Fordham, St. Cecilia and the search for magis: A Jesuit-infused journey on the Hudson River Valley tested and forged the coach’s faith
By Jay Sorgi | For On Mission
NEW YORK, NY — The Latin word magis, translated into English, means more. The “Spiritual Exercises” by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, reflects the search for our lives to become “what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.”
Vince Lombardi’s young adult years were an educational journey of discovery deeply rooted in his inner Catholic faith. They were also an outward, often-frustrating exploration to find his place, where his profession as a football coach could embody magis and fulfill that faith in daily life.
From 1933 to 1937, Lombardi lived at and attended Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus, America’s first Catholic school of higher learning. The relatively serene, verdantly pastoral campus was a 100-minute subway ride and walk from his boyhood home.
The towering center of the campus, Keating Hall, opened during Lombardi’s senior year at Rose Hill. That year, he sat in its massive, theater-like classroom for his capstone philosophy classes, integrating the lessons of his entire college coursework.
“This is what’s called the Ratio Studiorum,” said Robert Reilly, the retired assistant dean of the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School. “The Jesuits created the world’s first liberal arts curriculum, which is used to this day.”
“If you’re going to see God in all things, you’ve got to look at a whole bunch of things to see him, so you can start seeing the connections.”
Reilly says Lombardi took the greater Jesuit calling to heart, particularly in how it relates to Christ’s greatest commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength… You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:30-31).
The essence of part one involves the sacrifice of the Mass, which Lombardi celebrated daily at Fordham University Church, a two-block walk from Keating Hall. Some of the artwork inside the chapel remains from Lombardi’s days.
“In this chapel, his deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament matured into loyalty and love that he expressed almost every day of his life,” said Fr. John L. Connolly, S.J., during a homily at a memorial Mass for Lombardi on November 7, 1970, at University Church. “Welcoming each new day with his Lord, he guaranteed a success for himself far more meaningful and enduring than the roar of the crowd or the glistening trophies.”
Reilly said that the second part of Christ’s commandment that Lombardi took to heart, one that paralleled his discipline, moral soundness and trust in objective truth, involved “social justice, or corporal works of mercy.”
“He saw that we’re not separated from anybody here,” Reilly said.
“Collectively, if a rock falls down and falls on him, we’ve all got to work together to get this rock off the guy. There was a collective. I can’t turn my back and say you got the responsibility, not me.”
The third part of Lombardi’s rock-hard triumvirate of faith, family and football innately taught him that lesson: the interconnectedness and shared responsibility of the offensive and defensive lines.
Lombardi and his six-line cohorts formed a rock-hard unit called the Seven Blocks of Granite, one that turned Fordham into a national powerhouse.
The “Blocks,” the heart of the Fordham Rams, won 78.2 percent of their games in Lombardi’s three years on varsity. Only one point — the margin of a season-ending loss to New York University in his senior year — kept Lombardi and Fordham from playing in the 1937 Rose Bowl.
Lombardi received his degree in the spring of 1937. With his Catholic calling to strive for magis deeply integrated in his life, the next 22 years became a struggle to find a place to make that calling a reality.
A journey south to Wilmington, Delaware, led to a job at DuPont, playing semipro football and assisting at Salesianum High School in his first year coaching.
After a year back home, the coaching bug led him on a drive across the George Washington Bridge from Fordham to St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey.
The school no longer stands, but the church where Lombardi often worshipped remains as strong as granite. It houses relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and the spirit of the coach endures — his lessons in chemistry, Latin, physics and basketball — where his Saints won a state championship — were not just about academics or athletics but about the Jesuit ideal of magis… of God’s integration into all things.
That includes football, of course, for which he became head coach in 1942. His players’ regular weekend routine involved the click-clack of football cleats inside church for a pregame Mass, followed by the demolition of their opponents — 25 of them as part of a 32-game unbeaten streak with three consecutive sectional championships as head coach.
Lombardi knew he had found his calling in coaching. But he knew magis called — to go farther than a high school in a New Jersey suburb.
He returned to his spiritual home at Fordham to serve as an assistant varsity coach and head freshman coach in 1947 and 1948. He spent five years as an offensive assistant under Earl “Red” Blaik at Army, less than an hour drive north along the Hudson River. He spent five more years as an offensive coach with the New York Giants, where he paired with defensive coach Tom Landry to help lead the Giants to an NFL title in 1956.
Lombardi knew he was head coaching material, but the opportunity for magis slid past him for those 12 years, at least partially due to social injustices he endured against Italian-Americans.
“He was informed by a selection committee at a Southern college that he would never get a head job anywhere because he was Italian, and he never forgot that,” said Bill Curry, who played for Lombardi in Green Bay in 1965-66.
But he found God in his suffering, the ever-more visceral call to make the opportunity he would someday receive count for more than just wins and losses, even as his demand for more victory would never be satiated.
That more would finally come in January 1959, but nowhere near the banks of the Hudson River.
It would come for him in his 46th year, on the banks of the Fox River.