[14][15] Outside their local neighborhood, the Lombardi children were subject to the rampant ethnic discrimination that existed at the time against Italian immigrants and their descendants.

[39] The loss destroyed all hopes of Fordham playing in the Rose Bowl and taught Lombardi a lesson he would never forget — to never underestimate your opponent.

He tried to play semi-professional football with the Wilmington Clippers[43] of the American Association and worked as a debt collector for a collection agency, but those efforts very quickly proved to be failures.

[44] Later in life, he would explain to others that he was close to graduating, but his desire to start and support a family forced him to leave law school and get a job.

[59] "Decades later, looking back on his rise, Lombardi came to regard ..." Blaik's decision not to resign "... as a pivotal moment in his [own] career" — it taught him perseverance.

"Howell readily acknowledged the talents of Lombardi and Landry, and joked self-deprecatingly, that his main function was to make sure the footballs had air in them.

Lombardi applied for head coaching positions at Wake Forest,[66] Notre Dame, and other universities and, in some cases, never received a reply.

Before the championship game, Lombardi met with Wellington Mara and advised him that he would not take the Giants' head coaching job, which was initially offered after the end of the 1959 season.

"[81] In later years as coach of the Packers, Lombardi made it a point to admonish his running backs that if they failed to score from one yard out, he would consider it a personal affront to him and he would seek retribution.

[82] He coached the Packers to win their next nine post-season games, a record streak not matched or broken until Bill Belichick won ten straight from 2002 to 2006 with New England.

[84] His only other post-season loss occurred to the St. Louis Cardinals in the third-place Playoff Bowl after the 1964 season (officially classified as an exhibition game).

[85] Including postseason but excluding exhibition games, Lombardi compiled a 105–35–6 (.740) record as head coach, and never suffered a losing season.

[90] As coach of the Packers, Lombardi converted Notre Dame quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung to a full-time halfback.

[91] In 1967, Lombardi's Packers hosted the Dallas Cowboys in Green Bay on December 31 in the NFL Championship Game, a rematch of the previous season.

[99] Shortly after the victory in Super Bowl II, Lombardi resigned as head coach of the Packers on February 1, 1968, continuing as general manager.

He handed the head coaching position to Phil Bengtson, a longtime assistant, but the Packers finished at 6–7–1 in the 1968 season and were out of the four-team NFL playoffs.

[109] He seemed preoccupied with football even on their honeymoon, and cut it short to get back to Englewood ... "I wasn't married to him more than one week", she later related, "when I said to myself, Marie Planitz, you've made the greatest mistake of your life.

[15] When Lombardi was 12, while serving as an altar boy on Easter Sunday, "... amid the color and pageantry scarlet and white vestments, golden cross, scepters, the wafers and wine, body and blood ... the inspiration came to him that he should become a priest ...",.

[122] During his stay at Green Bay, Lombardi once emerged from his office and appeared before his secretary, Ruth McKloskey, wearing "... all these priest robes on, and he had a miter with a tassel, everything".

[123] Each day on his way to work for the Green Bay Packers, Lombardi would stop at St. Willebrord Church and "offer a prayer in case of unexpected death: 'My God, if I am to die today, or suddenly at any time, I wish to receive this Communion as my viaticum ...

[124] He regularly attended Sunday Mass at Resurrection Church in the Allouez neighborhood of Green Bay's southeast side, always sitting with his wife in the middle of the ninth pew.

[133] Among professional football head coaches, in the midst of the civil rights movement, Lombardi's anti-discrimination views were unusual.

Lombardi let it be known to all Green Bay establishments that if they did not accommodate his black and white players equally well, then that business would be off-limits to the entire team.

[140] While with the Redskins in 1969, at Lombardi's insistence and with the support of then-minority owner Jack Kent Cooke, Hall of Fame wide receiver Bobby Mitchell joined the Redskins' front office, becoming the first African American to work in an NFL front office, and eventually becoming the NFL's first African American executive, working his way up to assistant general manager in 1981.

[144] According to Lombardi biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer David Maraniss, if he caught a coach "discriminating against a player thought to be gay, he'd be fired".

[145] Richard Nicholls, the lifelong partner of Lombardi's younger brother, Hal, stated, "Vin was always fair in how he treated everybody ... a great man who accepted people at face value for what they were, and didn't judge anybody.

[118][page needed] McDonald had been handpicked by owner Edward Bennet Williams, but was a disappointment in his rookie year and spent most of the 1968 season on the bench with an injury.

[158] On June 24, 1970, Lombardi was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital, and tests "revealed anaplastic carcinoma in the rectal area of his colon, a fast-growing malignant cancer in which the cells barely resemble their normal appearance".

In attendance were team officials, coaches Tom Landry, Dick Nolan, Weeb Ewbank, Alex Webster, Norm Van Brocklin, Phil Bengtson and Bill Austin, Commissioner Pete Rozelle, past and present members of the Packers, Redskins, and Giants, broadcasters Ray Scott and Howard Cosell, former students from Saints, colleagues and players from West Point (including Red Blaik), and classmates from Fordham University, including the remaining Seven Blocks of Granite.

[178] A play titled Lombardi opened on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York City in October 2010, following an out-of-town tryout at the Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.