Vince Lombardi was the first superstar coach in the National Football League. Although his skills as a motivator was well known during his era, his celebrity star rose after his untimely death in 1970.

During Lombardi's era during the 1950s and 1960s, football was a second class sport in popularity far behind baseball. Television changed all that. Football became popular with the masses in the late 1960s. Ideal for television more people watched football games. As a result, Lombardi became a football household legend.

By the early 1970s, the name Lombardi was associated with excellence in coaching. So much that today the Super Bowl champions receive the Lombardi trophy for winning the biggest game of the year. Yet for him, it all started in the early 1960s when he led the Green Bay Packers to three NFL Championships. In 1966, the NFL changed its format and started the Super Bowl, where the AFC played the NFC for the championship. Lombardi was a part of that. He won with the Green Bay Packers the first two Super Bowls ever played.

Lombardi was such a well known American legend, I even studied his career in high school in a history elective class about professional sports. The teacher was also the school's head football coach. We learned day in and day out about Lombardi's philosophy of winning.

Time and time again Lombardi's famous quote, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" was repeated so often in class. Simply said, Lombardi was hell bent on winning. And he only showed happiness, his ear to ear smile, if his team, the Green Bay Packers, won. And they usually did in the 1960s. Lombardi was the epitome of a passionate coach on the sidelines. Whether in freezing cold Wisconsin winter, or in the locker room, Lombardi appeared to have no soft side unless he won. And when he did, he showed the world his trademark ear to ear smile.

During the Lombardi era, football players were more "blue collar" types rather than today's celebrity players. Lombardi motivated his players to play "blue collar" football. It was Lombardi's style "three yards and a cloud of dust" later replicated by Ohio State Woody Hayes.

Lombardi's offensive strategy was to pound it out on the ground. Then he would mix it up with his passing offense led by star quarterback Bart Starr. Nevertheless the offense was about working hard on the ground, and the defense working hard to shut down every yard. This was Lombardi's strategy. Not to win the game on one big play, but to win the game on constant pounding.

Lombardi gained that nose to the grindstone attitude when he was a guard for Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. He was a member of the best offensive lines in college football during his time. The were dubbed the "seven blocks of granite" for their ability to protect the quarterback and create holes on offense. They played "hard nose" football with only minimal pads. They got down and dirty.

Eventually Lombardi took that mentality to the NFL. He wasn't a passing coach, Starr ran the offense but wasn't known for having a great arm. Starr was better known for fitting into Lombardi's scheme of winning. Pounded it out on the ground.

Passing during Lombardi's era was less important than today. There were great quarterbacks like Y.A. Tittle for the New York Giants, and Sonny Jurgensen for the Washington Redskins, yet passing developed more into big play football with the onset of the game's popularity on television.

Lombardi's style resembled more like a bulldozer than an art form. Yet, he won. And he outlived his time of grinding it out on the football field to become today the most celebrated coach in football history.

Learn more about this author, Frank Lavoine.
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