Vinnie, Vidi, Vici

[Tarlam!]

I was on a flight to Naples this last Thursday and I was offered something to read. I chose Time Magazine, which I always do.

There was a flashback article on Vince Lombardi and a reference to further info on Timearchive.com. Back in my home office, I looked up the article for my fellow posters, cause I loved the text I read.

Here is the bit I was loved:


Starting in 1948. the small-town Packers went eleven years without a winning season. In 1958. they won only one game Tout of twelve). Things got so bad that Green Bay youngsters tore up their autograph books and Packer coaches wisely left their telephones off the hook. "A small town." says Coach Harland Svare of the Rams, "is the best place in the world to be if you're on a winning team—and the worst if you're losing." Recalls one Packer veteran: "Green Bay was like Siberia. Other coaches used to threaten to send their players here."

The Man from Brooklyn. In desperation the Packers turned to Vince Lombardi. a bristling, brooding bear of a man who was supposed to know football but had never held a major head coaching job before. He seemed hardly the type to coach in a bumptious, boisterous north woods town. He was a city man. an Easterner born and bred in Brooklyn and fiercely proud of it. Until he was 20, Vincent Thomas Lombardi had never even been west of the Hudson.

The son of an immigrant Italian butcher, Lombardi started out studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood. "But the Greek got him," says his father, and then there was football. He was an all-star fullback at Brooklyn's St. Francis Prep, went to Fordham University, where he switched to guard and quickly earned a reputation as a short-fused scrapper whose violent charge made him seem twice as big. "Vince never got above 182," recalls a Fordham teammate. "But when he hit you, it felt like 250." One day a brawny assistant coach caught Vince napping with a blind-side block that knocked him hip pads over helmet. "Try that again." Lombardi snarled—and sent the coach sprawling. Frank Leahy picked himself up. "O.K., kid." he said, "you'll do."

In 1935 and 1936. Fordham lost only two games, and Vince Lombardi helped bulwark the best-remembered line in college football history. Wrote Columnist Dan Parker:

Hindy's well-known front wall Took a million troops to man it, Whereas Fordham has but seven In its famous Wall of Granite.

When Fordham played powerhouse Pittsburgh to a 0-0 standoff in 1936. Lombardi put on a tremendous one-man show: he helped stop Pitt's deepest drive with a key tackle at the Fordham four, and his crashing blocks punched holes in the massive Pittsburgh line. "We had a play on which I was supposed to trap the Pitt tackle." recalls Lombardi. "It worked fine, so our quarterback kept calling it.

But every time I trapped that guy, he jabbed me right in the teeth with his elbow." At game's end a surgeon took 30 stitches inside Lombardi's mouth.



The full article is about 5 pages and I didn't want to exceed the serve memory!

But for those interested here is the link: Vinnie, Vidi, Vici (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,940172-1,00.html)

[vince]

Thanks for that link, Tarlam. Since Vince is the ultimate coach, I had to read it. Here's another great piece from the article.


That first year. Lombardi's adrenaline-filled Packers won seven of twelve games —including, admits Hornung. "a fistful that we had no business winning." In 1960. they won the Western Conference championship with an 8-4 record, dropped a 17-13 squeaker to Philadelphia in the X.F.L. championship playoff. Last year the Packers went all the way—and the title game, praise be, was at Green Bay. Nothing like it has ever been seen, before or since. Wrote New York Herald Tribune Columnist Red Smith, after the Giants were demolished: ''The poisonous polish of the Packers was equaled only by the fortitude of the natives, who turtled down into their mackinaws and buffalo robes and parkas, and stayed on into the bitter dusk, yelping and bawling for blood."

and another...


But Lombardi's contract still has three years to run at Green Bay. And neither the adulation nor the covetous eyes of other clubs have changed his ways. He is still precisely punctual, expects the same of everybody else. Smart Packers keep their watches set ten minutes ahead of time—"Lombardi time.'' they call it. He still works 70 hours a week, still gets so wrapped up in his football thoughts that he sometimes misses his street on the drive home from the stadium and winds up on the highway to Milwaukee. "I don't think Vince was ever a child," says Marie Lombardi. "I think he was born conscientious.'' On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, while he is absorbed in the task of preparing the Packers for their next game, ''we don't talk," she says. On Thursday, when practice tapers off, "we say hello." On Friday "he is civil"; on Saturday "he is downright pleasant." And then on Sunday, says Marie, "Vince feels the game is in the boys' hands. He has done all he can. Sometimes you have to poke him to keep him awake in the car, driving to the game."

and finally...


"To be successful," he says fervently, "you must believe in what you do"—and Lombardi believes in his Packers. In the dressing room he tells his players: "The only thing that can beat you is yourself. Think about this: the Green Bay Packers are you! Remember it! The Green Bay Packers are you!" His voice grows silken, almost hypnotic. "Look, I've said it all before, but I'll say it again. If we are going to win the championship, we are going to win it ourselves. We can't count on anybody falling down for us. We've come a long way, and this is the end of the road. This is our year and our championship. Let's win it the way a champion should."

[Tarlam!]

For readers unphased, please think, this article was written in 1962....

[MJZiggy]

Awesome read, Tar.