The second chapter of When Pride Still Mattered created some tension in me. Throughout the book, David Maraniss consistently reminds his readers that there’s no such thing as “the innocent past” of sports. There are no good old days to get back to. There was no time in which sports were considerably more pure than they are today. Teams, players, and coaches have always done everything possible to get an edge, whether it’s legal, borderline legal, or otherwise.

But reading about Vince Lombardi’s experience at Fordham, it’s hard not to think of it as a more pure form of football, or even of life. To me, going to Fordham, even with its strict Jesuit rules, and playing football sounds like a dream.

That may say something about me, but it’s nothing I don’t already know. I like football, I like structure, and I like knowing what’s expected of me. That environment seems great in those respects, and looking at pictures from the time, it seems like it would have been a blast to be in New York at that time, even with the aforementioned Jesuit restrictions on just about anything that passes for fun.

As to Lombardi, this chapter lays another important piece of groundwork for the coach that he would become. I wonder how differently his career plays out without some time in the trenches as an offensive lineman. Does he ever develop the same appreciation for precise blocking schemes? Does he have the same standards for linemen? Obviously, we’ll never know, but one can’t help but wonder.

Interesting notes

• Both sides downplay it, but it’s hard not to take note of Lombardi’s college-aged connection to Wellington Mara, the future owner of the New York Giants. Sure, they may not have run in the same circles, but that connection isn’t nothing.

• I love “Sleepy” Jim Crowley’s characterization of undersized linemen as “watch charm” guards. We need more colorful nicknames and descriptions like that. Lucas Patrick comes to mind as a recent example of someone who might fit that description.

• Here’s the apartment where Marie Planitz was living when she met Vince Lombardi.

• Marie’s father getting ill from dye in socks was a real problem in that era, and is actually the reason why baseball players wore stirrups and white undersocks, called sanitaries. Sock dye was, at the time, apparently very dangerous.

• The book doesn’t say exactly where it was, but here’s the intersection of Avenue S and 29th Street in New York. This is where the Lombardi family moved while Vince was at Fordham.

• The arguments against college football in the 1930s sound awfully familiar: too many guys playing for money, too much of an emphasis on sports versus education, too much corruption around the game.

• I love the perspective from both sides in Maraniss’ anecdote about Fordham’s win over NYU in 1936. NYU’s hot season came to an abrupt end, and here’s how the aftermath apparently went down:

• At midfield after the game, [Fordham head coach Jim} Crowley encountered NYU coach Mal Stevens, whose Rose Bowl hopes had just been crushed.
  
  “I’m sorry, Mal,” Crowley said.
  “That’s all right, Jim,” said Stevens. “Maybe I can do as much for you some day.”

• Lombardi’s perspective on race relations was and is considered quite progressive for his time, and it’s hard not to imagine how a dust up between Lombardi and Richard Healy might have informed it. When Healy used an ethnic slur, Lombardi responded with violence. Could that and other incidents have shaped his future perspective?

Packers connections

• Fordham head coach Jim Crowley was a Green Bay native and was coached by Curly Lambeau as a high school basketball star. At the time, Lambeau was also working on another project you may have heard about.