The Giants were such a disgraceful team in the 1970s (maily due to the long-running feud between Wellington Mara and his nephew Tim) that Pete Rozelle sat them both down in 1979 and told them that he would force them to sell the team (as commissioner he had this authority) unless they became competitive in a hurry.
The big problem with the team was that neither Wellington nor Tim could agree on a general manager. They hated each other so much that any candidate who was proposed by one was automatically rejected by the other.
Rozelle told them each to submit a list of names of all the general manager candidates they had considered, and he told them that he would select a GM who was not on either list. He picked an old friend of his named George Young.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
My roommate and I are dieharders from our first games in the early 80's (both born in 75). Our fathers laugh at us because they were sucked into loving the Giants in the 50's and we got sucked into during the 80's. Thankfully we haven't had to live through entire decades of futility but those spurts are pretty hard to go through. Somewhere Ray Handley is in his shack in the middle of nowhere cackling like a loon right now.