“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the 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.
Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. There is no room for second place.
There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place. I have finished second
twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There
is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and
always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to
win, and to win. Every time a football player goes to play his trade he’s got to play
from the ground up – from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of
him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to be
smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play
with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a
guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field
second.
Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization –
an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object
is to win – to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it
is. It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games
draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there – to compete. To know
the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly,
squarely, by the rules – but to win. And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth
his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the
discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the
harsh reality of head to head combat.
I don’t say these things because I believe in the “brute” nature of man or that men
must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human
decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of
all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good
cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”
Vince Lombardi
