| When Pride Still Mattered:
The Life and Myth of Vince Lombardi By Maraniss, David A short summary of this compelling book
It is also a study of national myths, tracing what Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Maraniss calls the fallacy
of the innocent past, and an absorbing account of the mythmakers from Grantland Rice to Howard
Cosell who shaped Lombardi's image.
Vincent Thomas Lombardi was born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on June 11, 1913. His early life
was shaped by the trinity of family, religion, and sports; they seemed intertwined, as inseparable to
him as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He was deeply influenced by the Jesuits, who taught him the
philosophy he later used with his players, subordinating individual desires to a larger cause. The
geography of his rise was the opposite of the small-town boy who makes it in the big city. This son of
New York did not achieve fame until he took a job in remote Green Bay, Wisconsin. Before that, he
had toiled anonymously for twenty years, first as a high school coach in New Jersey, then as an
assistant at Fordham, at West Point (under the influential Colonel "Red" Blaik), and finally with the
New York Giants. He was already forty-six when he was finally hired to coach the hapless Packers in
1959, leading them in the most storied period in NFL history, winning five world championships in nine
seasons.
By the time he died of cancer in 1970, after one season in Washington during which he transformed
the Redskins into winners, Lombardi had become a mythic character who transcended sport, and his
legend has only grown in the decades since. Many now turn to Lombardi in search of characteristics
that they fear have been irretrievably lost, the old-fashioned virtues of discipline, obedience, loyalty,
character, and teamwork. To others he symbolizes something less romantic: modern society's
obsession with winning and superficial success. In When Pride Still Mattered, Maraniss renders
Lombardi as flawed and driven yet ultimately misunderstood, a heroic figure who was more complex
and authentic than the stereotypical images of him propounded by admirers and critics.
Using the same meticulous reporting and sweeping narrative style that he employed in First in His
Class, his classic biography of Bill Clinton, Maraniss separates myth from reality and wondrously
recaptures Vince Lombardi's life and times. Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com As coach of the Green Bay Packers from 1959 to 1967, Vince Lombardi turned perennial losers into a juggernaut, winning back-to-back NFL titles in 1961 and 1962, and Superbowls I and II in 1966 and 1967. Stern, severe, sentimental, and paternal, he stood revered, reviled, respected, and mocked--a touchstone for the '60s all in one person. Which adds up to the myth we've been left with. But who was the man? That's the question Pulitzer Prize-winner David Maraniss tackles. It begins with Lombardi's looming father, a man as colorful as his son would be conservative. Still, from his father Vince Lombardi learned a sense of presence and authority that could impress itself with just a look. If a moment can sum up and embrace a man's life--and capture the breadth of Maraniss's thoroughness--it is one that takes place off the field when the Packers organization decides to redecorate their offices in advance of the new head coach's arrival: "During an earlier visit," Maraniss reports, "he had examined the quarters--peeling walls, creaky floor, old leather chairs with holes in them, discarded newspapers and magazines piled on chairs and in the corners--and pronounced the setting unworthy of a National Football League club. 'This is a disgrace!' he had remarked." In one moment, one comment, Lombardi announced his intentions, made his vision and professionalism clear, and began to shake up a stale organization. It reveals far more about the man than wins and losses, and is the kind of moment Maraniss uses again and again in this superb resurrection of a figure who so symbolized a sporting era and sensibility. --Jeff Silverman. - From The NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW When Pride Still Mattered stands in stark contrast to most other books by and about coaches. Maraniss shows not only that winning isn't everything, it's not even what it's cracked up to be. --Allen St. John - From BOOKLIST, September 1, 1999 Lombardi, whose Green Bay Packers dominated professional football in the early 1960s, was arguably the greatest NFL coach ever, despite a relatively short career ended by his death from cancer in 1970. Maraniss, who won a Pulitzer for his Washington Post articles on presidential candidate Bill Clinton, looks beyond Lombardi's surface image of single-minded determination and devotion to discipline to reveal a man whose essence was . . . single-minded determination and devotion to discipline. There was no pretense and very little subtext to Vince Lombardi. He was devoted to family, God, and football, and if he had a failing, it was to reverse the order occasionally. As Maraniss reveals, he was a mediocre father and a loving but distracted workaholic husband. If there is any revelation here, it comes in Maraniss' treatment of the relationship between Lombardi and his wife, Marie, who was unhappy with her secondary position in her husband's life and, in response, became a problem drinker. This is a carefully researched, often poignant, three-dimensional biography. In an era where image is usually synonymous with illusion, it is refreshing to realize that Lombardi, whose private and public selves were so similar, was a man of substance and depth. Wes Lukowsky -- Copyright© 1999, American Library Association. All rights reserved - FROM KIRKUS REVIEWS Though his subjects could not seem more different, Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post reporter Maraniss finds in Green Bay Packer coach Vince Lombardi as compelling and paradoxical a leader as Bill Clinton (First in His Class, 1995) . Like prior biographies, such as Michael OBriens Vince (1987), Maranisss covers Lombardis childhood as the son of a Brooklyn butcher, college playing career as one of Fordhams Seven Blocks of Granite, apprentice coaching at a small New Jersey high school called St. Cecilias, West Point, and the New York Giants, the five championships with the Packers in the 60s, and the last year with the Washington Redskins before dying from colon cancer in 1970. What else can be written about a coach who seemed to symbolize the best and worst of professional sports? As it turns out, quite a bit. Maranisss coach is less self-confident than the martinet of myth, more aware that his rage, while the source of his success, is also sinful and self-destructive. Lombardi could play the father figure more convincingly to his lockerroom band than he could with his wife, a secret drinker, and his children, whom he neglected. Frightened by the anarchy he saw in the late 1960s, he became a favorite of businessmen and conservative Republicans because of his belief that sports builds character. His private actions might have surprised his admirers, however. On the negative side, he was not afraid to ask John Kennedy (whom he warmly supported) to defer stars Paul Hornung and Ray Nitschke from active duty in the army. More positively, he practiced quiet toleration, both of blacks and gays. In addition, Maraniss sensitively analyzes the influence of the coachs zealous Catholicism on his work, and paints extraordinarily vivid tableaus. From the myth of this model of order, loyalty, and victory, Maraniss has fashioned a richly complicated counterlife of a sports icon committed to and consumed by the quest for perfection. (First serial to Vanity Fair) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. - SIMON & SCHUSTER, November 19, 1999 DAVID MARANISS WRITES A WINNER - "This profile of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, which forges a near-perfect synthesis of fine writing and fascinating material, may be the best sports biography ever published." - SPORTS ILLUSTRATED "This is a superb book, one of the best on football that we have." - The PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER "Maraniss has a superb eye for detail....His book is punctuated with telling vignettes that range from the awkwardkly sentimental...to the truly bizarre....WHEN PRIDE STILL MATTERED stands in stark contrast to most other books by and about coaches. Maraniss shows not only that winning isn't everything, it's not even what it's cracked up to be." - The NEW YORK TIMES "WHEN PRIDE STILL MATTERED is a richly detailed new Lombardi biography..." - HARTFORD COURANT "WHEN PRIDE STILL MATTERED sheds remarkable light not only on what Lombardi meant to the NFL but to the entire country in the nasty days of the '60s." - CHICAGO SUN TIMES "The ensuing result of Maraniss' work might be the best sports biography ever written." - The SEATTLE TIMES "Maraniss also does an extraordinary job of explaining that Lombardi's genius as a coach resulted from his genius as a teacher." - WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL "This time around Mr. Maraniss skillfully sorts the Lombardi of media legend from the more complicated truth."
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