Winning is not a sometime
thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do
things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is a
habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
There is no room for second place. There is
only one place in my game and that is first place. I have finished second twice
in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There is
a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is
and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do and to win
and to win and to win.
Every time a football player goes out to play his trade,
he’s got to play from the ground up--from the soles of his feet right up to his
head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s ok,
You’ve got to be smart to be No. 1 in any business. But more important, you’ve
got to play with your heart--with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky
enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to
come off the field second.
Running a football team is no different from running
any other kind of organization--an army, a political party, a business. The
principles are the same. The object is to win--to beat the other guy. Maybe that
seems hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.
It’s a reality of life that men are
competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s
why they’re there -- to compete. They know the rules and the objectives when they
get into the game. The objective is to win--fairly, squarely, decently, by the
rules--but to win.
And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt, who in
the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the
discipline. There is something in the good men that yearns for, needs,
discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.
I don’t say these
things because I believe in the ‘brute’ nature of man or that men must be
brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human deficiency.
but, I firmy believe that any man’s finest hour--his greatest fulfillment to all
he holds dear--is that moment when he has worked his heart out for a good cause
and lies exhausted on the field of battle-- VICTORIOUS.
-Vince Lombardi