To walk this tightrope, a leader had to find the precise balance between mental toughness and love, Lombardi said. The toughness came from Blaik’s notion of spartanism. The love was Lombardi’s concept of team. “The love I’m speaking of is loyalty, which is the greatest of loves. Teamwork, the love that one man has for another and that he respects the dignity of another. The love that I am speaking of is charity. I am not speaking of detraction. You show me a man who belittles another and I will show you a man who is not a leader; or one who is not charitable, who has no respect for the dignity of another, is not loyal, and I will show you a man who is not a leader. I am not advocating that love is the answer to everything. I am not speaking of a love which forces everyone to love everybody else, that you must love the white man because he is white or the black man because he is black or the poor because he is poor or your enemy because he is your enemy, but rather of a love that one man has for another human being…. Heart power is the strength of your company. Heart power is the strength of the Green Bay Packers. Heart power is the strength of America and hate power is the weakness of the world.”
The contradictions of Lombardi all came out in that long ode to love. He had belittled players time and again on the practice field. He had shown little charity or heart power for some who could not help him win, especially journalists covering the Packers. He sometimes incited hate power in players for the very purpose of spurring them on to victory. But if there was an obvious contradiction here, it was not necessarily duplicitous. Lombardi believed what he was saying, and most of the people closest to him, all of whom had suffered at various times—his players, his wife, his children, his assistants, his friends—believed him when he said it. He was “such a forceful personality,” said W. C. Heinz, “that if he hadn’t been a good guy, he could have been a terrible danger.”
Lombardi’s final theme, the seventh block of granite in his speech, concerned two inseparable qualities that he believed distinguish great leaders: character and will. All the men who took Father Cox’s ethics class in the mid-thirties had the intertwining definitions pounded into them day after day. Character is an integration of habits of conduct superimposed on temperament. It is the will exercised on disposition, thought, emotion and action. Will is the character in action. Character in action, Lombardi asserted at the end of his speech, was the great hope of society. “The character, rather than education, is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard, because character is higher than intellect. While it is true the difference between men is in energy, in the strong will, in the settled purpose and in the invincible determination, the new leadership is in sacrifice, it is in self-denial, it is in love and loyalty, it is in fearlessness, it is in humility, and it is in the perfectly disciplined will. This, gentlemen, is the distinction between great and little men.”
LOVE AND LOYALTY. What did they really mean? Where did they end and practicality begin? In the real world, apart from the rhetoric, those were difficult issues for Lombardi, and he had to face them immediately in his football life. Two days after the New York speech, a special draft was held for the newest NFL expansion team, the New Orleans Saints. Each team had to make eleven players available to the Saints, who would pick three from that group. Lombardi included Paul Hornung on the list. He figured that Hornung was injured and at the end of his career, and assumed that New Orleans would not take him. He wanted his Golden Boy to stay in Green Bay, for personal and inspirational purposes, if not to start at left halfback. Jerry Kramer, the inquisitive right guard, who had just begun keeping a diary of the 1967 season, came by the Packers offices on that afternoon of February 10 to pick up his mail. He met Lombardi walking out of the building, and used the scene as the opening anecdote of Instant Replay, the extraordinary best-selling book he later wrote with sportswriter Dick Schaap.
I just stood there and Lombardi started to speak again and again he opened his mouth and still he didn’t say anything. I could see he was upset, really shaken.
“What is it, Coach?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
Finally, he managed to say, “I had to put Paul”—he was almost stuttering. “I had to put Paul on that list,” he said. “And they took him.”
The loss of Hornung “hurt Lombardi more than anything I ever saw,” said Max McGee. “He didn’t put him on the list to lose him. It didn’t make any sense for the Saints to take him.” How did this mesh with his philosophy of love and loyalty? Had he been disloyal to Paul? For days afterwards, whenever Lombardi tried to talk about it, his reaction was the same as when he encountered Jerry Kramer. He choked and stuttered and sometimes cried. It was as though a son had been ripped from his arms. But there was more to it than Lombardi realized, more than love, loyalty and family. The son wanted to leave for a better deal.
“I kind of orchestrated that, unbeknown to Lombardi,” Hornung revealed later. He had placed a secret call to Tom Fears, the Saints coach, who had been an assistant in Green Bay. “I called him. I knew my neck was bad. I said to him, ‘Vince is going to put me on the list.’ He said, ‘Oh, he wouldn’t do that. How’s the shoulder?’ I said, ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I need to get it checked.’ He said, ‘Tell you one thing. If he puts you on that list, I’m going to take you. You’ll make lots of money down here. You’ll sell a lot of tickets.’ ”
When the draft was held and the Saints selected him, Hornung expressed surprise. He told the press that he “held no animosity” against the Packers for putting him on the list, never letting on that he had wanted to go and had eased his own way, realizing that he could get far more money in New Orleans and his own television show in a big market. “No way I’d tell Lombardi what I’d done. I was thinking money then,” he explained later. “The Saints took me, Lombardi was pissed and hurt. But that was business.”
It was big business in New Orleans. The Saints had the Golden Boy, and soon enough they had his old backfield mate, Jim Taylor, a Louisiana native who took the money and fled Green Bay after his contract option expired that spring. Lombardi’s relationship with Taylor had been complicated. Their negotiations every year were nothing more than tests of stubborn will. Once they sat in the room saying nothing, refusing to budge from their positions, until Taylor finally just got up and left. Paul was soft and easy; Jimmy was rock-hard and difficult. Lombardi had insisted all year that Taylor was a great player and that the Packers could not afford to lose him. He believed it. And yet the day Taylor left, Lombardi had an appointment with his dentist, Bert Turek, and while sitting in the chair confided that as much as he admired his fullback’s toughness, his leaving had brought “a sense of relief.”
Taylor went to New Orleans in pursuit of liberty and money, as much money as he had seen the young Packers Anderson and Grabowski receive. He played there one frustrating season, the worst since his rookie year at Green Bay under Scooter McLean, and then his career was over. Hornung did not play at all. In July, he underwent tests at the Mayo Clinic and in Houston that seemed inconclusive, but a third examination at Scripps Clinic in California found that he had a severing of the fifth, sixth and seventh vertebrae and damaged nerve roots in his spinal cord. Another hard blow on the football field, he was told, and he might be crippled for life. Hornung immediately retired. “I’ve had ten beautiful years,” he said.
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK on the eighth of May, the people of Lombardi’s life gathered in the faculty lounge at Fordham University in the Bronx for a special dinner marking another step in his apotheosis from football coach to patron saint of discipline. Harry and Matty were there, along with Marie, Vincent and Susan. From Fordham came Sleepy Jim Crowley, Tim Cohane, Jim Lawlor, Handy Andy Palau and the six other Blocks of Granite: Druze, Franco, Babartsky (now known as Al Bart), Wojciechowicz, Pierce and Paquin. From Saints came the merry Carmelite fathers, Tim Moore and his brother Ken. Red Blaik and Red Reeder represented West Point. Wellington Mara was there for the Giants, along with Jim Lee Howell and Frank Gifford. From his Green Bay years ca
me Paul Hornung, the would-be Saint, Bart Starr, Bob Skoronski, Ole, the Gray Ghost, Dick Bourguignon and Jack Koeppler.
Earlier that day Lombardi had received Fordham’s highest honor, the Insignis Medal, awarded to “Catholic leaders for extraordinary distinction in the service of God through excellent performance in their professions.” The name was taken from The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The founder of the Jesuits had used the Latin word insignis to describe someone whose service to God was ardent and unstinting. Past winners had included Francis Cardinal Spellman and Nobel physicist Victor Hess, but it had never before been presented to someone in the world of sports. Father Leo McLaughlin, S.J., president of Fordham, had “pulled a little rank” so that he could read the citation himself.
“In honoring Vincent Lombardi of the class of 1937, Fordham faces an embarrassment of riches,” McLaughlin said. “On which of the many men who are Vincent Lombardi should its Insignis Medal be pinned? On the master planner, the fearsome strategist of attack and defense—Alexander in a football jersey? Or rather on the field tactician capitalizing on his enemies’ mistakes and shrewdly covering his own—Napoleon without the hat? Or the merciless opponent but gracious victor? Or simply as the ablest, most respected, and most successful coach in football’s brief history? All of these he is, as surely as he is Fordham’s.” Yet Fordham was honoring him for none of that, McLaughlin said. Lombardi was receiving the medal for being a great teacher.
Lombardi considered being honored in the tradition of St. Ignatius “the finest moment” of his life. After dinner he took a party of family members and pals to Toots Shor’s saloon. As they were celebrating there, Arnold Palmer, the swashbuckling golfer, came by and said hello and planted a kiss on Marie’s cheek. And that, according to Marie, was the finest moment of her life. So what if her husband was being treated like a saint; Arnie Palmer had kissed her. “She won’t wash her cheek for a month,” Lombardi said, and he exploded in laughter, and everyone at his table laughed with him.
24
Ice
ED SABOL could not sleep the night before a title game. He and his son Steve had been working pro football championships for NFL Films since 1962, and every year he was nervous, as if he had never done this before. Were his cameras in the right locations? Would there be a dramatic story line? Would the weather create problems again? By seven on the morning of December 31, 1967, he already had been awake for two hours, and now he was standing at the window of his hotel room, staring out into the northern darkness. Friday seemed unforgiving in Green Bay, with heavy snow and a fierce wind, but on Saturday there was a brilliant winter sun and the temperature had soared toward thirty. Local forecasters had predicted more of the same for today’s one o’clock game.
The telephone rang. Steve, who had been asleep in the other bed, fumbled for the receiver.
“Good morning, Mr. Sabol.”
The wake-up message came in a gentle singsong voice.
“It is sixteen degrees below zero and the wind is out of the north. Now have a nice day.”
“Dad,” Steve said. “You’re not going to believe this!”
The same words of disbelief were being uttered all over town. The phone at Paul’s Standard station on South Broadway had started ringing at five that morning, and the overnight man couldn’t handle it, so Paul Mazzoleni went in himself and took to the streets with his tow truck and jumper cables. One of his first stops was at Willie Wood’s. The free safety was standing next to his dead car, shivering, convinced that even when Mazzoleni brought his frozen battery back to life he was not going anywhere. “It’s just too cold to play,” Wood said. “They’re gonna call this game off. They’re not going to play in this.” Chuck Mercein, the new man on the Packers, brought in at midseason to help fortify the depleted backfield, was alone in his apartment, semiconscious; his clock radio had just gone off. Had he really just heard someone say it was thirteen below? He must have misunderstood. Wasn’t it near thirty when he went to bed? He called the airport weather station to see if he had been dreaming. “You heard it right. It’s thirteen below and it may get colder.”
Lee Remmel of the Press-Gazette had arranged a ride to the stadium with a cityside writer, one of eleven reporters the home paper had assigned to the game. His colleague called at seven with the question, “Lee, do you know what the temperature is?” Remmel guessed twenty. No. Twenty-five? Go look at the thermometer. “I was aghast,” he recalled. “The weatherman had been predicting twenty.” Chuck Lane, the Packers’ young publicist, had grown up in Minnesota and was familiar with the telltale sounds of severe winter in the northland. As soon as he stepped out of his downtown apartment on Washington Street, he knew this was serious. “You can tell when it’s cold by the sound of your foot in the snow. I could tell by the first stride that this was damn cold. The sound has got a different crunch to it.” By his second stride he could feel something else—“the fuzz in your nose froze up.”
Dick Schaap led a foursome of New Yorkers out to Green Bay for the big game, which he hoped would provide a narrative climax for the book he was writing with Jerry Kramer. As he and his editor, Bob Gutwillig, and their wives were driving downtown for breakfast, Schaap noticed the temperature reading on the side of a bank. It was-13. “Look, it’s broken,” he said. He had never before seen a negative temperature and assumed that the bank got it wrong. Dave Robinson was in his kitchen, eating his traditional pregame meal: scrambled eggs, the filet of a twenty-ounce T-bone steak, toast, tea with honey. His little twin boys hovered in the next room, waiting for their dad to leave so they could eat the rest of the steak. His wife came in and gave him a kiss. “It’s twenty below out there,” she said. “Twenty above, you mean,” Robinson said. “Can’t be twenty below.”
There was a full house at Sunset Circle. Susan lived at home again after a short and unhappy stint at a Dominican-run secretarial school in Boca Raton. Vincent and Jill came down from St. Paul, and now they had two boys, Vincent II and John. Vincent was working days and going to law school at night. The father-son relationship had developed another odd twist. Vince rarely had time to watch Vincent play in college, but now he insisted that Vincent attend as many Packers games as possible. Lombardi the family man? Partly, no doubt, but there was also a measure of superstition involved. The Packers had won a key game the year before when Vincent was there, and ever since the Old Man thought of him as a talisman. Vincent loved football, he had grown up standing on the sidelines, but sometimes this good-luck business seemed more for his dad’s benefit than his own.
At his father’s request, he had once boarded a flight in St. Paul during a heavy storm to attend a game in Green Bay. The plane was diverted to Milwaukee and he ended up studying his law books and watching the Packers on television at the airport. Another time he brought Jill along for a preseason game in Milwaukee. They had left the boys with a babysitter and were excited about having a night alone at the Pfister Hotel. At dinner after the game, Vincent and Jill were startled to hear the Old Man suddenly announce “We’re going home!”
“Jeez, Dad, it’s kind of late,” Vincent pleaded.
“I’ll drive halfway and you drive halfway,” Lombardi said, and that was that. Vincent and Jill packed up, and soon they were in the car with Vince and Marie, heading north to Green Bay. Five miles up the highway, Lombardi pulled over. “My knees are killing me,” he said to Vincent. “You drive.”
Maybe it had all done some good. The Packers had finished in first place again. They had finished first in the newfangled Central Division of the Western Conference with a 9—4—1 record, and then whipped the Los Angeles Rams in the playoff game for the western title. Critics were saying that the Packers were too old and slow aside from their one breathtaking rookie, Travis Williams, known as The Roadrunner, a return specialist who had run four kickoffs back for touchdowns, including two against the Browns in one game. Yet here they were, back in the championship, playing for their record third straight NFL title against the
Dallas Cowboys. If standing on the sideline in subzero weather this afternoon could help them win one more time, Vincent was game.
Not much was said about the temperature in the Lombardi house. There was little talking about the game at all that morning. “Everybody was very uptight,” Susan recalled. Vincent II had been up all night with a fever, distracting everyone, including the coach, who patted his grandson on the head before leaving for church. The cars were in the heated garage; Vince’s Pontiac started right up. Silence on the way to mass. The priest prayed for the Packers. All quiet on the way back. Then Vince and Vincent left, driving clockwise south to the bridge crossing the Fox in downtown De Pere, then west to Highway 41, north to the Highland Avenue exit and east to Lambeau Field.
The Sabols were already there, positioning eleven cameramen around the stadium. They sent a technician up to the scoreboard to place a microphone near a camera that peeked through one of the number holes. When it came time for a pregame group meeting, one member of the crew was missing. What happened? He had brought a flask with him and had taken a few shots of bourbon to stay warm—a few too many, it seemed. He had passed out cold and might have frozen to death behind the scoreboard had they not gone looking for him. The parking lots were starting to fill up by 11 a.m., two hours before game time, with many Packers fans insisting on going through their pregame rituals as though it was just another winter day in paradise. Not as many tailgaters as usual, but they were still out there. Folding chairs, card tables, brats and beer. One concession to the weather: more of them than usual were huddled around fires. Jim Irwin, a local TV sports director, arrived at the press box two hours before kickoff, and looked out and saw hundreds of people already stationed at their seats. “They didn’t have to be in the stands,” he noted. “They had reserved tickets. They chose to be out there when it was thirteen below.”
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