Coach Vince Lombardi always felt guilty that he was only a coach and not a priest. Had he remembered his earlier anointing as Overcomer in playing the Game he might have remembered that he was more priest than coach:
“But the most telling moment of the season for Vinnie came at the conclusion of an early game against powerful Erasmus Hall, a public high school then in the midst of a long winning streak. Led by the golden arm of its crackerjack quarterback, Sid Luckman, Erasmus shut out St. Francis, 13-0. Yet Lombardi, who smacked Luckman with a few good licks on defense, felt like anything but a loser when it was over. He experienced what he later described as a locker room epiphany. As he sat slumped on the bench in his grass-stained red and blue uniform, he was overcome by joy, a rare feeling for him. Nothing on the sandlots felt quite like this. He understood that he was not a great player, but he had fought hard, given his best and discovered that no one on the field intimidated him, not matter how big or fast. He was confident, convinced that he could compete, puzzled why other players did not put out as much as he had. He felt fatigue, soreness, competitive yearning, accomplishment-and all of this, he said later, left him surprisingly elated.
WORK and PLAY. It was an intoxicating sensation, one that he would want to experience again and again for the rest of his life.” (p. 3, Dr Rick Barr, Play the Game: The Holy Order of Exuberance, 2012,)
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