"Veni, Vidi, Vince!"...

So much has been written about the life and times of Vince Lombardi that just as we were beginning to believe that some of it could be true, our attention was captured by a chapter in the last book edited by the late (and great) George Plimpton.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Titled Sport because that is the theme of every story in it, the book includes a stunning piece of dialogue between Plimpton and the erudite former Green Bay Packer center, Bill Curry. It is, essentially, what they think of Lombardi (as they are driving from Louisville, KY to Green Bay, WI).

Allow us to start with an apology to the publishers (W.W. Norton, NY) for trimming so much of the scalding dialogue from the text:

When the assistant coaches left the room and shut the door behind them, Lombardi really went at it. He began screaming and shouting: "Goddamit! You guys don't care who wins or loses. I'm the only one who gives a damn!"

Suddenly there was a stirring in back of the room, and then Forrest Gregg was on his feet, red as a beet, with two players holding him back with their arms:

"Goddamit, Coach, but it makes me sick to hear you say something like that. We lay it on the line for you every Sunday, Coach. We live and die the same way you do, and it hurts!"

Gregg then begins straining forward again, trying to get up there to punch Lombardi out.

Then Bob Skoronski stands up. "Dammit," he says. "Don't you tell us that we don't care about winning! That makes me sick. Makes me want to puke. We care about it every bit as much as you do!"

So there it was. The coach (Lombardi) had been confronted, the captain of the ship facing a mutinous crew, with the first mate (Gregg) staring him down face-to-face.

But then darned if the master doesn't triumph again. After just a moment's hesitation, he says, "All right, now that's the kind of attitude I want to see! Who else feels that way?"

Willie Davis (Dr. Feelgood) picks that moment to rock off balance in his chair and fall forward into the middle of the floor, just as Lombardi finished saying: "Who else feels that way?"

Davis grins, then adds, "Yeah, me too. I feel that way, Coach!"

Lombardi says, "All right, Willie, that's great!"

And it sweeps through the room; everybody is blasting, "Yeah, heck--me, too!"

Suddenly you have 40 guys who can lick the world.

That's what Lombardi created out of the situation. He went around to each player, looked into each man's face and said, "Do you want to win football games for me?"

And the answer was, "Yes, sir!" (40 times).

He wended his way through that mass of people sitting around in the disarray of chairs and looked at each guy nose-to-nose two inches from his face and said:

"Do you want to win football games?" And every man said, "Yes, sir"--and we did not lose another game that year!