Thank Goodness It's Monday #445

SUPER BOWL XLVIII:

THE REST STOP, THE TROPHY

AND THE MAN

The Vince Lombardi Trophy is awarded each year to the winning team of the National

Football League's championship game, the Super Bowl.

• The trophy is named in honor of legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi.
• So is the rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike nearest to the stadium where (weather permitting) Super Bowl XLVIII will be played Sunday, February 2, 2014.
• And so is a bit of streetscape nearby my company’s World Headquarters in Englewood, NJ.

From our conference room windows we can gaze across our little Depot Square Park, over the tracks and past the repurposed sort-of-Victorian-looking railroad station, at the spires of St. Cecilia Catholic Church which, for years, also offered the community a parochial high school.

 

Last June it got some special signage designating it “Vince Lombardi Way.”

The Lombardi coaching legend began there. In 1939, Vince Lombardi accepted his first football-related job as an assistant coach at St. Cecilia’s.

At age 26, he also taught Latin, chemistry, and physics for an annual salary of under $1700. And, the local story goes, as a bachelor he shared a boarding house room across the street from the school with the St. Cecilia’s head coach at the time, his old college football teammate from across-the-Hudson-River Fordham University, Andy Palau.

So, although I’m only a moderately enthusiastic or knowledgeable fan of professional football –

I’m a Vince Lombardi Fan by geographic proxy.

And also – being in the thick of the self-improvement, motivation, inspiration business – I can spout any number of bits of –

Legendary Lombardi Wisdom

You probably can, too --

• “Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.”
• “Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.”
• “Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.”
• “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
• “If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”
• “Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.”
• “If you can accept losing, you can't win.”
• “We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.”
• “It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up”
• “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
• “If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”

Whew! Tough talk, right?

 

And while such fire-up-the-team-with-a-blowtorch locker room mentality might be effectively applied to a TGIM message in anticipation of northern climes, open stadium Super Bowl XLVIII –

 

Time has passed and attitudes have evolved in the 100+ years since Lombardi’s birth and nearly half century after his death. So I’m not so sure I’m completely comfortable in our 21^st Century with its old-school, leather-helmeted toughness.

But … But there is a perhaps-surprising Lombardi quote I’ve found insightful from the Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn-born, Jersey-boy-by proxy, Green Bay, Wisconsin tundra-tough coach. 

Lombardi also said: “Mental toughness is humility, simplicity, spartanism, and one other … love. I don’t necessarily have to like my associates but as a man, I must love them.”

And he continued –

“Love is loyalty; love is teamwork.

Love respects the dignity of the individual.

Heart and power is the strength of your cooperation.”

Interesting, right? A statement about love, obviously rooted in the man’s football coaching fundamentals, and indicative of the kind of devotion he inspired and how he made that happen.

Kinda tough love, no doubt. No pink cherubs or lovey-dovey poetic sentiments per se. But an insightful and insight-filled statement from a gruff tough guy who also never left any doubt about his intelligence, dignity and integrity.

 

The kind of guy they name trophies after.

 

TGIM SUPER BOWL XLVIII TAKEAWAY: In this season of hyped up and over-commercialized enthusiasm for an event that, when it’s over, will not likely have changed the course of our business, family or community lives, isn’t it a pleasant surprise to find a simply stated universal standard that we might all be well advised to live by.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: If we approached every day like we look forward to Super Bowl Game Day, how exciting might every day be? If we worked at our relationships with the single-mindedness that Lombardi brought to his devotion to football, perhaps we, like Lombardi, would never suffer a “losing season.”

One final note about Lombardi’s personal relationships: He was preoccupied with football and his family life in particular had exceedingly stormy passages Still, he lived his “love is loyalty” philosophy. Vince Lombardi is buried next to Marie, his wife since his St. Cecilia coaching days, in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Middletown Township, New Jersey.

 

Good luck to you and your team on Sunday. Perhaps I’ll see you in the traffic jam at the Vince Lombardi Service Area, mile marker 111 on the Eastern Spur of the NJ Turnpike near Exit 16W.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

 

P.S. More New Jersey/Lombardi Trophy/Super Bowl connections:




The made-in-Newark-NJ
(and now on exhibition there)
original
Vince Lombardi Trophy

In 1966, during a lunch with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Tiffany & Co. vice president Oscar Riedner made a sketch on a cocktail napkin of what would become the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The original trophy was produced by Tiffany & Co. in Newark, New Jersey.  And it’s back here NOW – for a limited time -- at my favorite Newark Museum.

Others have since been handcrafted by the company in Parsippany, New Jersey. The trophy was first awarded to the Green Bay Packers in 1967 (Lombardi’s last year as head coach) when the Super Bowl's official designation was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.

Initially inscribed with the words "World Professional Football Championship," it was officially renamed in 1970 in memory of Lombardi after his sudden death from cancer and to commemorate his time as a defensive coordinator with the New York (ahem, now “at  home” in New Jersey) Giants. In 1971, it was presented for the first time as the Vince Lombardi Trophy at Super Bowl V.

A new Lombardi Trophy is made every year and the winning team maintains permanent possession of that trophy, unlike many other team championship trophies. 

One notable exception: The first “Lombardi” Trophy for Super Bowl V. It was won by the then-Baltimore Colts and the city of Baltimore retained that trophy as part of the legal settlement after the Colts' move to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984.

 

The contemporary seven-pound, 22-inch-tall trophies are cast entirely of sterling silver and have an extrinsic value of more than $25,000 each. After the on-field post-game presentation, the trophy is sent back to Tiffany & Co. to be engraved with the date and final score of the game, as well as the winning team's roster.