Vince Lombardi

In the Green Bay of the 1960s, Vince Lombardi became the face of football at its most demanding and exacting. Born Vincent Thomas Lombardi on June 11, 1913, in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, he rose from a close Italian American family to become one of the most admired coaches and leaders in American sports. His grandparents had emigrated from Southern Italy, and both the Lombardi and Izzo families settled in Sheepshead Bay, where church, family meals, work, and neighborhood life shaped his early world.

Lombardi grew up in a middle-class, ethnically diverse neighborhood, but outside it he and other children of Italian immigrants faced harsh discrimination. Sundays in the Lombardi home meant mandatory Mass at St. Mark Catholic Church, where Vince served as an altar boy, followed by long dinners with extended family, friends, and local clergy. As a child he helped in his father Harry’s meat-cutting business in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, work he came to hate. At 12, he began playing in an organized football league in Sheepshead Bay, a rougher classroom that would pull him away from the idea of becoming a priest.

After Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Brooklyn, Lombardi attended St. Francis Preparatory, then earned a football scholarship to Fordham University in the Bronx in 1933. At Fordham he played for the Rams under Jim Crowley and became known as an aggressive, spirited player despite being undersized for the line. In 1936, his senior year, he was the right guard in the “Seven Blocks of Granite,” the nickname given to Fordham’s offensive front. A late-season loss to NYU ended Fordham’s hopes of playing in the Rose Bowl and left Lombardi with a lesson he carried forward: never underestimate your opponent.

His path after graduation was not smooth. Lombardi left Fordham in 1937, during the Great Depression, when opportunities were scarce. He tried semi-professional football with the Wilmington Clippers and worked as a debt collector, but neither took hold. He enrolled in Fordham Law School in 1938 with his father’s support, then dropped out after one semester. In 1939, he found his direction at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey, where he became an assistant coach and taught Latin, chemistry, and physics for less than $1,000 a year. He married Marie Planitz the following year and later became St. Cecilia’s head coach.

From there, Lombardi’s coaching career climbed through Fordham University, the United States Military Academy, and the New York Giants before he became head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers from 1959 to 1967. In Green Bay, he led the Packers to three straight and five total NFL Championships in seven years, including victories in the first two Super Bowls after the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons. He later coached the Washington Redskins from 1969 until his death from cancer during the 1970 preseason. Lombardi never had a losing season as an NFL head coach, and the Super Bowl trophy was named in his honor.

What keeps Lombardi’s words alive is not just the winning, though there was plenty of it. It is the plain force of what he asked from people: correction, effort, habits, and character. His line, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up,” sounds less like a slogan than a summary of the life behind it. From Brooklyn to Fordham to Green Bay, Lombardi spoke in the language of work, and that is why his voice still fits locker rooms, offices, and hard days everywhere.