29 November 1976 Vince Lombardi's Son By Dave Anderson, New York Times His name is Vince Lombardi, his title is administrative assistant to the general manager of the Seattle Seahawks, and his heritage is obvious. But he probably would not be with a club in the National Football League if his father were still alive. "My father," he says, "never got quite enough credits for his law degree and it was really a big thing to him when I got mine. He used to introduce me as 'my son, the lawyer'. One of the last times I saw him, in the hospital, I had a conservative suit on and he said, 'You look like a lawyer.'" But under that conservative suit, Vince Lombardi's heart was in pro football. When his father moved to the Washington Redskins from the Green Bay Packers in 1969, he asked his father for a job. "I wanted to get into pro football so bad," Vince Lombardi says now with a smile, I was willing to work for my father." But his father told him to practise law. And he did what his father said, like everybody else did. He worked in a law office in Minneapolis until the job materialized with the Seahawks, the expansion team on dosplay in Giants Stadium today. He arranges travel plans, supervises training camp, handles the speaking engagements and does "whatever else John Thompson [the general manager] tells me to do." He's 34 years old now, with his father's face, his father's body and his father's philosophy. "Of all my father's quotes, the one most people remember is 'Winning is the only thing,' he said. "He was talking to his players when he said that, and in that context winning is the only thing. For youngsters, it's different. For them, football should be an enjoyable learning experience. But in the context of the NFL, I can't argue with what he said." The ambition Vince Lombardi won't talk about his NFL ambitions. But he would not be his father's only son if some day he did not want to be the general manager of a team that wins the Super Bowl and the Lombardi Trophy that symbolizes it. He remembers the Packers winning the first two Super Bowls and he remembers his years before that as a ballboy with the Packers, when his father was the coach, and earlier with the Giants, when his father was Jim Lee Howell's offensive coordinator. One day at the Giants' training camp, two players were late arriving on the field for practice. "Jim Lee Howell," he remembers, "asked me who the two players were and I said I could not remember. He told me, "Get off the field until you do remember." I didn't think telling on players was my job, but I hid from my father for two or three days and when he finally saw me he said 'If you had told on those guys, I would have killed you,' so I guess I did the right thing." After a late night once in Green Bay, he curled up for a nap behind blocking dummies during a workout. "My father finally noticed me from across the field, but he didn't know it was me. He yelled, 'who the hell is that?' and when he found out he had that disgusted look. But the players had a good laugh." The burden Vince Lombardi was an all-Wisconsin fullback at Premontre High in Green Bay, but spurned offers from big-name colleges. "I wasn't that good." he says now. "I went to St Thomas College in St Paul and that was perfect. My father had never insisted I play football. I played because I'd been around it all my life and because I enjoyed it. There was some pressure because of my father's reputation, but I think that burden was more self-imposed than anything else. When the Packers came up to play the Vikings, my father would come over on Saturday afternoon and watch me play. I remember him telling me, 'lift up your feet when you run.' I coached the offensive backs in the junior varsity there while I was going to William Mitchell College of Law - that's where Chief Justice Burger is from - but staying in coaching never entered my mind. The comparison would have been too difficult." As an attorney and as a Conservative in the Minnesota Legislature for two years, he was a Viking season ticket-holder. "But in the back of my mind," he says, "I was hoping to get into pro football. I've always had a good relationship with the Commissioner [Pete Rozelle] and I mentioned to him what I'd like to do. He told me if something came up, he'd let me know. When the Seahawks were organized, John Thompson called me and I went to work in July a year ago. When we went to Minnesota to play the Vikings this season, I looked down from the press box to where my seats used to be and realized I'd come full circle." He'll really come full circle today at Giants Stadium, not far from Englewood NJ, where he lived when his father was coaching St cecilia's High School. "I'm not a Jr., but I used it to avoid confusion when my father was alive," he says. "I'm Vincent Henry Lombardi; my father was Vicnent Thomas. But my oldest son is Vicent Thomas Lombardi 2d. He's 10." His wife, Jill, and he have three other children - John, 9, Gina, 8, and Joseph, 5. Only the three oldest remember their grandfather, especially when they see his face on television. But the two oldest boys are not football players. "Right now," Mr Lombardi says, "they're soccer players." 28 January 2001 Evincing the Lombardi legend By Les Carpenter, Seattle Times staff reporter Note: The following is an excerpt. The entire article can be found here in the Seattle Times Archive. Eventually, he left the Seahawks to become a negotiator for the owners in the 1982 NFL strike, winning one of the few victories a sports league has ever had over a group of athletes. He left to become an executive in the USFL, helping to run the Michigan and Oakland teams until the reckless nature in which people were losing jobs in the struggling league bothered him so much that he left. He came back to Bellevue, where he came to learn he could mix the words of his father with his own experiences and become a motivational speaker.