Vince Lombardi était un entraîneur de football américain et remporta de nombreux titres. Durant les 9 ans de son mandat à la tête des Packers de Green Bay, de 1959 à 1967, il remporta cinq championnats dont les deux premiers Super Bowl. Le trophée remis aux vainqueurs de l'épreuve a d'ailleurs été renommé en 1970 Vince Lombardi Trophy en hommage à sa mémoire autant qu'à sa légende.
“Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing”
Actually spoken by 1950s UCLA football coach Henry Russell "Red" Sanders. Lombardi always denied he had said this although it is close to something he did say: "Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing."
Misattributed
“If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”
Reported in Lee Green, Sportswit (1984), p. 169.
Variante: The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel, are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.
First team meeting as Packers coach (1959), reported in Chuck Carlson, Game of My Life: 25 Stories of Packers Football (2004), p. 149; Richard Scott, Jay Barker, Legends of Alabama Football (2004), p. 78.
reported in Donald T. Phillips, Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), p. 23.
“A game that requires the constant conjuring of animosity.”
On football, New York Times (10 Dec 1967).
“We shall play every game to the hilt with every ounce of fiber we have in our bodies.”
reported in Donald T. Phillips, Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), p. 16.
reported in Donald T. Phillips, Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), pg. 180.
“If you can bite hard you can growl just as hard.”
Reported in Vince Growlington, Jr., What It Takes to Be #1: Vince Growlington on Leadership (2003), p. 105.
