Vince Lombardi
Every year, the National Football League’s Super Bowl champions receive the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The trophy honors Lombardi’s role as the greatest coach of his era in making professional football one of America’s most popular spectator sports.
Vince Lombardi was born in Brooklyn on June 11, 1913. Planning to become a priest, he attended the Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception, where he showed early leadership skills by getting elected class president four years in a row.
While Lombardi remained a devout Catholic all his life, football became almost a second religion for him.
He had to play sandlot football after hours because his school had no team. Its disapproval of football may have contributed to his decision against the priesthood. Moving to St. Francis Preparatory School, he became an AllCity fullback. Having built his strength carrying animal carcasses for the family meat business, he earned a football scholarship to Fordham University and became one of its “Seven Blocks of Granite,” one of the best offensive lines in the country.
When Lombardi graduated in 1937, few career opportunities existed for football players. Professional football was widely seen as a waste of players’ college education. Many college players ended up coaching football instead. After dropping out of law school, Lombardi accepted an old Fordham teammate’s invitation to become his assistant coach at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey.
Lombardi became St. Cecilia’s head coach in 1942 and built one of the nation’s top high school teams. His next step was college coaching, with stints as an assistant at Fordham, and the U.S. Military Academy. Lombardi hoped to become a head coach again but worried that prejudice against Italian-Americans was denying him opportunities.
Pro football gave Lombardi his big break. Still only an assistant, Lombardi helped the New York Giants win the NFL championship in 1956. Even though the Giants lost the 1958 championship game to the Baltimore Colts, everyone benefitted when the dramatic overtime contest proved pro football’s popularity on television. In 1959, Lombardi became one of pro football’s biggest stars as head coach of the Green Bay Packers.
Lombardi’s dedication to discipline turned the Packers around after their onewin 1958 season. After finishing 7-5 in 1959, Green Bay made the championship game in 1960 and won the title the next two seasons. After a setback when quarterback Paul Hornung was suspended for gambling in 1963, Lombardi led the Packers to three more titles starting in 1965.
One challenge awaited Lombardi. Created in 1960, the American Football League competed with the NFL for top college players and TV ratings. Many believed the AFL’s innovative style superior to an old-fashioned NFL. The test came in January 1967, when Lombardi’s Packers faced the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs in the first Super Bowl. Green Bay’s 35-10 victory reaffirmed NFL supremacy, and another win a year later confirmed Lombardi as the game’s greatest coach.
Despite announcing his retirement from coaching in 1968, Lombardi soon started over with another losing franchise. In 1969, he coached the Washington Redskins to their first winning record in 14 years before colon cancer ended his career. After his death on Sept. 3, 1970, the NFL and AFL, now merged, renamed the Super Bowl trophy in his memory, ensuring that Vince Lombardi’s name would always stand for victory.
To learn more about Vince Lombardi and football go online to the Professional Football Hall of Fame at http://www. profootballhof.com/players/vincelombardi/.