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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato with Jacqui Tricarico, our co-anchor and executive producer.

Jacqui, we take a look at Vince Lombardi, who...

Listen, this being taped a little bit after the Super Bowl, the Vince Lombardi trophy, the Super Bowl trophy.

That's the name of it.

But in this interview you're gonna hear, from David Maraniss who wrote this extraordinary book behind me, "When Pride Still Mattered".

Why is Lombardi, or how is Lombardi and New Jersey connected please?

- So, Vince Lombardi was here in New Jersey.

He actually taught at, it's called St. Cecilia's High School in Englewood.

He taught there and was the football coach there- - Eight years.

- For eight years, yep.

Eight years there where he really started his career in coaching, the sport of football.

So definitely New Jersey connection.

And also he's a 2008 New Jersey Hall of Fame inductee.

And not too long ago, the New Jersey Hall of Fame, part of something that they were doing around the state renaming service areas on all the major highways, one of them got renamed to the Vince Lombardi service area.

- And you know something else, Jacqui, and I talk about this in the interview with David Maraniss, who's a great writer.

Check out David Maraniss' work on Bill Clinton.

He's the quintessential, Bill Clinton biographer.

But in talking about Lombardi, what I was fascinated by, and I talked to David about this in the interview, is Lombardi's connection to Fordham University that our family has a strong connection with the Jesuit community there.

His connection to the Catholic church.

Jacqui, wanted to become a priest.

Thought he would become a priest.

- Yeah.

- Became a coach.

But a big theme in that interview is about Italian American discrimination and how he could not get a job.

The only reason he wound up in Green Bay with the Green Bay Packers is because nobody else would hire him and Green Bay was the worst- - Worst team.

- Team in football.

Nobody wanted the job.

He went out there and the rest is history.

He won the first two Super Bowls, three NFL championships before there was a Super Bowl back in the late 1960s.

So listen, I'm fascinated, I'm obsessed by Lombardi and I show this in the interview, but this is something I've had in this office for a long time.

It's a quote from Lombardi, in which he says, "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength or a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."

Obsessed by perfection and working hard, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

And he didn't just teach his players football, he taught them life lessons.

And he was there for them, a lot more than his own family, we learned from David.

- Yeah.

- He kind of always put his family last.

But the team, his players, the other coaches really became his immediate family.

And he devoted so much time to them.

Vince Lombardi passed away in 1970 after a diagnosis with terminal cancer.

It was in New York where the funeral took place.

- St. Patrick's.

- Yep, but then he...

I watched a documentary about him and his daughter talks about leaving New York and driving through New Jersey to his burial site and people just lining the streets to give their respects to the great Vince Lombardi.

- And I think he's buried in Middletown.

- Yes.

- That's where it is.

1970 died way too young.

So we take a look at an important iconic, we say that word a lot, but in this case it couldn't be more true, the great Vince Lombardi, check it out.

(quirky music) (music continues) - [Narrator] One of the most successful football coaches in history, Vince Lombardi, began his career at St. Cecilia's High School in Englewood, where he spent nine years.

His success led him to the college ranks and eventually to the New York Giants where he spent four years.

In 1958, he became head coach for the Green Bay Packers, where he took a perennial loser and transformed it into the standard by which all other teams are measured.

His philosophy and motivational skills still inspire people today, and he is legendary for his legacy of hard work, perseverance and dedication.

Elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, this New Jersey High School coach became the greatest head coach of all time.

(upbeat music) (music continues) - We're now joined by David Maraniss, who is the author of a compelling book, you see it over my left shoulder.

It is "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi."

Good to see you David.

- You too Steve.

Great to be with you.

- Great to be with you.

Hey, listen, growing up as a kid in Newark, New Jersey, '60s, '70s, all about Lombardi.

And it wasn't just because he was Italian American, but that was a part of it.

Why are we still talking about Vince Lombardi and why is the Super Bowl, which just finished a few weeks ago, why is the Super Bowl trophy named the Vince Lombardi Trophy?

Loaded question, I know, please.

- Well, there are two different answers to that.

It's called the Lombardi Trophy largely because he was so successful.

In nine short years in Green Bay he won five championships.

And no one had done that before, or really since in that period of time.

And he came along right when pro football was becoming the national sport in the 1960s, when television and other things were making it the national sport.

But why he's still so revered today really transcends sports.

Lombardi became sort of the symbol of competition and success in American life and leadership.

And that combination made him popular, not just in the realm of sports, but in business and life in general.

- Along those lines, I'm in a library that we have in our home where we shoot the program, and I have this Lombardi quote here, "The difference between a successful person and others is not the lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."

Lombardi and a commitment to excellence/perfection and the will to work that hard.

Please talk about it, that's not just about football.

That's about life, leadership, which I'm obsessed by, trying to understand it.

What was going on with him and his pursuit of excellence and perfection?

- Well, I think that it goes back to his days at Fordham actually, and his training with the Jesuits where will was a central part of their theology.

And it was there that he developed the notion of freedom through discipline, which is an attribute of will.

Which is that you study the fundamentals and become so trained in those that you have the freedom to work from there.

And that's the will that Lombardi had from the time, really well before he became famous.

He developed that will, and that's what drove him.

- It's interesting talking about Fordham.

I have two sons that are, one graduated from Fordham, the other one there now.

And you go to football games at Fordham, Lombardi played football there.

But the Jesuits, the church being Catholic, and you go to Lombardi, you go to the stadium and you see his number, number 40, retired right up on the wall when you go see a football game there.

Lombardi at Fordham, it was not a mistake he went from Brooklyn to the Bronx to play there at Fordham.

Religion, the church, and Lombardi, please.

- Yeah, it's all of a package.

Lombardi, all of his philosophy in football stems from that Jesuit tradition along with his time at Army, which we'll talk about later.

But he learned that freedom through discipline at Fordham.

He was a devout Catholic.

He went to mass every morning of his life.

Sometimes later in life he would wake up the priest to make sure that they could get him there on time to his mass in Green Bay, in Washington, D.C.

But that was just such a central part of his life that, he was an integrated personality in that sense.

Football was just part of that package, but that's where he showed his excellence and his will the most.

- And when you read the book you'll also, David's book, you'll see that Lombardi was a very small, undersized lineman.

PS, Seven Blocks of Granite, who came up with that?

'Cause this was 1936 if I'm not mistaken.

Do you know who came up with it?

- Yeah, it was Tim Cohane who was the public relations guy for Fordham, and was deep into sort of that mythology of going back to the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.

Because the coach, Crowley, was one of the Four Horsemen, so then Fordham had the Seven Blocks of Granite.

It was then popularized by Grantland Rice who also sort of popularized the Four Horsemen and others.

There were poems written about the Seven Blocks of Granite.

- What did it mean?

You couldn't get past them, right, I'm sorry for interrupting David.

You couldn't get, they were blocks of granite.

You couldn't break through them.

- No, it was a wall of seven lineman.

- Right.

- The interesting thing is that Lombardi was, he was a little guy.

He never weighed more than 175 pounds probably.

They had what they called watch-charm guards.

They wanted the guards to be mobile and smaller.

The tackles were the big guys on that wall of granite.

But when you get a name like that it sort of lifts it into the realm of mythology.

They were very good.

A couple of their, Wojciechowicz and Druze became pros, were excellent.

Lombardi had that will and was, had a lot of stamina, but he wasn't exactly the prototype of a modern lineman.

- No, and he was not gonna play pro ball.

So, now let's talk about coaching.

What is not part of the Lombardi myth but is real is that he had a hard time getting a job, and they were very caught up in the concept of discrimination against Italian Americans.

Believed that he would not, or was not getting coaching opportunities because in part he was Italian American.

So, he goes to St. Cecilia's High School in Englewood, New Jersey.

Make that connection real.

'Cause was he there for eight years?

- He was at St. Cecilia for eight years.

He taught, he coached football, he coached basketball, even though he didn't know much about basketball.

- He did not.

- But he was a pretty good coach no matter what he was coaching.

And he taught Latin and chemistry and other difficult subjects.

All again, Steve, in that same realm where he had a capacity to simplify complicated matters.

He taught chemistry in a way where he made sure that the slowest person in the class understood it so everyone would understand it, the same way he taught football and did everything else.

But yeah, he was there for eight years before he got a little bit of a break as an assistant coach at Fordham, then went to Army, but never really felt he was getting his chance wherever he went.

And he felt somewhat discriminated against because he was an Italian American.

- And also believed, I'm sorry for interrupting you.

He also believed he would never get the head coaching job with the New York Football Giants.

And he was an assistant coach there, if I'm not mistaken, David.

- Oh, absolutely.

After his years at Army he went to the Giants.

They had what you would have to call the greatest two assistant coaches in the history of professional football.

- Was that Landry?

- Landry was the defensive coordinator, and Lombardi was the offensive coordinator.

They said that Jim Lee Howell, the head coach, all his responsibility was just making sure the footballs had enough air in them.

And Lombardi and Landry basically ran the team.

But even there he wasn't getting a shot.

He thought he could be the head coach at Air Force and other schools, but didn't get the chance.

And then finally, he'd been to Green Bay, Wisconsin once before as an assistant coach for Army.

He went out there on a scouting mission, and I found a letter he wrote back to one of his friends saying he can't imagine how anybody could live in this godforsaken place.

(Steve laughing) - Hold on.

- And it's that godforsaken place that made him what we know today.

- A terrible team at the time that he goes there.

What year was it, David, that he went to Green Bay?

- He got there in 1959.

The year before they'd gone 1-10-1 under a hapless coach named Scooter McLean.

- They were terrible.

They were bordering on getting kicked out of the league.

He goes in there.

- Yes.

- How does he begin to turn this?

We're up against the break here.

We'll come right back with David Maraniss in just a second.

And then PS, the book, "When Pride Still Mattered."

What does he begin to do to change the culture, everything about Green Bay, the Green Bay Packers?

- Well, the first time he met with what would be his Hall of Fame quarterback, Bart Starr, Bart, after one hour of meeting with him, called his wife Cherry and said, "We're gonna be winners."

He just had this capacity to infuse belief into them, discipline.

Scooter McLean, his predecessor, was completely undisciplined.

Lombardi set up everything so that the players knew exactly what they were doing.

He pounded the fundamentals into them.

There's this famous scene where at the beginning of the year he holds up a sphere and says, "Gentlemen, this is a football."

He starts from there.

And Max McGee, his wise-guy, wide receiver says, "Coach, could you slow down?

You're going too fast for us," but, that's where he would start.

- He was tough.

Was he a yeller, was he a yeller, David?

- Well, he was, Landry called him Mr. High-Low.

Yes, he was.

He was a laugher, a yeller, a crier.

He showed his emotions on his sleeve.

But one of the mistaken impressions of Lombardi is that he was just a tough guy.

He wasn't.

His father, a butcher, Harry Lombardi, had tattoos on his knuckles, all of his hands.

And one hand was work and the other hand was play.

And that's sort of the way Lombardi was too.

It was work and play, it was love and hate.

It was always balanced.

There's so many wannabe Lombardis out there who think that they can just be tough guys, and that's the answer.

But that wasn't Vince Lombardi.

He knew exactly how to handle his players.

- And as a student of leadership, any of us who lead a team or try to lead a team, you learn a lot from Lombardi.

And again, we're gonna talk about the quote that he wished he had never said and clarify it, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

In our business there is no second place."

We'll talk about that with David Maraniss, who's the author of the book "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi."

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're back with David Maraniss, who's the author of "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi."

Why did Lombardi regret the quote, "Winning isn't everything.

It's the only thing in our business.

There's no second place?"

Why did he regret that?

- Well, it's important to understand that he was obsessed with winning, but it wasn't his primary goal.

He was striving for excellence and that will to do the very best that you can do.

So, his players would always say that he was much tougher on them if they won but played sloppily than if they lost and gave their all.

That was really his goal.

You know, I write a whole chapter in the book about that phrase, "Winning isn't everything.

It's the only thing."

He didn't coin it.

It turns out it was first uttered by a 14-year-old actress in a John Wayne movie who was talking to a social worker played by Donna Reed.

You know, John Wayne was playing this sort of ne'er-do-well college football coach who was cheating and bringing in ringers to play on his team and his tomboy daughter, after Donna Reed pointed this out to the daughter that it looked pretty shady out there, she said, "Well, don't you know winning isn't everything?

It's the only thing."

And that's where it got into the public culture.

Lombardi might have said it once or twice, but it wasn't his mantra and it wasn't what he believed.

He was all about striving for excellence.

- And it was more, again, a complicated person.

Talk about his relationship with his wife and the fact that his wife, who had problems with alcohol, said that football was her husband's mistress.

- You know, it's often the case that great leaders are better at dealing with strangers than they are with their own nuclear family.

So, Lombardi had a more difficult relationship with his wife and with his son and daughter than he did with the football players, Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor and Bart Starr, and, you know, not his family because he was so committed and so obsessed with football and with the excellence there that he, to some degree, neglected his family, and his son in particular.

His wife struggled with alcoholism and with some other things, but his son, Vince Jr., could never live up to being Paul Hornung or Bart Starr.

And so he always felt that he was, you know, in second or third place behind the other sons, who were Vince Lombardi's players.

There's that contradiction in Lombardi.

You know, he believed in God, family, and the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers probably came first, God second, and then family third.

Did Lombardi have a chip on his shoulder- - Yes, very much so.

- About his perception, about those who did not perceive him to be what he saw himself being, in large part, because of being an Italian American from Brooklyn?

- He carried that chip his whole life.

You know, he was 46 years old when he finally got his shot in Green Bay.

He was about to give up coaching and go into banking, and he felt that several times he'd been passed over because of his background.

Now, that served him in two different ways, Steve, in two positive ways.

One, it drove him to be that great coach and prove everyone wrong.

And second, it made him more sensitive to other people who are suffering because of various discrimination.

- Including African Americans.

I'm sorry for interrupting, David.

There's so much in this book that we're not gonna get to.

Lombardi and race and his players.

It matters.

Please.

- Oh, absolutely.

You know, when he got to Green Bay, the only African American in town was the shoeshine man at the Northland Hotel.

Lombardi immediately brought Emlen Tunnell over with him from the Giants and paved the way for many African American players to follow.

You know, Willie Wood and Willie Davis and Dave Robinson and many others.

And I'll never forget talking to Dave Robinson, who said that Lombardi had a more profound effect on him than anyone but his father.

And Willie Wood said that Lombardi treated them the most fairly of any coach he'd ever had.

You know, when they went to play exhibition games in the South, Lombardi made sure that they stayed at military bases instead of hotels because he didn't want his Black players to be separated from the rest of the team.

He was very strong on that.

One of the first things he did when he got to Green Bay was he went to, you know, Green Bay is a city of taverns, right?

On every street corner just about.

And Lombardi went to many of them and said, "If I hear you discriminating against any of my Black players, you're off limits for the entire team."

He was incredibly strong on race and wanted- - And one his players, I'm sorry, David, one of his Black players dating and/or married a white woman?

- Lionel Aldridge.

You know, it's hard to believe today, but in that era, not just in Green Bay, but in the League in general, it was frowned upon for Black players to date or marry a white woman.

Lionel Aldridge did, he went to Lombardi and Lombardi said, you know, not in that modern lingo, but, basically, "I've got your back.

You know, love takes you where it takes you."

Lombardi was strong on that.

He was also shockingly, surprisingly, strong on gender issues.

He had a brother who was gay and Lombardi several times later in his career made it clear to his staff and to his players that if he found any of them picking on a player who happened to be gay, and there were a few on both the Packers and especially the Redskins, they'd be in trouble with him.

He defended- - 1960s.

- Yep.

- Lombardi leaves Green Bay.

He's getting sick.

He did not wanna see doctors.

Read it in the book.

He had a whole thing about not wanting to see a doctor.

He has cancer.

- Yes.

- Then goes to Washington to coach the Redskins, short period of time.

Describe, 1970, he passes, the reverence for him from so many of his players and others in the League, which had very little to do with football and everything to do with their relationship with him.

I don't wanna say too much.

You got a minute left, please, David.

- Yeah, well, you know, the funeral was at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

All of his former players were there, from the Packers' glory years to the Redskins, to the leaders of the NFL, to thousands of mourners in the streets, you know, as his body was taken out to Middletown where it was buried.

But he was beloved.

You know, he was not just that tough guy.

He represented something stronger in American life.

And his funeral, you know, I mean, even today, 1970 to 2024, Lombardi still lives where most former football coaches are forgotten.

- Hey, David, thank you for helping us remember and appreciate the very complex and important life of Vince Lombardi.

Yes, there are New Jersey connections, at St. Cecilia's in Englewood and where he's buried in Middletown, but he was a gift to America and to the world, and not just in sports, but in life.

Thank you, David.

You honor us by being with us.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Steve.

Great to talk with you.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

This is an important program on Vince Lombardi and that is David Maraniss.

And by the way, check out his book on Bill Clinton.

It's pretty good.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

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RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The North Ward Center.

Seton Hall University.

And by The Russell Berrie Foundation.

Promotional support provided by The New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

And by BestofNJ.com.

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