {{US-sport-bio-stub