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Lombardi still the face,
voice of football

FOR Christmas, my wife got me a book. It was a book about Vince Lombardi. It's called "When Pride Still Mattered" by David Maraniss. It's a very good book.

You would think that in 2005 we wouldn't still be reading about Vince Lombardi, that he'd be irrelevant and long forgotten. But no.

The name just resonates. That's his voice you've heard in those soliloquies about character and winning that were run in commercials during NFL games this season.

Lombardi. He's still the face, voice, image of the NFL. Of football.

And the true story -- as true stories often are -- is more rich than the legend.

After I had read the book -- 504 pages -- I wanted to talk to someone who had known the real man in his real times.

Bill Curry.

The ESPN announcer had been a young center under Lombardi, replacing the great Jim Ringo. As a young man, Curry had hated the coach for always pushing him so hard, the book said. As an older one he realized things weren't so simple.

He visited Lombardi in the hospital, the book said, trying to tell the coach that he finally got it; the dying man told his old player to pray for him.

Bill Curry was just here, for the Hawaii Bowl, but now I had missed him. Missed the chance.

I wanted to talk to someone who knew the man.

Lombardi was a New Yorker, and was one of the Seven Blocks of Granite at Fordham U., and was on the coaching staff of the New York Giants when Les Keiter broadcast the games.

Les Keiter. Of course. Keiter, Hawaii's sportscaster emeritus, would have known Lombardi.

And Keiter, of course, would know the real story, how it really was.

"He was the line coach before he became a saint," Keiter said with a laugh.

Of course.

That's the best part about the book. It shows the real Lombardi, the one who was a high school coach, an assistant who wondered if he'd ever get his big break. He was human. Flawed.

(Incidentally, Tom Landry, who would go on to head-coaching greatness with the Dallas Cowboys, was the defensive coordinator with the Giants. Lombardi was the offensive coordinator. It may have been the greatest staff of all time. The joke was you'd walk past Landry's office, he's watching film. Walk past Lombardi's office, he's watching film. Walk past the head coach's office, he's got his feet up on the desk, reading the paper.)

Keiter remembers football's most fearsome disciplinarian as a person, a warm, friendly face.

"He and I always sat next to each other" when Lombardi was an assistant coach, Keiter said.

Lombardi would roar at everyone's jokes. He was a sweet and personable guy. You'd never know it on the field, where "he barked like an angry Airedale," Keiter said.

But off the field, he was different.

"Very shy," Keiter said.

Keiter said he saw a head coach's promise in Lombardi, but he had no idea how much.

Who knew that he would someday be football's face. Football's iron fist.

But it was the warmth that stands in Keiter's memory, not the barking. It's the man, not the myth. He could see why players would someday respond to the coach the way they did.

"Les, he's a sweetheart," Keiter said the great Sam Huff once told him.

The young players cowered, but Huff knew.

Keiter knew.

There was something deeper to the story, to the man. It wasn't that simple.

It never is.

You'll hear those speeches this weekend, during breaks of those games. That's Lombardi in those commercials. His voice endures. His image endures, even in 2005. He's still football's greatest name. Its face. Its iron fist.

But before that he was a guy who smiled and laughed and sat next to Les Keiter on Mondays.

A line coach before he became a saint.