Icons: Vince

Sitting in his den late at night. Alone with a letter open on his desk. He couldn't believe they did not want him. He had given the program everything he had. Every day. Only to be passed over for the top job.  His eyes looked at a phone number scribbled on a piece of note paper under the engraved New York Giants logo. Why not return the call?

That telephone call, and the crushing occupational defeat which preceded it, led to what David Maraniss perfectly described as "his last chance to be something more than a face in the crowd".  Not at all what he had dreamed of . What he had worked so hard for. But it was better than nothing. At least he would be in charge. Coaching. In some little town on the edge of the pro football universe. A snowy place called Green Bay.

When he got there he said that his plan for the long-stumbling team was perfection.  Since he and his team were all humans, however, perfection was not possible.  So, by striving endlessly for impossible perfection, they would achieve the next best thing. Excellence. He would not accept anything less.  He never did.

Then, as now, the smallest franchise town in the National Football League, Green Bay, Wisconsin was to be the beneficiary of five NFL championship trophies and two Super Bowl trophies while he was there.  It would not have happened without him. There probably would not even be a team there now if it weren't for him. He gave all of the little boys like me, up in the woods and the snow banks, a lot of things.  Something to cheer for.  The belief that, against towering odds, desire, ferocity, hard work and love could actually win the day.  The belief that, in the title words of Maraniss' biography, "pride still mattered".  Faded notions now.  Like being early, not just on time. At Lambeau Field, they still have the non-game clock set ten minutes fast.  His sort of  time, always early for everything.

Vince Lombardi would be 100 today.  An awful lot of us still think of him an awful lot. Because pride still matters.