Sacking Lombardi

When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, by David Maraniss (Simon & Schuster, 416 pp., $27.50)

THE detached adverbial clause in the title of David Maraniss’s biography of Vince Lombardi is taken from Richard Ford’s novel Independence Day, where it occurs in connection with the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike. Maraniss, like Ford, claims to use the expression with “a certain irony,” but it seems tometobea very uncertain irony. On the one hand, Maraniss obviously admires Lombardi’s dedication and leadership, his heart as an undersized guard among the Fordham “Seven Blocks of Granite” of the 1930s, and his ability to instill discipline and teamwork into winning football teams at St. Cecilia’s High School in Englewood, New Jersey, at Army, and with the New York Giants, Green Bay Packers, and Washington Redskins. Even during his lifetime, cut short by cancer in 1970, when he was 57, Lombardi personified the best in American football—which is why they named the Super Bowl trophy after him.

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James Bowman

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When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, by David Maraniss (Simon & Schuster, 416 pp., $27.50)

THE detached adverbial clause in the title of David Maraniss’s biography of Vince Lombardi is taken from Richard Ford’s novel Independence Day, where it occurs in connection with the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike. Maraniss, like Ford, claims to use the expression with “a certain irony,” but it seems tometobea very uncertain irony. On the one hand, Maraniss obviously admires Lombardi’s dedication and leadership, his heart as an undersized guard among the Fordham “Seven Blocks of Granite” of the 1930s, and his ability to instill discipline and teamwork into winning football teams at St. Cecilia’s High School in Englewood, New Jersey, at Army, and with the New York Giants, Green Bay Packers, and Washington Redskins. Even during his lifetime, cut short by cancer in 1970, when he was 57, Lombardi personified the best in American football—which is why they named the Super Bowl trophy after him.