Patrick J. McGroder, Jr. (1904–1986) 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. He served as the interim

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

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 ...

in 1983. McGroder was instrumental in bringing the Bills to Buffalo. After the previous Bills franchise in the

All-America Football Conference The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the ...

was denied membership in the NFL, McGroder continued to lobby the NFL to bring a team to the city; such was his renown that it was McGroder, and not Ralph Wilson, who was

Lamar Hunt Lamar Hunt (August 2, 1932 – December 13, 2006) was an American businessman most notable for his promotion of American football, soccer, and tennis in the United States. He was the principal founder of the American Football League (AFL) and ...

's first choice to own the Buffalo

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. ...

franchise (Wilson was instead to own a team in Miami). McGroder had the resources to buy the team (at the time he owned a successful liquor store) but declined, thinking that the threat of the AFL would be enough for the league to expand to Buffalo. At the time, Buffalo had been a regular site for NFL neutral-site contests for two decades, and McGroder reasoned that the league's relative success in the city would make it a prime candidate for quick expansion in the face of the AFL's threat. When the NFL again passed Buffalo up, and Wilson was unable to put his AFL team in Miami, Wilson and McGroder met, eventually agreeing to establish the modern Buffalo Bills. McGroder negotiated the lease with War Memorial Stadium and was rewarded with a position on the team's payroll in 1961. McGroder is included on the Bills' Wall of Fame in

New Era Field 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 ...

(then called Rich Stadium). When McGroder was placed on the Bills' wall of fame in 1985 (a time in which the Bills were performing very poorly on the field and found themselves unable to compete on the free-agent market for talent, especially with the

USFL The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...

), fan discontent was so high that they openly booed Wilson when he introduced McGroder. McGroder, during his acceptance speech, defended Wilson, prompting further boos from the sparse crowd. McGroder died January 15, 1986, shortly after his retirement.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mcgroder, Pat Buffalo Bills executives National Football League general managers 1986 deaths 1904 births Sportspeople from Buffalo, New York