Since the Packers had the weekend off, it gave me some time to highlight their most famous coach and the winner of the first two Super Bowls. However, I want to bring up what he changed about the NFL off the field, namely desegregating the Packers and other social issues.
Vince grew up in the Bronx back when Italians were in the same position as Latin American immigrants are today.
After high school he attended seminary to join the priesthood but two years later he changed tracks, enrolled at Fordham. There he was a star player with the “Seven Blocks of Granite” (a very tough offensive line) and graduated magna cum laude in 1937; name a college football player who did the same in the last 60 years.
He was done with football as he took a full-time job with a finance company while attending Fordham law school at night.
Yet the game called him back because he quit it all to take a less lucrative job teaching and being the assistant coach at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, NJ. The position gave him a deferment from serving in WWII as well (back then, the US Army drafted people as old as 45). After eight years of success at the high-school level, Vince got the chance to join the staff at his alma mater Fordham. This only lasted two years since he was lured away by West Point to study under the Red Blaik; hard to believe West Point used to be a contender. I remember reading an article in Smithsonian from a reader who wrote them a letter about how he got a personal visit from Vince to join their team. Vince was pretty honest too, it wasn’t going to be easy. The writer said he went elsewhere while saving the personal letter he received from Vince.
Lombardi then joined the NFL as an assistant coach with the NY Giants in the Fifties. His drive, work ethic and strategies helped them have winning seasons.
As 1959 rolled around, Lombardi was the new hot coach everybody wanted. We all know what happened next, he chose the Green Bay Packers. Not exactly a “smart” move given the NFL’s growth in larger media markets, television covering the games and the AFL appearing around 1960 with cities like Houston, LA, New York and Boston in their rosters.
Lombardi’s coaching, exhausting training camps and demand for dedication made Green Bay a winning franchise through the decade. He also recruited more Black players; the Packers only had one Black player when he got there, by 1967, there were 13…it was a start. He may not have been a great figure in the Civil Rights movement, but he made it clear throughout Green Bay and the League, the Packers wouldn’t patronize any business that didn’t admit any of his players for any reason; aka, places which made Blacks come through the kitchen if they were allowed at all. He extended his “no intolerance” policy toward homosexuals, something really way ahead of his time; yet biographers think it was due to his younger, gay brother plus a couple people in Green Bay’s front office. Regardless, good move on his part and this was when head coaches had the final say unlike today’s NFL star-player-driven policies.
With two Super Bowls under his belt, he took some time off and then signed on with Washington where he made them winners for the first time in 10 years. Sadly it didn’t last, he was diagnosed with some pretty aggressive cancer and died in a couple months at 57.
Vince lives on for his accomplishments: changing the game, fighting for equality, stuff named after him in Green Bay and his Brooklyn neighborhood and having his name on the Super Bowl trophy. He is admired by many, even grudgingly by Chicago and Minnesota’s fan base.