“It’s no damn fun being hard….You berate somebody and you feel disgusted with yourself for doing it, for being in a job where you have to.”—Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, quoted in Michael O’Brien, Vince: A Personal Biography of Vince Lombardi (1987)
Who knows where the desire for perfection, the urge to push himself and others to their physical and psychological limits, came from?
One thing for sure: it came with a price for Vince Lombardi. The above quotation—one with not even close to the circulation of one misattributed to him, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”--is one indication of that price. The other was his death at age 57, on this date in 1970, by colon cancer. The disease, already in an aggressive stage when diagnosed two months before his death, was surely not helped by stress that ate away at him.
Like more than a few alumni of my alma mater, St. Cecilia of Englewood, N.J., I’m fascinated by this NFL legend who began his coaching career at my high school. Even if every single one of the stories about him is true (and I suspect that only 80% are), you still come away with a misleading portrait of the man. It’s like looking at the dark side of the moon and thinking you understand the whole thing.
Lombardi felt that part of his job involved motivating his players to achieve their best, and that this involved criticizing them until they could never forget they had messed up. Nearly all of the accounts I read, though, indicate that at some point, before the player was mentally broken, the coach would say or do something to build his confidence back up. He also knew who could bear up under his criticism and who would buckle.
At the same time, he was all too aware of what this managerial style did to himself. The element of self-disgust is impossible to miss in that quote.
Who knows where the desire for perfection, the urge to push himself and others to their physical and psychological limits, came from?
One thing for sure: it came with a price for Vince Lombardi. The above quotation—one with not even close to the circulation of one misattributed to him, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”--is one indication of that price. The other was his death at age 57, on this date in 1970, by colon cancer. The disease, already in an aggressive stage when diagnosed two months before his death, was surely not helped by stress that ate away at him.
Like more than a few alumni of my alma mater, St. Cecilia of Englewood, N.J., I’m fascinated by this NFL legend who began his coaching career at my high school. Even if every single one of the stories about him is true (and I suspect that only 80% are), you still come away with a misleading portrait of the man. It’s like looking at the dark side of the moon and thinking you understand the whole thing.
Lombardi felt that part of his job involved motivating his players to achieve their best, and that this involved criticizing them until they could never forget they had messed up. Nearly all of the accounts I read, though, indicate that at some point, before the player was mentally broken, the coach would say or do something to build his confidence back up. He also knew who could bear up under his criticism and who would buckle.
At the same time, he was all too aware of what this managerial style did to himself. The element of self-disgust is impossible to miss in that quote.
Moreover, he felt guilt over the price paid by his family for his devotion to his work. He took his coaching job at the time of his death, with the Washington Redskins, partly because he was bored with being simply a front-office executive with the Packers, but also because he realized that his wife was becomingly increasingly lonely in Green Bay.
Later this month, a play will premiere on Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theater, called Lombardi, starring Dan Lauria (who played Kevin Arnold’s father on The Wonder Years). I hope the show runs long enough for me to see it.
What encourages me about this biodrama is that it is based on a superb biography of the coach that belongs on every sports fan’s bookshelf: When Pride Still Mattered, by David Maraniss. In each succeeding page, Maraniss narrates an incident that either troubles Lombardi’s defenders or stuns his critics. In other words, the coach emerges as fully human—the kind of person who constantly exhorted his players to surmount their flaws, but all too aware of the difficulties he had in overcoming his own.
It’s this latter Lombardi that interests me, not the cartoonish gridiron martinet whose legacy has been distorted by succeeding coaches with nothing like his tragic self-understanding (something you can sense in the image accompanying this post, where the coach looks far more vulnerable than victorious).
Later this month, a play will premiere on Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theater, called Lombardi, starring Dan Lauria (who played Kevin Arnold’s father on The Wonder Years). I hope the show runs long enough for me to see it.
What encourages me about this biodrama is that it is based on a superb biography of the coach that belongs on every sports fan’s bookshelf: When Pride Still Mattered, by David Maraniss. In each succeeding page, Maraniss narrates an incident that either troubles Lombardi’s defenders or stuns his critics. In other words, the coach emerges as fully human—the kind of person who constantly exhorted his players to surmount their flaws, but all too aware of the difficulties he had in overcoming his own.
It’s this latter Lombardi that interests me, not the cartoonish gridiron martinet whose legacy has been distorted by succeeding coaches with nothing like his tragic self-understanding (something you can sense in the image accompanying this post, where the coach looks far more vulnerable than victorious).
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