Vincent Lombardi

A wise man once said, "If you can accept losing, you can't win." This man was Hall of Fame NFL coach Vince Lombardi. He led with power and intimidation but the result of his work was incredible.

Vincent Thomas Lombardi was born on June 11, 1913 to an Italian family in Brooklyn, USA. His father, Enrico "Harry" Lombardi was born in Italy and later immigrated to the United States and worked in Brooklyn as a butcher. His mother, Matida Izzo was born in Brooklyn. Vince was the oldest of five children. He went to Fordham University on a football scholarship where he played guard for the team. After university he attended law school in the evenings while he worked for a finance company to make a living.

Vince had a change in heart in his career path, and joined the Fordham University coaching staff, the team he had once played for. After two years of coaching at his alma mater he decided to continue his coaching at West Point. Vince picked up his coaching philosophy, which would later make him one of the NFL's greatest coaches, from Earl "Red" Blaik who was the Head Coach at West Point. In 1954 the New York Giants hired, the 41 year old, Lombardi to be the assistant coach to Jim Lee Howell. The previous year the Giants had posted a measly 3-9 season and had just fired their head coach Steve Owen. The following year, under Howell and Lombardi, the team turned their luck around posting a 7-5 record. In 1956 after only two seasons as an assistant coach, the Giants won the NFL championship with a score of 47-7 over the Chicago Bears. In 1959 the Green Bay Packers signed Lombardi to a five-year contract after posting a horrible 1-10-1 season. After taking in a team of young and disobedient players he was able to turn the squad around posting a 7-5 record. He did this while demanding respect and discipline. In only his second season with the Packers he took the team to the NFL Championships, unfortunately losing to the Philadelphia Eagles 17-13. In 1961 Lombardi took the Packers back to the NFL championship, this time beating his ex-team, the New York Giants. Vince left the Green Bay after the 1968 season in which his team won Super Bowl over the Oakland Raiders 33-14. Lombardi holds the record for the highest playoff win percentage for coaches in the NFL with 90%.

Lombardi was diagnosed with a severe form of colon cancer in June 1970 and died on September 3, 1970 at the young age of 57. He was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1971, a year after his death. During his time with the Green Bay Packers he coached 10 Hall of Famers. He never had a losing season posting a career coaching record of 96-34-6. The NFL honored Vince by naming the Super Bowl trophy after him, and later in 2010 Eric Simonson wrote a Broadway Play entitled "Lombardi" that premiered this fall.

Lombardi is a winner, a legend, and a hero. He coached with an iron fist and demanded respect. He broke the game down to two simple principles, blocking and tackling. He took in underachieving players and created winners out of them. Stories of the great Lombardi's decisions are both fiction and non-fiction, yet the one consistent trend is that if he didn't like how you played or what you did you didn't play for him. One famous story states: "Upon reporting for contract negotiations with Coach and General Manager Vince Lombardi, prior to the 1964 season, Hall of Fame centre Jim Ringo, brought along an agent. Lombardi excused himself from the meeting and upon returning he told Ringo he was talking with the wrong team. He needed to speak to the Philadelphia Eagles because he'd just been traded." He was an icon to people everywhere and President Richard Nixon considered him as a running mate. Winning and respect were the only two things that mattered to him and those qualities are what make him a hero and an icon.