The image in your mind might be of a bespectacled man in his 50s , wearing a long winter coat and hat—or maybe a green windbreaker. Vince Lombardi is certainly best known as the man who led the Green Bay Packers to five NFL championships during the 1960s. A few decades earlier, though, he was just another guy trying to make a tackle.
Our RMY Auctions Photo of the Day is a rare shot of Lombardi, the player, in action at Fordham.
As a senior, Vince was one of the Rams’ ‘Seven Blocks of Granite”, a sold, hard-nosed lineman, though undersized. He earned the nickname while playing guard for Fordham, but the photo shows Lombardi on defense, making a tackle against St. Mary’s in the 1930s. It’s already been authenticated as a Type I photo by PSA. The date is incorrectly listed as a 1940s image, however.
Lombardi graduated from Fordham in 1937. By 1939, he was a high school assistant coach and the rest is history. He finally became an NFL head coach in the late 1950s when the downtrodden Packers came calling on the highly regarded New York Giants assistant.
The photo has some crazing and a crease at the top but the image is strong. It’s one of more than 300 original photographs, many from newspaper archives, up for bid in RMY’s Holiday Auction. Bidding continues through December 9 at RMYAuctions.com.
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