This is where the journey began for Vince Lombardi, inside this weather-beaten brick schoolhouse on Demarest Avenue. This is Englewood On the Palisades Charter School now, but in 1939 it was St. Cecilia’s High School, next door to the great gothic church where Lombardi, a daily communicant, worshipped.
Inside these walls, Lombardi taught physics, chemistry, biology and Latin for the princely sum of $1,000 a year. At the front of building now is a bright colored sign, “gym.” In there, he would coach both the boys’ basketball team and the girls’ six-on-six basketball team, and with distinction, even though he had to learn everything he knew about the sport from a textbook.
But it was also here where he was hired by Andy Palau, a Fordham teammate who was the Saints’ varsity football coach, to be his assistant. It was here that, three years later, at age 29, Lombardi would become a head football coach for the very first time, and where, not long after, the Saints would string together a 32-game unbeaten streak.
His team would cruise up Tenafly Road on the way to games singing together — “On, Cecilia, on, Cecilia, fight on for your fame!” to the tune of “On Wisconsin — and then gather prior to kickoff to say The Lord’s Prayer before inviting the wrath of God on its opponents, and one of his old players, Don Crane, would later tell author David Maraniss: “When his eyes started to blink, you stayed away.”
Sunday, precisely 11.2 miles from this spot, they will hold a game to determine the champion of the football-playing world, and in the moment that champion is crowned it won’t matter who did what to get there. Everyone will have only one name on their lips, and in their hearts, and in their hands. Lombardi.
***
This is where the journey begins for the Vince Lombardi Trophy, inside this large office building tucked into the woods of Parsippany, just off Sylvan Way. On Wednesday, it was carefully placed into a Federal Express truck and traveled the 29 miles from this Tiffany & Co. campus hideaway just off I-287, made the trip east along I-80 and over the bridge, finally settling in Midtown.
There, Justin Tuck — who twice before had cradled its seven pounds in his hands like a newborn — donned white gloves and helped carry it to its temporary resting place on Super Bowl Boulevard. It is the second-most-famous trophy in the United States — only the Stanley Cup has a higher Q rating, and it had a 77-year head start.
And it symbolizes something different for every man who touches it, who thrusts it high into a night sky as confetti falls around them, who hugs it and kisses it and marvels at everything it takes to assume ownership of it — and, yes, it is permanent. Unlike the Stanley Cup, they build a new one every year. It’s for keeps.
“It’s an incredible rush!” Tom Coughlin, the Giants coach who has won two of them as a head coach and one as an assistant, gushed in an email. “All the years and the great chase. Very few realize how difficult it is just to make it to the Super Bowl, let alone win it. The rush and the surge of emotion … and then for me, my immediate vision of [my wife] Judy and our family and what it meant for all of us.”
And, of course the name.
“In the National Football League,” Coughlin said, “Lombardi symbolizes excellence.”
The players know that, and yet they don’t, not really, not until the moment it’s actually in their hands, until they see it up close. It is shockingly simple and stunningly beautiful, especially up close: a football resting on an imaginary tee, 22 inches high, handcrafted out of sterling silver by Tiffany silversmiths who spend four months working on it each year.
“For many of us, we spend our whole lives dreaming of what it’ll be like to hold the Lombardi Trophy in our hands,” said Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey, a future Hall of Famer who has been toiling since 1999 in pursuit of just such a moment. “All it symbolizes, who it’s named after … it’s hard not to get a thrill just talking about it.”
That is where the journey ends for the Lombardi Trophy: in hands, in hearts, in memories that carry the players who will carry it for a lifetime.