Bill Savage – Editor – The Wisconsin Conservative Digest
In 1966 I moved into a home in a middle-class suburb just north of Milwaukee. To be honest, I’m not sure whether the jersey I was wearing was number 15 or 66. The house was close enough to the high school to faintly hear the drums of the marching band on Friday night.
The smell of Autumn in Wisconsin meant more to us back then. The blowing leaves, the big orange moon and the heavy fall air that signaled it was time for Green Bay football led by Coach Lombardi. We ran home from school and rushed to get out of those new school clothes, daylight was scarce, and the football awaited. We played football until the moon was the only light that remained.
Every Sunday we watched with as much pride as any group of boys could have ever watched a football team play. Dale to the left, Dowler to the right, Starr drops back… Boom. There were no Sunday or Monday night games. No Thursday football except on Thanksgiving when the Pack played the Lions. The money aspect of football was just becoming prevalent in 1966. It was safer back then to become attached to your gridiron heroes without suffering great disappointment when they left to play for another team.
David Maraniss provides a complete history of Lombardi that helps us to understand who he was, and what made him one of the most driven coaches ever. Lombardi’s grew up in Brookly and his father owned a butcher shop. Lombardi was an undersized guard at Fordham but became known as part of the “Seven Blocks of Granite” an offense line that became known for their prowess.
Lombardi’s contemporary colleagues would tell you he considered himself a teacher first and foremost. It wasn’t just x’s and o’s on a chalk board, it was 11 players moving with precision on a football field. Very much as one machine with 11 gears all striving for the same goal. Lombardi was about perseverance, as his own career would suggest. Lombardi went to the little town of Green Bay with their horrendous losing record in order to get his chance at a head coaching job.
He was about preparation and repetition. His early relationship with the Jesuit priests taught him that discipline was key but the idea that people with God given talent had a moral responsibility to sacrifice in order to achieve greatness, was all Lombardi. Lombardi felt that Champions created their own luck.
Much has been written about what Lombardi meant when he said, “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Many attempt to “soften’ that with the qualifier, he meant that the effort to win is everything. We won’t ever really know, but his players made it clear. Lombardi was happier after a loss where his team showed great effort than he was when they won sloppily.
I believe he meant you play to win; you give it 100% effort and that’s all you need to do to be a champion. I was 10 years old when Vince Lombardi died. He was diagnosed with aggressive cancer in mid-July of 1970 and on September 3rd he was gone… If you feel like you never got a chance to really know Vince Lombardi, David Maraniss offers that chance.
