Today is Vince Lombardi’s 100th birthday.

Lombardi Avenue provides an appropriate tribute:

Vince Lombardi – the name conjures the images of championships, players covered in mud, and a simpler, exciting time in Green Bay Packers history.

But Lombardi was far from simplistic. He was a master technician, a psychologist, and a man who could take a team of individuals and meld them into a single mindset. …

Go into any successful business board room and you will see Lombardi quotes plastered on the walls. It’s a tribute not only to the intellect of the man, but to his legacy – that being his keen sense of humanity. He knew what made people tick and he knew how to get the best out of the people around him.

He was also smart enough to surround himself with the best assistant coaches who bought into his system and carried the Packers Way with them the remainder of their lives – as did every player who touched the gridiron under his direction.

Others, notably author David Maraniss and his former players, have written extensively about Lombardi. I’ve written about how he was a much better coach than general manager.

Three other things stand out to me. The first is what a fair man Lombardi was. Defensive tackle Henry Jordan’s claim that Lombardi “treats us all the same, like dogs,” was only partly an exaggeration. Early in his career, the Packers had a preseason game in the South (before the pro football came to Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami), and the Packers could not all stay in one hotel in the segregated South. Lombardi spoke to his team, apologized, and, boiling mad, swore that that would never happen again. Authors have suggested that Lombardi’s experience of being discriminated against because of his Italian background made him sensitive to discrimination.

The second is that for being the author of the concept of “run to daylight,” the power sweep and, supposedly, smash-mouth football, Lombardi was more flexible on offense than he was given credit for being. The 1961 and 1962 NFL champion teams were powered by the legs of running backs Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor. They were out of the picture due to, in order, injury and the NFL expansion draft (Taylor went to New Orleans) by the time the Super Bowl rolled around. The Packers won two Super Bowls not as much on running the ball as by the arm (and brain, since he called the plays) of quarterback Bart Starr.

Finally, there is this, noted by, of all people, college basketball coach Bobby Knight:

Knight once said he considered that to be excellent coaching. What was Lombardi doing in that clip? Yelling, of course. Who was he yelling at? All of the Packers. He didn’t single out any one player; he criticized all of them for insufficient attention to tackling.

Once Starr became the Packers’ starting quarterback and started collecting NFL championships, Lombardi yelled at him during a meeting. Starr was used to discipline, because he was the son of an Air Force master sergeant. But Starr felt his teammates would disrespect him if Lombardi chewed him out in front of them. Starr brought this up to Lombardi, and any chewing-out thereafter occurred in private.

Anyone who saw (as many in the 1960s did) Lombardi as a my-way-or-the-highway martinet wasn’t paying attention to what was actually going on in Green Bay. The Packers dominated the 1960s NFL by an order of magnitude more than any other NFL team, and doing nothing but yelling at players for nearly a decade would not accomplish that.

Lombardi Avenue provides a list of Lombardi quotes, the second of which is my personal favorite:

“People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.”

“Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while…you do them right all the time.”

“Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what’s life worth to him?”

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”

“I would say that the quality of each man’s life is the full measure of that man’s commitment of excellence and victory – whether it be football, whether it be business, whether it be politics or government or what have you.” …

“You never win a game unless you beat the guy in front of you. The score on the board doesn’t mean a thing. That’s for the fans. You’ve got to win the war with the man in front of you. You’ve got to get your man.”

“Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

“Having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it.”

“A leader must identify himself with the group, must back up the group, even at the risk of displeasing superiors. He must believe that the group wants from him a sense of approval. If this feeling prevails, production, discipline, morale will be high, and in return, you can demand the cooperation to promote the goals of the community.”

“They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them … you show them the reasons.”

“To be successful, a man must exert an effective influence upon his brothers and upon his associates, and the degree in which he accomplishes this depends on the personality of the man. The incandescence of which he is capable. The flame of fire that burns inside of him. The magnetism which draws the heart of other men to him.”

“Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will all be judged on one thing: the result.” …

“After all the cheers have died down and the stadium is empty, after the headlines have been written, and after you are back in the quiet of your room and the championship ring has been placed on the dresser and after all the pomp and fanfare have faded, the enduring thing that is left is the dedication to doing with our lives the very best we can to make the world a better place in which to live.”