Most of us know that Rick Majerus loves the Green Bay Packers, and admires Vince Lomardi, who led Green Bay during its dynasty years, while Majerus was a teen, growing up in Milwaukee. The September 20, 1999 New Yorker has a fine article about Lombardi by Adam Gopnik, which reviews the first serious biography of Lombardi, by David Maraniss. I was struck by strong similarities between Lombardi's and Majerus' coaching styles, philosophies, and the course of each coach's career:
"Lombardi's [read: Majerus'] ultimate ambition was to get a job back in the city at one of the Catholic colleges." (P. 127.)
"Once he had assembled his players, he scared them half to death, threatening them with professional extinction at every moment, and made them work past the constraints that held back most other players." (P. 130.)
"Lombardi's [Majerus'] insight was that you could push players much, much harader than coaches normally did--and they wouldn't rebel. What's more, he grasped that, because they were so gifted, they hadn't ever been pushed as hard as they could be." (Ibid.)
"He forced his players to practice the sweep [man-to-man defense; blocking out] over and over, ten or eleven hours at a stretch, until its complicated mechanics were second nature to them, and it became an almost metaphysical experience." (Ibid.)
"Lombardi [Majerus] also grasped the complementary, paradoxical truth that tiny gestures are more effective in motivating men than big rewards. So along with the repetition came an emphasis on symbols: dress codes, work codes, a right way and a wrong way to do everything." (Ibid.)
"The price that coaches like Lombardi [Majerus] seem to pay is to not so much have an unhappy inner life as a remarkably flat one. The dance of distance and intimacy that they have to practice is so constantly demanding that there is nothing left." (P. 131.) (Lombardi was not close to his family; Majerus has no immediate family.)
"Although Lombardi [Majerus] liked to pretend that he had been exiled to anonymity, in fact his legend benefited enourmously, and predictably, from his being way out there in Wisconsin [Utah]." Lombardi's [Majerus'] old New York sportswriter friends loved to make the trip to Green Bay [Salt Lake] to ogle what their old pal had done in the sticks." (P. 131.)
"From the mid-sixties [nineties] on, in fact, he was so legendary that he was looking for a way to get out of Green Bay [Salt Lake]..." (Ibid.)
"Despite his reputation as a martinet, Lombardi [Majerus] was in fact a remarkably adaptable coach. He was tough on players who could take it, like his receiver [forward; center] Max McGee [Alex Jensen; Michael Doleac], and easier on players who couldn't, like the golden boy Paul Hornung [Keith Van Horn; Andre Miller; Tony Harvey]. This is a good way to run a Church, or a football [basketball] team." (P. 129.)
"Lombardi's Packers did go on, to an impressive degree, to do the kinds of things football players did [after retirement] if they could--insurance, broadcasting, running car dealerships." (P. 130.) In other words, Lombardi's comprehensive approach to his players, preparing them for life after the game, is analogous to Majerus' overriding emphasis on academics.
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