Vince Lombardi

Vince Lombardi was an American Hall of Fame former NFL head coach whose 16-year head-coaching career produced five NFL championships (1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967) and the first two Super Bowl championships in NFL history (Super Bowl I in 1967 and Super Bowl II in 1968) with the Green Bay Packers — making him one of the foundational figures of late-20th-century American professional football. He was born Vincent Thomas Lombardi on June 11, 1913, in Brooklyn, New York City, into an Italian-American Catholic working-class family. His father Enrico "Harry" Lombardi was a Brooklyn-area Italian-immigrant butcher, and his mother Matilda "Mattie" Izzo was an Italian-immigrant homemaker.

His college football career at Fordham University across 1933–1937 — as one of the famous "Seven Blocks of Granite" Fordham offensive line — produced his 1937 graduation. His subsequent 1939–1947 career as a Fordham Preparatory School and St. Cecilia High School (Englewood, New Jersey) high-school football head coach launched his early-career American football-coaching public profile.

His 1947–1949 service as a Fordham University assistant football coach and his subsequent 1949–1953 tenure as a U.S. Military Academy at West Point assistant football coach (under head coach Earl Blaik) preceded his 1954–1958 New York Giants offensive-coordinator position. His January 28, 1959 hiring as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers — at age 45, after the Packers' 1958 1–10–1 season (the worst record in Packers franchise history at the time) — launched his 1959–1967 Green Bay Packers head-coaching public profile.

His 1959–1967 Green Bay Packers head-coaching tenure produced five NFL championships (1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967) — making the Packers the first NFL franchise to win three consecutive NFL championships in the modern NFL era (1965–1966–1967). The January 15, 1967 Super Bowl I victory over the Kansas City Chiefs (35–10) and the subsequent January 14, 1968 Super Bowl II victory over the Oakland Raiders (33–14) — the first two Super Bowl championships in NFL history — produced his late-1960s American football public profile.

His later 1969 Washington Redskins head-coaching tenure produced the Redskins' first winning season in 14 years before he was diagnosed with cancer. He died on September 3, 1970, at age 57, in Washington, D.C., of complications from colorectal cancer. The NFL Vince Lombardi Trophy (the trophy presented annually to the Super Bowl winner) was renamed in his honor in 1971.

His name Vince is the English short form of Vincent (from the Latin Vincentius meaning "prevailing"). Vince has been a popular American boys' name across the mid-to-late 20th century.