What It Takes to Be No 1

Every competitor, no matter how successful, NEEDS to hear this once in a while…

You’ve got to pay the price.
Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-the-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
There is no roomfor second place. There is only one place in my game and that isfirst place. I havefinished second twice in my time at Green Bay and I don’t ever want tofinish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an
American zeal to befirst in anything we do and to win and to win and to win. Every time a football player goes out to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up-from
the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to play with your heart-with everyfiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough tofind a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.
Running afootball team is no different from running any other kind of organization-an army, a political party, a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win-to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.
It’s a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they’re there to compete. They know the rules and the objectives when they get in the game. The objective is to win fairly, squarely, decently, by the rules-but to win.
And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for, needs, discipline and the harsh reality of head-to-head combat.
I don’t say these things because I believe in the “brute” nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-victorious.
Vince Lombardi

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 9:25 pm and is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “What It Takes to Be No 1”

1. Jim Davis Says:
   May 17th, 2010 at 9:36 pm

   Very few truer words have ever been spoken.