If you’re looking to fill the football void this weekend with something more substantive than watching the Pro Bowl, read this wonderful piece on the roots of Vince Lombardi in ESPN.com.
Ian O’Connor, a gifted writer, attended the same New York high school where Lombardi got his start as a coach. In fact, remarkably it was his only head coaching job prior to taking over the Packers.
O’Connor organized a meeting with several of the surviving players who were the first to experience Lombardi’s greatness. The presentation includes videos of their discussion.
O’Connor writes:
They can tell you how he could gauge a student’s untapped potential within a week or two of class time, and how he understood the necessity of building up any player he’d spent a stormy afternoon tearing down. So these are the stories from some of the oldest Lombardi Saints, ages 84 to 91, many of them still living within a short drive of the high school that shut down in 1986, and of the grand old Gothic church Lombardi attended every day. Some told their stories over the phone, some at a gathering at a New Jersey restaurant. The stories belong to men who played football and basketball for him, and to a woman who played six-on-six basketball for him and who still sounds ready to run through a wall on his command. They still hear him as if he were standing before them, spittle flying, his voice loud enough to be heard over the jitterbug music playing on the cafeteria jukebox at lunchtime.
Yes, Vincent Thomas Lombardi is very much alive to these oldest living Saints.
In an interview with ESPN’s Front Row, O’Connor talks about writing the story.
What surprised you most about Lombardi throughout your research, interviews and writing for this piece?
I don’t think I realized just how good of a basketball coach he was, even without complete command of the Xs and Os of the sport. Lombardi shaped his teams through the force of his personality, and he did win the only boys basketball state championship in St. Cecilia history for a reason. I also didn’t realize he helped out with girls basketball. One of his players, Rosemary Maroldi Diemar, a delightful 89-year-old woman, said her team felt that losing was never an option when Lombardi was around. Of course it wasn’t.
All in all, you will find the entire package more satisfying than watching a bunch of guys play touch football in Hawaii.