Vince Lombardi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Career stats
Win-Loss Record 96-34-6
Winning % .738
Games 136
Coaching stats at pro-football-reference.com
Career highlights and awards
AP NFL Coach of the Year (1959)
2 Super Bowl victories (I, II)
5 NFL Championship victories (1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967)
96-34-6 (regular season record)
9-1 (playoff record)
105-35-6 (overall record)

Pro Football Hall of Fame
Vincent Thomas Lombardi (June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) was an American football coach. He was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers of the NFL from 1959-67, winning five league championships during his 9 years. Following a one-year retirement from coaching in 1968, he returned as head coach of the Washington Redskins for the 1969 season. Lombardi’s record in the post-season was 9-1, the loss coming in the first of those games, the 1960 NFL Championship Game.

Early years
Lombardi was born in Brooklyn to Neapolitan-born father Henry Lombardi, a butcher, and Brooklyn-born Matilda Izzo, the daughter of a barber, whose parents had immigrated as teenagers from just east of Salerno in southern Italy. Henry Lombardi also had a brother whose name was Michael Lombardi, who was also a butcher in Brooklyn. Michael Lombardi also had a son whose name was Vincent Michael Lombardi named after his cousin. Vincent Michael Lombardi had a son named Anthony Vincent Lombardi, who is currently in the U.S. military stationed at FT. Lewis WA. Vince Lombardi was raised in the Sheepshead Bay area of southern Brooklyn and attended its public schools through the eighth grade.

In 1928, at the age of 15, he entered Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception, a six-year secondary program to become a Catholic priest. After two years, Lombardi decided not to pursue this path and transferred to the St. Francis Prep, where he was a standout on the football team, played baseball and was a Charter Member of Omega Gamma Delta Fraternity. Lombardi remained a devout Catholic throughout his life.

Days at Fordham University

The Lombardi Memorial Center at Fordham UniversityIn 1933, Lombardi accepted a football scholarship to Fordham University in The Bronx to play for new head coach Sleepy Jim Crowley, one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame in the 1920s. Lombardi was an undersized guard (5′8″ 185 lb.) on Fordham’s imposing front line, which became known as the Seven Blocks of Granite. It held Fordham’s opponents scoreless several times during a string of twenty-five consecutive victories. Frank Leahy, future head coach at Notre Dame, was Lombardi’s position coach. In the classroom, Lombardi was a great student and ended up graduating cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in business in 1937.

High school coaching career
In 1939, after two years at a finance company, semi-professional football (with the Brooklyn Eagles, bulking up to 205 lb., and Wilmington Clippers), and an unfulfilled semester of Fordham’s law school at night, Lombardi accepted an assistant coaching job at St. Cecilia, a Catholic high school in Englewood, New Jersey. He was hired by its new head coach, his former Fordham teammate, quarterback “Handy” Andy Palau. Palau had also struggled for two years, failing to make it in baseball as a catcher in the Yankee farm system. Palau had just taken over the head coaching position from another Fordham teammate, Nat Pierce (left guard), who had accepted an assistant coach’s job back at Fordham. In addition to coaching, Lombardi, age 26, also taught Latin, chemistry, and physics for an annual salary of under $1800 at the high school. Lombardi and Palau shared a boarding house room across the street from the school for $1.50 each per week.

In 1940, Lombardi married Marie Planitz, a cousin of another Fordham teammate, Jim Lawlor. Andy Palau left for Fordham in 1942 and Lombardi became the head coach at St. Cecilia. Lombardi stayed a total of eight years (five as head coach), leaving for Fordham in 1947 to coach the freshman teams in football and basketball. The following year he served as an assistant coach for Fordham’s varsity football team.

West Point
Following the 1948 football season, Lombardi accepted another assistant’s job, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a position that would greatly influence his future coaching style. Lombardi served as offensive line coach under legendary head coach Colonel Red Blaik. Blaik’s emphasis on execution would become a hallmark of Lombardi’s NFL teams. Lombardi coached at West Point for five seasons, with varying results. The 1949, 1950, and 1953 seasons were successful, but the 1951 and 1952 seasons were not, due to the aftermath of a cadet cribbing scandal in the spring of 1951, which severely depleted the talent on the football team. Following these five seasons at Army, Lombardi accepted an assistant coaching position with the NFL’s New York Giants.

To the NFL
Lombardi, age 41, began his career as a professional football coach in 1954. He accepted a job that would later become known as the offensive coordinator position for the NFL’s New York Giants, under new head coach Jim Lee Howell. The Giants had finished the previous season, under 23-year coach Steve Owen, with a 3-9 record. By the third season, Lombardi, along with the defensive coordinator, a cornerback turned coach named Tom Landry, turned the squad into a championship team, defeating the Chicago Bears for the league title in 1956. Lombardi relied on the talents of Frank Gifford, whom Lombardi made a two-way player, offensive halfback and his original professional position of defensive halfback.

Head coaching career

Green Bay Packers
In January 1959, at age 45, Vince Lombardi accepted the position of Head Coach and General Manager of the Green Bay Packers. Green Bay had lost all but two of its 12 games (a win & a tie) that they played in the 1958 season. Lombardi created punishing training regimens and expected absolute dedication and effort from his players. The 1959 Packers were an immediate improvement, finishing at 7-5.

In his second year, Lombardi led the Packers to the 1960 NFL championship game against the Philadelphia Eagles, but suffered his only post-season loss when Packer fullback Jim Taylor was stopped nine yards from the end zone by the Eagles Chuck Bednarik as time ran out. According to When Pride Still Mattered, after the loss to the Eagles Lombardi stated that losing a championship game was unacceptable and it would not happen again under his command. (He would win his next nine post-season games.)

Immediately following that game, Lombardi had an opportunity to become head coach of the New York Giants, once his dream job. After considerable deliberation he declined, and the Giants hired Allie Sherman instead. The Packers would defeat the Giants for the NFL title in 1961 (37-0) and 1962 (16-7 at Yankee Stadium), marking the first two of their five titles in Lombardi’s nine years. His only other post-season loss occurred to the St. Louis Cardinals in the Playoff Bowl (3rd place game) after the 1964 season (officially classified as an exhibition game). Lombardi had earlier expressed an interest in the head coaching job at Notre Dame and on two separate occasions wrote letters to the university to that effect. He never received a reply.

Lombardi went on to accomplish a 105-35-6 record as head coach (.750, discarding ties as was the NFL policy); and he never suffered a losing season. He led the Packers to a still-unmatched three consecutive NFL championships in 1965, 1966, and 1967; winning the first two Super Bowls. Lombardi’s popularity was so great that Richard Nixon supposedly considered him as a running mate for the 1968 election, only to be reminded by an advisor that Lombardi was a Kennedy Democrat who had campaigned on behalf of Wisconsin U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (although Lombardi’s wife, father and brother were Republicans).

The Lombardi Sweep
As coach of the Packers, Lombardi converted Notre Dame quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung to a full-time halfback. Lombardi designed a play for Hornung based on an old single wing concept–the right offensive linemen swept to the outside and blocked downfield (pulling guards). This was a play that he had originally developed for Gifford that would become known as the “Lombardi sweep” or “Packer power sweep.”

The Ice Bowl
Main article: NFL Championship Game, 1967
One of the most famous games in the history of football was the NFL championship game of 1967, in which his team hosted the Dallas Cowboys in Green Bay on the last day of the year. This became known as the Ice Bowl because of the -13 game time temperature. With sixteen seconds left in the game and down by three points, the Packers called their final time-out. It was third and goal on the Dallas one yard line. The previous two plays (44-Dive) to halfback Donny Anderson had gone for no gain.

Following the time out, quarterback Bart Starr ran an unplanned sneak, with center Ken Bowman and right guard Jerry Kramer taking out Dallas defensive left tackle Jethro Pugh; Starr scored the touchdown and won the game. The play (31-Wedge) actually called for Starr to hand off to Chuck Mercein, a little known fullback from Yale (brought in at midseason after being cut by the New York Giants) who had played a major part in propelling the Packers down the field on the final drive. This play call (suggested by Starr) was a shrewd call by Lombardi, because with no timeouts, Dallas was expecting a pass. An incomplete pass would have stopped the clock and allowed a field goal attempt, but if Mercein were stopped at the goal line, Starr could not have spiked the ball as it then would have been fourth down. Starr, feeling the field was too icy and the footing too precarious, decided to keep the ball and dive in himself, surprising even his own teammates. Mercein said he raised his hands into the air as he plowed into the pile (expecting the handoff), not to signal “touchdown,” but to show the officials that he was not illegally assisting Starr into the end zone. Lombardi, explaining why he had not chosen to kick a game-tying field goal, said of that play, “We gambled and we won.” Two weeks later, the Packers would handily defeat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II, Lombardi’s finale as the Green Bay head coach.

Washington Redskins
Lombardi stepped down as head coach of the Packers following the 1967 NFL season, staying on as the team’s general manager for 1968. He handed off the head coaching position to Phil Bengtson, a longtime assistant, but the Packers finished at 6-7-1 and out of the four team NFL playoffs. A restless Lombardi returned to coaching in 1969 with the Washington Redskins, where he broke a string of 14 losing seasons. The ‘Skins would finish with a record of 7-5-2, significant for a number of reasons. Lombardi discovered that rookie running back Larry Brown was deaf in one ear, something that had escaped his parents, schoolteachers, and previous coaches. Lombardi had observed Brown’s habit of tilting his head in one direction when listening to signals being called, and walked behind him during drills and said “Larry”. When Brown did not answer, the coach asked him to take a hearing exam. Brown was fitted with a hearing aid, and with this correction he would enjoy a successful NFL career.

Lombardi was the first coach to get soft-bellied quarterback Sonny Jurgensen, one of the league’s premier forward passers, to get into the best condition he could. He coaxed former All-Pro linebacker Sam Huff out of retirement. He even changed the team’s uniform design to reflect that of the Packers, with gold and white trim along the jersey biceps, and later a gold helmet with an “R” inside a circle, similar to the famous Green Bay “G” monogram. The foundation Lombardi laid was the groundwork for Washington’s early 1970s success under former L.A. Rams Coach George Allen. Lombardi had brought a winning attitude to the Nation’s Capital, in the same year that the nearby University of Maryland had hired Lefty Driesell to coach basketball and the hapless Washington Senators named Ted Williams as manager and led the club to its only winning record in Washington (86-76). It marked a renaissance in sports interest in America’s most transient of cities.

Illness and death
During the summer, the hearty Lombardi suddenly began to feel less than his vigorous self. He was diagnosed with colon cancer in late June 1970, weeks before training camp for his second season in Washington. Although a long-time sufferer of digestive tract problems, Lombardi had avoided going to the doctor for colonoscopies, and this delay may have hastened his illness and eventual death. He was treated at the Georgetown University Hospital, but by the time it was discovered, the cancer had rapidly spread from his colon to his liver, peritoneum, and lymph nodes. The attending oncologist described it as the most virulent case he had ever witnessed (Maraniss, “When Pride Still Mattered”). He died ten weeks later on September 3, 1970 at the age of 57.

Many made long journeys to attend his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, and hardened football veterans wept openly at the service, held on September 7th. Honorary pallbearers included Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, Willie Davis, Tony Canadeo, Wellington Mara, Dick Bourguignon, and Edward Bennett Williams. President Nixon went so far as to send a telegram of condolence signed “The People.”

Just a week after his death, the NFL’s Super Bowl trophy was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy in his honor, first awarded after Super Bowl V. Lombardi was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame at its next induction ceremony in 1971.

Vince Lombardi is buried next to his wife and his parents, in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Middletown Township, New Jersey.

Bear Bryant
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Paul William “Bear” Bryant
Paul Bryant at Denny Stadium
Title Head Coach
Sport Football
Born September 11, 1913
Place of birth Moro Bottom, Arkansas
Died January 26, 1983 (aged 69)
Place of death Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Career highlights
Overall 323–85–17
Coaching stats
College Football DataWarehouse
Championships
1961/1964/1965/1973/1978/1979 National Championship
1964–65/1971–75/1977–79 Southeastern Conference Championship
1961/1966/1981 Southeastern Conference Co–Championship
Playing career
1932–1936 Alabama
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1945
1946–1953
1954–1957
1958–1982 Maryland
Kentucky
Texas A&M
Alabama
College Football Hall of Fame, 1986

(Bio)
Paul William “Bear” Bryant (September 11, 1913 – January 26, 1983) was an American college football coach. He was best known as the longtime head coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his twenty-five year tenure as Alabama’s head coach he amassed six national championships and thirteen conference championships. Upon his retirement in 1982 he held the record for most wins as head coach in collegiate football history. At the University of Alabama, the Paul W. Bryant Museum, Paul W. Bryant Drive and Bryant-Denny Stadium are all named in his honor. He was also known for his trademark houndstooth hat, deep voice, casually leaning up against the goal post during pre-game warmups, and frequently holding his rolled-up game plan while on the sidelines.

Before arriving at Alabama, Bryant was head football coach at University of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Texas A&M University.

Early life
Paul Bryant was the 11th of 12 children who were born to William Monroe and Ida Kilgore Bryant in Moro Bottom, Arkansas. His nickname stemmed from his having agreed to wrestle a captive bear during a theater promotion when he was 13-years-old.

He attended Fordyce High School in Fordyce, Arkansas, where 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) tall Bryant began playing on the school’s football team as an eighth grader. During his senior season, the team, with Bryant playing offensive line and defensive end, won the 1930 Arkansas state football championship.

Bryant accepted a scholarship to play for the University of Alabama in 1931. Since he elected to leave high school before completing his diploma, Bryant had to enroll in a Tuscaloosa high school to finish his education during the fall semester while he practiced with the college team. Bryant played end for the Crimson Tide and was a participant on the school’s 1934 National Championship team. Bryant was the self-described “other end” during his playing years with the team, playing opposite the big star, Don Hutson, who later became an NFL Hall-of-Famer. Bryant was such a tough player that he played with a partially-broken leg in a game against Tennessee. Bryant pledged the Sigma Nu social fraternity, and as a senior, he married Mary Harmon. The two had a daughter nine months later.

Bryant was selected in the fourth round by the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1936 NFL Draft, but never played professionally.

Coaching career

Assistant and North Carolina Pre-Flight
After graduating in 1936, Bryant took a coaching job at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, but he left that position when offered an assistant coaching position under Frank Thomas at The University of Alabama. Over the next four years, the team compiled a 29–5–3 record. In 1940 he left Alabama to become an assistant at Vanderbilt University under Henry Russell Sanders. After the 1941 season, Bryant was offered the head coaching job at the University of Arkansas. However, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Bryant joined the United States Navy. He served off North Africa, seeing no combat action. However his ship, the civilian merchantman SS Uruguay was rammed by another ship and ordered to be abandoned. Bryant disobeyed the order, saving the lives of his men. 200 others died. He was later granted an honorable discharge to train recruits and coach the North Carolina Navy Pre-Flight football team. One of the players he coached for the Navy was the future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham. While in the Navy, Bryant attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

University of Maryland
In 1945 Bryant accepted the job as head coach at the University of Maryland. In his only season with the Maryland Terrapins (Terps), Bryant led the team to a 6–2–1 record. However, there was a struggle for control of the football program between Bryant and Harry Clifton “Curley” Byrd. Byrd was a former Terrapin coach (1912-1934) and, when Bryant was coach, he was the University President. In the most widely publicized example of the power struggle between the two strong-willed men, Bryant suspended a player for violating team rules only to discover that Byrd had the player reinstated while Bryant was away on vacation. Bryant left Maryland to take over the head coaching position at the University of Kentucky.

University of Kentucky
Bryant coached at the University of Kentucky for eight seasons. Under Bryant, Kentucky made its first bowl appearance (1947) and won its first Southeastern Conference title (1950). The 1950 Kentucky team concluded its season with a victory over Bud Wilkinson’s #1 ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. The team finished the season ranked #1 according to the Sagarin Rankings. The living players from the 1950 team were honored during halftime of a game during the 2005 season after the NCAA retroactively recognized the team as co-national champions for that season. Bryant also led Kentucky to appearances in the Great Lakes Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl. Kentucky’s final AP poll rankings under Bryant included #11 in 1949, #7 in 1950, #15 in 1951, #20 in 1952 and #16 in 1953. The 1950 season was Kentucky’s highest rank until it finished #6 in the final 1977 AP poll.

Bryant departed Kentucky after he and basketball coach Adolph Rupp had both completed successful seasons in their respective sports. Legend has it that, as a reward, Rupp was given a Cadillac automobile: Bryant was given a cigarette lighter. Bryant left Kentucky, furious that the University had not reprimanded Rupp for his players’ roles in the college basketball point shaving scandals of the early ’50s. Kentucky was suspended from playing college basketball in 1953, and Rupp received no suspension. This led Bryant to conclude that basketball was #1 on the Kentucky campus and Bryant could not abide by that. Rumors also stating that Bryant left Kentucky after his ideas of integrating the team were rebuffed.

Texas A&M University
In 1954 Bryant accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M University. He also served as athletic director while at A&M.[2]

The Aggies suffered through a grueling 1-9 initial season which began with the infamous training camp in Junction, Texas. The “survivors” were given the name “Junction Boys.” Two years later, Bryant led the team to the Southwest Conference championship with a 34–21 victory over the University of Texas at Austin. The following year, 1957, Bryant’s star back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy (the only Bryant player to ever earn that award), and the Aggies were in title contention until they lost to the #20 Rice Owls in Houston, amid rumors that Alabama would be going after Bryant.

Again, as at Kentucky, Bryant attempted to integrate the Texas A&M squad. “We’ll be the last football team in the Southwest Conference to integrate,” he was told by a Texas A&M official. “Well,” Bryant replied, “then that’s where we’re going to finish in football.”

At the close of the 1957 season, having compiled an overall 25–14–2 record at Texas A&M, Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa to take the head coaching position, as well as the athletic director job at Alabama.

University of Alabama

Memorial of Bryant outside of Legion FieldBryant took over the Alabama football team in 1958. When asked why he came to Alabama, he replied “Momma called. And when Momma calls, you just have to come runnin’.” After winning a combined four games the last three years, the Tide went 5–4–1 in Bryant’s first season. The next year, in 1959, Alabama beat Auburn and appeared in a bowl game, the first time either had happened in the last six years. In 1961, under his leadership with quarterback Pat Trammell, football greats Lee Roy Jordan, and Billy Neighbors, Alabama went 11–0 and defeated Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.

The next three years (1962–1964) featured Joe Namath at quarterback and were among Bryant’s finest. The 1962 season ended with a victory in the Orange Bowl over Bud Wilkinson’s University of Oklahoma Sooners. The following year ended with a victory in the 1963 Sugar Bowl. In 1964, the Tide won another national championship but lost to the University of Texas in the Orange Bowl in the first nationally televised college game in color. The Crimson Tide would repeat as champions in 1965 after defeating Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. Coming off of back-to-back national championship seasons, Bryant’s Alabama team went undefeated in 1966 and defeated a strong Nebraska team 34–7 in the Sugar Bowl. However, Alabama finished third in the nation behind co-national champions Michigan State and Notre Dame, who had previously played to a 10–10 tie in a late regular season game.

The 1967 team was billed as another national championship contender with star quarterback Kenny Stabler returning, but the team stumbled out of the gate and tied Florida State 37–37 at Legion Field. The season never took off from there, with the Bryant-led Alabama team finishing 8–2–1, losing in the Cotton Bowl to Texas A&M, coached by former Bryant player and assistant coach Gene Stallings. In 1968, Bryant again could not match his previous successes, as the team went 8–3, losing to the University of Missouri 35–10 in the Gator Bowl. The 1969 and 1970 teams finished 6–5 and 6–5–1 respectively.

For years, Bryant defended charges of racism by saying the social climate didn’t allow him to go after black players. He finally was able to convince the administration to allow him to do it after scheduling the Tide’s 1970 season opener against a strong University of Southern California team led by African-American fullback Sam Cunningham. Cunningham rushed for 150 yards and three touchdowns in a 42–21 victory against the overmatched Tide. After that season, Bryant was able to recruit Wilbur Jackson as Alabama’s first African-American scholarship player, and junior-college transfer John Mitchell became the first black man to play for Alabama. By 1973, one-third of the team’s starters were African-American.

In 1971, Bryant installed the wishbone offense. The change helped make the remainder of the decade a successful one for the Crimson Tide. That season Alabama went undefeated and earned a #2 ranking, but lost to #1 Nebraska, 38–6 in the Orange Bowl. The team would go on to split national championships in 1973 (which led the UPI to stop giving national championships until after all the games for the season had been played–including bowl games), 1978 (despite losing a regular season matchup against co-national champion USC) and win it outright in 1979.

Bryant coached at Alabama for 25 years, winning six national titles (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and thirteen SEC championships. Bryant’s win over in-state rival Auburn University, coached by former Bryant assistant Pat Dye in November 1981 was Bryant’s 315th as a head coach, which was the most of any head coach at that time.

Retirement and death
Bryant announced his retirement as head football coach at Alabama effective with the end of the 1982 season. His last game was a 21–15 victory in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee over the University of Illinois. When asked in a post-game interview what he intended to do while retired, Bryant sarcastically replied that he would “probably croak in a week.”

On January 26, 1983, Bryant, complaining of chest pains, checked into Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa. Only minutes later, he died after suffering a massive heart attack. His death came 28 days after his last game as a coach, and only one day after passing a routine medical checkup. On his hand at the time of his death was the only piece of jewelry he ever wore, a gold ring inscribed “The Junction Boys”. He is interred at Birmingham’s Elmwood Cemetery.