Background
Vincent Thomas Lombardi was born on June 11, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of Henry Lombardi, an immigrant wholesale meat dealer, and Matilda Izzo. He was raised in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.
Vincent Thomas Lombardi was born on June 11, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of Henry Lombardi, an immigrant wholesale meat dealer, and Matilda Izzo. He was raised in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.
Lombardi attended Cathedral High School, planning to enter the priesthood. But he soon changed his plans (his father said, "The Greek got him") and transferred to St. Francis Preparatory School, where he played basketball and baseball, and starred as a fullback in football. Lombardi entered Fordham University in 1933 and graduated magna cum laude in 1937 with Bachelor of Science in business administration. Later he attended Fordham University Law School and took education courses at Seton Hall University.
Lombardi played guard on the famed line called "the Seven Blocks of Granite" at Fordham University, which then had one of the best teams in the country. At less than five feet ten inches tall and under 175 pounds, Lombardi was small even by the standards of that day. But his fierce charge and durability helped the team to win all but two games in 1935 and 1936. After graduation Lombardi worked as an insurance investigator. In 1939 he was hired by his former Fordham teammate Andy Palau to be line coach at St. Cecilia's, a small Catholic preparatory school in Englewood, New Jersey. He was also to be basketball coach, baseball assistant, and teacher of physics, chemistry, algebra, and Latin, at a salary of only $1, 700 per year.
By 1942 he was head coach of football, basketball, and baseball, and in eight years led his teams to six state football titles and one New Jersey parochial school basketball championship. Lombardi also worked at various odd jobs in construction and at a du Pont research laboratory in Wilmington, Delaware. On weekends he played semiprofessional football in Springfield, Massachusetts, Brooklyn, and Wilmington. But his ambition was to be a head football coach at a major university. In this quest he accepted the position of freshman coach at Fordham in 1947 and moved up to coach the varsity offense in 1948.
From 1949 to 1954 he worked at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, under the famous coach Earl H. ("Red") Blaik. Army was in those days one of the dominant football teams in the country, and Lombardi was in charge of the successful, fast-striking T-formation offensive attack. He later credited Blaik with teaching him the importance of organization in the football program, of meticulous preparation and motivation of the players, and of controlling his volatile temper.
Lombardi became offensive coach of the New York Giants professional team in 1954. By his own admission he had paid little attention to the professional game. His lack of experience and emotional style of coaching, along with his introduction of new techniques, brought him into conflict with his players. But he helped transform the Giants into a major National Football League (NFL) contender. Although he was soon mentioned as a possible head coach at both the collegiate and professional levels, he received no offers. He later speculated that his Italian-American heritage was held against him.
His chance finally came in 1959 when he was recommended to the Green Bay Packers by former army colleague Sid Gillman, then a successful professional coach. With only five years in professional football and with little experience as a head coach, Lombardi, the inveterate New Yorker, moved his family to northern Wisconsin to take over the Packers, a team that had won only two games the previous season. At his insistence he was appointed both head coach and general manager, and placed in charge of all phases of the team's operation. After carefully evaluating his personnel, Lombardi began to rebuild the Packers by disciplining and motivating the players. His rigid control and exhausting training camps became legendary. Using the Giants' brand of power football, he quickly made Green Bay competitive in the league. The team also began to make money, and Lombardi soon upgraded the stadium and training facilities. In the first year the Packers won seven games and lost five, and Lombardi was named the league's Coach of the Year. In 1960 the team won the Western Conference title before losing the league championship to the Philadelphia Eagles. In 1961 and 1962 Green Bay won the NFL championship, but in 1963 and 1964 it failed to make the playoffs. Lombardi then rebuilt his aging team, and Green Bay won an unprecedented three consecutive league championships, in 1965, 1966, and 1967.
Lombardi faced a new challenge in 1960 with the formation of the competing American Football League (AFL). In what Lombardi and others saw as a crucial test of the credibility of the older NFL, Green Bay easily defeated the new league's champions, Kansas City and Oakland, in the first two Super Bowls in 1967 and 1968. In nine seasons with Lombardi at the helm the Packers had become a symbol of strength, precision, and excellence in football and Lombardi a folk hero. However, exhausted by the tensions of coaching and claiming that the demands of two jobs were too great, Lombardi resigned as head coach in 1968. He planned to concentrate on his duties as general manager and to give more time to league matters, including the still-in-progress merger of the two football leagues. But he found that he missed "the fire on Sunday" and the close camaraderie of the team. Soon there were rumors that he would sign as coach with any one of seven different professional teams.
In early 1969 he accepted an offer from the Washington Redskins to become head coach and executive president with complete control of the organization; as an added bonus he was given 5 percent ownership of the team. The Green Bay corporation was reluctant to let Lombardi go and complained that Washington had violated league rules by approaching him directly. They also reminded Lombardi that his contract did not permit him to coach elsewhere until 1974. But ultimately they released him, and he moved to Washington, D. C. , to attempt to repeat the miracle of Green Bay. With full media coverage, Lombardi began to transform a weak Redskins program, and the team won seven, lost five, and tied two games in 1969. But in the late spring and summer of 1970 Lombardi became ill during preseason drills. Exploratory surgery revealed he had intestinal cancer. He died in Georgetown University Hospital.
Football to Lombardi was a simple game. If you blocked and tackled better than your opponent and got the breaks, you won. His system of coaching was an amalgam of his memories of his loving, perfectionist father, his years at St. Cecilia's, his belief in the hierarchical system of the Catholic church, and the lessons he learned from Blaik at West Point. He said coaching was teaching, and he worked to achieve excellence by endless repetition and by motivating each of his players.
A stern disciplinarian who set rigid rules to govern his player's personal lives, he was blunt, direct, and not above verbal abuse of his players and staff. Yet he came to question some aspects of the professional game. He called it a game for madmen, and worried over the insatiable demands of success. With the help of television, professional football had become the major spectator sport of the 1960's, and Lombardi symbolized its success. But he also represented order and stability in a troubled time. He spoke of the older values of hard work, discipline, loyalty to family and team, duty to God, and respect for authority. He was openly critical of individualism that lacked personal responsibility. He condemned his players' long hair, sideburns, and mustaches. He also attempted to direct their outside interests. He had little time for player agents and he sided with professional football's management in its developing quarrels with players over rights and benefits.
Lombardi always struggled to separate his private and professional lives. He was active in community affairs in the Green Bay area. Always concerned with financial security, he reportedly left an estate worth more than $1 million.
Lombardi's reputation rested on his accomplishments as a coach and on his being a symbol of authority and discipline. His record of 135 victories, forty-one defeats, and eleven ties in fifteen years of coaching was exceptional in that day. Yet he was hardly an innovator in football tactics. While he rejected the standard professional "slot T, " his "close-end" offensive system owed much to an older single-wing formation, and he clearly preferred a running attack to the forward pass. His offensive game was best illustrated by the famed Green Bay "end sweep, " with guards pulling out to lead the formation. Yet he delighted in variations such as the halfback option pass perfected first with the Giants' Frank Gifford and later with Lombardi's favorite player, the Packers' Paul Hornung. He also popularized the idea of "running to daylight, " or permitting the runner to choose his own route according to the actions of his blockers. Along with other honors and tributes he was posthumously given the National Football League Distinguished Service Award in 1970, and the following year he was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame.
Lombardi was a committed Roman Catholic who attended mass daily.
Quotations:
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. "
"A university without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall. "
"Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn't do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another. "
"Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can. "
"Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It's something we call heart power. Once a man has made his commitment, nothing will stop him short of success. "
Lombardi was shy, wary of the press, and difficult to approach. But many of his players spoke of him with affection as well as respect.
Lombardi married Marie Planitz on August 31, 1940. They had two children.
