The Drillmaster

In San Francisco's Kezar Stadium last week stocky, swarthy Vince Lombardi, late of Brooklyn, made himself the idol of the state of Wisconsin. With Halfback Paul Hornung scoring every point, Coach Lombardi's Green Bay Packers won a 13-0 victory over the San Francisco Forty-Niners. The win put the surprising Packers in first place in the National Football League's Western Conference, set them up for a finish fight with 1959's champion Baltimore Colts.

In theory, the Green Bay Packers should be binding their wounds among the N.F.L.'s cellar teams. The team has no great passer, no great receiver, no breakaway back--the standard prerequisite for a successful pro team. Instead, Green Bay uses rugged, old-fashioned blocking to open holes for rugged, old-fashioned ball carriers. To Vince Lombardi, 47, even the complex game of the pros can be reduced to the simple principle of knocking people down. "To play in this league," he says, "you've got to be tough--physically tough and mentally tough."

Up from Siberia. One of the most granitic of the "Seven Blocks of Granite" at Fordham in the mid-30s. Lombardi began talking tough to Green Bay the minute he arrived in 1959 to put a backbone into a team that had won just one game the year before. "Green Bay was like Siberia before Lombardi came," says one player. "Other coaches would threaten to send their players here." In the first week of practice, Lombardi yelled so long and loud that he lost his voice. He insisted that injured players run in practice ("You're preparing yourself mentally"), warned flatly: "Don't cross me. If you cross me a second time, you're gone."

In no time at all, Lombardi realized that the Packers had just the kind of back he was looking for: Paul Hornung, ex-Notre Dame quarterback and former golden boy of college football. Like Lombardi's theories, Hornung went against the trend of the pros. In a league of specialists, Hornung could do nothing supremely: his passing, speed and power were only fair. What Hornung could do was play solid football tough enough to please even Lombardi. "You're my left halfback," Lombardi told Hornung. "The only way you can get out of it is to get killed."

Out of the Dark. Before Lombardi's arrival, recalls Hornung, "I wanted to get out of Green Bay. I had been wandering around in a daze--quarterback, halfback, fullback. Having a coach's backing was like coming out of the dark."

Hornung played well in 1959 as the Packers rallied to finish with a respectable 7-5 record, but not until this year did he hit full stride. He kicks field goals. He catches passes. He sweeps the ends. He passes. He slashes up the middle. Paired with jolting Fullback Jim Taylor (6 ft., 210 lbs.), Hornung gives the Packers the most powerful running game in the league.

This season he has already scored 165 points to break by 27 the league record set in 1942 by Green Bay End Don Hutson, another blond glamour boy. But proud as he is of his own performance, Hornung is in no doubt as to the reason for the resurgence of the Packers: "Lombardi. Lombardi raises hell."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.