JACK VAINISI: THE DRAFTING GENIUS BEHIND THE PACKERS DYNASTY
2009-04-23T00:00:00Z JACK VAINISI: THE DRAFTING GENIUS BEHIND THE PACKERS DYNASTY madison.com
Vince Lombardi rightly gets the lion's share of credit for the Green Bay Packers' unbelievable run of five championships in seven seasons in the 1960s. But if the National Football League had any sense of history, it would name its annual draft day television extravaganza "The Jack Vainisi Show," in honor of the man whose remarkable draft day wisdom put in place the great players who Lombardi used to win championships.
Vainisi, according to many writers of league history as well as former players, is perhaps the one man who turned a draft day comedy into serious examination of players' potential. Vainis began his career at age 23, but then died a tragically young death 10 years later just as the hapless Packers had turned the corner and were on the verge of winning championships.
His story is one of meeting life's unexpected challenges as opportunities, and of beating the opposition with preparation. His legacy is written in both the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, of which he is a member, and of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where 11 men he brought to Green Bay are enshrined as members.
All this from a guy who grew up with the Chicago Bears, but ran a series of drafts for Green Bay which are still considered among the best in history, stocking the team with the talent Lombardi would use. Although Vainisi never carried the title of general manager in his 10-year stint in Green Bay (from 1951 to 1960), that is what he really was. He was officially known as the scouting director, the personnel director, the business operations director and the chief contract negotiator.
Perhaps his best draft during his tenure was in 1958, when his first pick was Dan Currie, a Michigan State linebacker who went on to have a stellar career in Green Bay. In the second round Vainisi took Jim Taylor, the powerhouse fullback from Louisiana State who would become a Hall of Famer.
The Packers had two picks in the third round and with the first they took Dick Christy, a back from North Carolina State who never played for the Pack. But the next pick came with a choice obtained from the New York Giants in a trade which sent defensive end John Martinkovic to the Giants.
That pick was used to select Ray Nitschke, the middle linebacker from Illinois who would anchor Lombardi's defenses and who is also in the Hall of Fame. With the fourth round pick, the Packers chose Jerry Kramer, the Idaho guard who many think should be enshrined in Canton, even though he is not.
Vainisi, little remembered by Packers fans, was raised on the northside of Chicago, in close proximity to many of the Chicago Bears players of the late '30s and early '40s. Vainisi's father, Tony, ran a grocery and delicatessen across the street from the Sheraton Plaza Hotel where several of the Bears made their homes during the season. The football players tended to hang out at Tony's, and Jack got to know most of them, including Gene Ronzani, then of the Bears, later coach of the Packers.
Vainisi's Bears connection went deeper, however. He attended school and played football with Mugsy Halas, the son of Bears owner, coach and autocrat George S. Halas. As a high school senior, Vainisi was selected as an All City lineman, playing for St. George High School, and was given a scholarship to Notre Dame by Hugh Devore.
Vainisi was good enough to start as a freshman at Notre Dame, but after that season was drafted into the Army and sent to post-war Japan, where he played football on a service team while working at the headquarters of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Vainisi became ill during his tour of duty in Japan, and was diagnosed, mistakenly as it turned out, with scarlet fever. Vainisi had been suffering from the far more serious rheumatic fever and the disease and his continued football career had caused serious and permanent damage to his heart.
Although he could no longer play football, Vainisi returned to Notre Dame after his recuperation and continued his studies, along with his association with Gene Ronzani, who was an assistant coach.
Ronzani once told Vainisi that if ever landed a head coaching job in the National Football League, he would hire Vainisi, according to John Torinus, the longtime Packers executive committee member and newspaper editor in Green Bay and Appleton.
Torinus, like other authors such as David Maraniss in his biography of Lombardi and Eddie Epstien in his book on the Bears, give credit to Vainisi for stocking Lombardi's teams with the players needed for success. Writing in his 1982 book "The Packer Legend," Torinus notes that Vainisi was back-packing through Europe after his college graduation when he got word from Ronzani, who had been hired to coach the Packers, that he wanted Vainisi on his staff at Green Bay.
Vainisi, 23 years old with virtually no job experience, then became the head scout for one of the premier organizations in football history. "One of Vainisi's first draft choices in 1952 was Vito (Babe) Parilli, quarterback from Kentucky," Torinus notes, who, like a host of other draft picks, would go through an awful time in Green Bay until the 1959 arrival of Lombardi.
Perhaps it is that dismal record in the 1950s, when the Packers had a .304 winning percentage in the years before Lombardi, that makes Packer fans forget Vainisi's work. Or perhaps because the Braves baseball team had made the sports thunder in that decade, moving from Boston to Milwaukee, setting attendance records, then winning a World Series with such popular players as Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews.
In any case, despite his success, Vainisi is relatively unknown among Packer backers. Maraniss, in his highly regarded biography of Lombardi "When Pride Still Mattered," said Vainisi had "one of the most exceptional and underappreciated careers in professional football."
The dominance of the Packers during the Lombardi era "would not have been possible without the work of an accomplished young personnel man who had suffered through nine losing seasons and then died before he could witness the wonder of a team that he, almost as much as the famed Lombardi, had built," wrote Maraniss.
When Ronzani hired Vainisi, scouting and the draft were a joke at most NFL franchises, but Vainisi took his job seriously, calling around the league to establish reports on players, putting his scouting reports into 18 big binders, which ranked and coded some 4,000 players. He also traveled extensively, even convincing his new wife to take their honeymoon in the southeast, so he could scout potential draft picks.
"He became known around the league as a boy wonder," writes Maraniss, "lending Green Bay a measure of respect that it could not gain on the football field."
Stories of Max McGee, the famed Packer receiver with a strong penchant for the night life, are numerous in Green Bay, even after his untimely death in 2007. McGee once said, "When it's third and10, you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time."
Vainisi was said to be in New Orleans on a scouting trip when he went to the Tulane dormitory where McGee lived to have a chat with him. It was well past midnight when Vainisi arrived, the story goes, and the dorm was locked. But he saw lights in several rooms and hollered out "Can anyone get me Max McGee?"
"What?" came the reply of a young man who stuck his head out the window. "Max McGee!!!" Vainisi shouted back.
"Oh, thanks for bringing him," said the guy in the window. "Just leave him there and a couple of us will come down and carry him up."
Vainisi drafted McGee, who despite a self-admitted severe hangover, caught two touchdowns passes from Bart Starr, another Vainisi pick, in the first Super Bowl.
Along with Parilli in that first draft in the spring of 1952, Vainisi landed reciever Billy Howton, defensive back Bobby Dillon, and defensive lineman Dave "Hawg" Hanner. In 1953 he added Al Carmichal, Bill Forester and All Pro center Jim Ringo. In 1954 he added the irrepressible McGee in the fifth round, and the following year added linebacker Tom Bettis and defense end Jim Temp of Wisconsin.
The 1956 draft was one of Vainisi's hallmarks, and started a three-year run which would eventually serve Lombardi well. All-American running back Jack Losch of Miami was the number one pick, and while he never made a lasting impact on the Packers, Vainisi picked Hall of famer offensive tackle Forrest Gregg -- who Lombardi would call the best football player he ever coached -- in the second round. He followed that with Indiana tackle Bob Skoronski in the fifth round, defensive back Hank Gremminger in the seventh round, and topped it off by taking Alabama quarterback and punter Bart Starr in the 17th round.
In 1957 the Packers had the first choice in the draft and Vainisi's call was Notre Dame quarterback Paul Hornung, followed by Michigan tight end Ron Kramer. Vainisi again scored late in the draft, getting defensive back John Symank in the 23rd round.
Then came the 1958 coup which brought the Packers Currie, Taylor, Nitschke and Jerry Kramer. But perhaps the greatest feat of all in Vainisi's career would come after the disasterious 1958 season when the Packers went 1-10-1 and fired coach Ray "Scooter" McLean.
The disastrous season caused renowned New York sportswriter Red Smith, a Wisconsin native, to say of Green Bay: "They overwhelmed one oppenent, underwhelmed 10, and whelmed one."
Although he had absolutely no authority to do so, Vainisi began quietly asking around the league, trying to find a coach who could pull the Packers out of the 1950s doldrums and return them to championship stature. He called Halas in Chicago and Paul Brown in Cleveland, along with college coaches and others, and one name kept popping up: Vince Lombardi, the New York Giants' offensive coach.
Still without authority, Vainisi called Lombardi and told him he should seek the job, and should demand to be put in complete charge, to overcome what Vainisi perceived as improper attempts by executive committee members to interfere with the three prior coaches, Ronzani, Lisle Blackbourn and McLean.
Then he suggested to the executive committee that they should consult Halas, Brown and others to find a candidate, naming all those he had already checked with.
The committee made those calls, and after interviewing candidates, picked Lombardi as the next coach. When he got the job, Lombardi bluntly told the committee he never would have considered coming to Green Bay had Vainisi not been there, according to Maraniss and other writers.
Along with Lombardi, Vainisi had a hand, by draft or by trade, in bringing 10 men to Green Bay who would be enshrined at Canton, including Taylor, Gregg, Starr, Nitchscke, Willie Davis, Ringo, Hornung, Willie Wood, and Henry Jordan.
Acting largely on Vainisi's recommendation, one more was added after his death when the Packers took Herb Adderly in the next draft. Yet the Packers have relatively little information and no photos of Vainisi, only a two paragraph summary on its Hall of Fame page.
Vainisi died of a heart attack on the Sunday following a Thanksgiving Day loss to the Lions in 1960. The funeral was Wednesday and the Packers were all in attendance, having an early practice to make the 11 a.m. funeral Mass.
Paul Hornung, the Golden Boy taken at Vainisi's insistence, approached his widow Jackie and asked if there was anything he could do, wrote Maraniss in his book.
"Yes," replied Jackie, "Become the kind of football player Jack knew you could be."
That Sunday, largely behind Hornung, the Packers whipped the arch-rival Bears 41-13, and went on to win the Western Conference title, but lost to the Eagles in the NFL Championship game.
Vainisi was sadly missing when Hornung set the all-time league scoring record that year and the Packers won their first title with the players he obtained by draft and trade.
Mike Miller - 4/23/2009 7:55 am
Vainisi, according to many writers of league history as well as former players, is perhaps the one man who turned a draft day comedy into serious examination of players' potential. Vainis began his career at age 23, but then died a tragically young death 10 years later just as the hapless Packers had turned the corner and were on the verge of winning championships.
His story is one of meeting life's unexpected challenges as opportunities, and of beating the opposition with preparation. His legacy is written in both the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, of which he is a member, and of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where 11 men he brought to Green Bay are enshrined as members.
All this from a guy who grew up with the Chicago Bears, but ran a series of drafts for Green Bay which are still considered among the best in history, stocking the team with the talent Lombardi would use. Although Vainisi never carried the title of general manager in his 10-year stint in Green Bay (from 1951 to 1960), that is what he really was. He was officially known as the scouting director, the personnel director, the business operations director and the chief contract negotiator.
Perhaps his best draft during his tenure was in 1958, when his first pick was Dan Currie, a Michigan State linebacker who went on to have a stellar career in Green Bay. In the second round Vainisi took Jim Taylor, the powerhouse fullback from Louisiana State who would become a Hall of Famer.
The Packers had two picks in the third round and with the first they took Dick Christy, a back from North Carolina State who never played for the Pack. But the next pick came with a choice obtained from the New York Giants in a trade which sent defensive end John Martinkovic to the Giants.
That pick was used to select Ray Nitschke, the middle linebacker from Illinois who would anchor Lombardi's defenses and who is also in the Hall of Fame. With the fourth round pick, the Packers chose Jerry Kramer, the Idaho guard who many think should be enshrined in Canton, even though he is not.
Vainisi, little remembered by Packers fans, was raised on the northside of Chicago, in close proximity to many of the Chicago Bears players of the late '30s and early '40s. Vainisi's father, Tony, ran a grocery and delicatessen across the street from the Sheraton Plaza Hotel where several of the Bears made their homes during the season. The football players tended to hang out at Tony's, and Jack got to know most of them, including Gene Ronzani, then of the Bears, later coach of the Packers.
Vainisi's Bears connection went deeper, however. He attended school and played football with Mugsy Halas, the son of Bears owner, coach and autocrat George S. Halas. As a high school senior, Vainisi was selected as an All City lineman, playing for St. George High School, and was given a scholarship to Notre Dame by Hugh Devore.
Vainisi was good enough to start as a freshman at Notre Dame, but after that season was drafted into the Army and sent to post-war Japan, where he played football on a service team while working at the headquarters of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Vainisi became ill during his tour of duty in Japan, and was diagnosed, mistakenly as it turned out, with scarlet fever. Vainisi had been suffering from the far more serious rheumatic fever and the disease and his continued football career had caused serious and permanent damage to his heart.
Although he could no longer play football, Vainisi returned to Notre Dame after his recuperation and continued his studies, along with his association with Gene Ronzani, who was an assistant coach.
Ronzani once told Vainisi that if ever landed a head coaching job in the National Football League, he would hire Vainisi, according to John Torinus, the longtime Packers executive committee member and newspaper editor in Green Bay and Appleton.
Torinus, like other authors such as David Maraniss in his biography of Lombardi and Eddie Epstien in his book on the Bears, give credit to Vainisi for stocking Lombardi's teams with the players needed for success. Writing in his 1982 book "The Packer Legend," Torinus notes that Vainisi was back-packing through Europe after his college graduation when he got word from Ronzani, who had been hired to coach the Packers, that he wanted Vainisi on his staff at Green Bay.
Vainisi, 23 years old with virtually no job experience, then became the head scout for one of the premier organizations in football history. "One of Vainisi's first draft choices in 1952 was Vito (Babe) Parilli, quarterback from Kentucky," Torinus notes, who, like a host of other draft picks, would go through an awful time in Green Bay until the 1959 arrival of Lombardi.
Perhaps it is that dismal record in the 1950s, when the Packers had a .304 winning percentage in the years before Lombardi, that makes Packer fans forget Vainisi's work. Or perhaps because the Braves baseball team had made the sports thunder in that decade, moving from Boston to Milwaukee, setting attendance records, then winning a World Series with such popular players as Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews.
In any case, despite his success, Vainisi is relatively unknown among Packer backers. Maraniss, in his highly regarded biography of Lombardi "When Pride Still Mattered," said Vainisi had "one of the most exceptional and underappreciated careers in professional football."
The dominance of the Packers during the Lombardi era "would not have been possible without the work of an accomplished young personnel man who had suffered through nine losing seasons and then died before he could witness the wonder of a team that he, almost as much as the famed Lombardi, had built," wrote Maraniss.
When Ronzani hired Vainisi, scouting and the draft were a joke at most NFL franchises, but Vainisi took his job seriously, calling around the league to establish reports on players, putting his scouting reports into 18 big binders, which ranked and coded some 4,000 players. He also traveled extensively, even convincing his new wife to take their honeymoon in the southeast, so he could scout potential draft picks.
"He became known around the league as a boy wonder," writes Maraniss, "lending Green Bay a measure of respect that it could not gain on the football field."
Stories of Max McGee, the famed Packer receiver with a strong penchant for the night life, are numerous in Green Bay, even after his untimely death in 2007. McGee once said, "When it's third and10, you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time."
Vainisi was said to be in New Orleans on a scouting trip when he went to the Tulane dormitory where McGee lived to have a chat with him. It was well past midnight when Vainisi arrived, the story goes, and the dorm was locked. But he saw lights in several rooms and hollered out "Can anyone get me Max McGee?"
"What?" came the reply of a young man who stuck his head out the window. "Max McGee!!!" Vainisi shouted back.
"Oh, thanks for bringing him," said the guy in the window. "Just leave him there and a couple of us will come down and carry him up."
Vainisi drafted McGee, who despite a self-admitted severe hangover, caught two touchdowns passes from Bart Starr, another Vainisi pick, in the first Super Bowl.
 |
| Hawg Hanner, father of Joel Hanner, a GB Southwest grad (like Strube and Strass) and member of the 1975 NMU National Championship team. Son Joel later coached Hammerin Hank Sweeney at Depere East. |
Along with Parilli in that first draft in the spring of 1952, Vainisi landed reciever Billy Howton, defensive back Bobby Dillon, and defensive lineman Dave "Hawg" Hanner. In 1953 he added Al Carmichal, Bill Forester and All Pro center Jim Ringo. In 1954 he added the irrepressible McGee in the fifth round, and the following year added linebacker Tom Bettis and defense end Jim Temp of Wisconsin.
The 1956 draft was one of Vainisi's hallmarks, and started a three-year run which would eventually serve Lombardi well. All-American running back Jack Losch of Miami was the number one pick, and while he never made a lasting impact on the Packers, Vainisi picked Hall of famer offensive tackle Forrest Gregg -- who Lombardi would call the best football player he ever coached -- in the second round. He followed that with Indiana tackle Bob Skoronski in the fifth round, defensive back Hank Gremminger in the seventh round, and topped it off by taking Alabama quarterback and punter Bart Starr in the 17th round.
In 1957 the Packers had the first choice in the draft and Vainisi's call was Notre Dame quarterback Paul Hornung, followed by Michigan tight end Ron Kramer. Vainisi again scored late in the draft, getting defensive back John Symank in the 23rd round.
Then came the 1958 coup which brought the Packers Currie, Taylor, Nitschke and Jerry Kramer. But perhaps the greatest feat of all in Vainisi's career would come after the disasterious 1958 season when the Packers went 1-10-1 and fired coach Ray "Scooter" McLean.
The disastrous season caused renowned New York sportswriter Red Smith, a Wisconsin native, to say of Green Bay: "They overwhelmed one oppenent, underwhelmed 10, and whelmed one."
Although he had absolutely no authority to do so, Vainisi began quietly asking around the league, trying to find a coach who could pull the Packers out of the 1950s doldrums and return them to championship stature. He called Halas in Chicago and Paul Brown in Cleveland, along with college coaches and others, and one name kept popping up: Vince Lombardi, the New York Giants' offensive coach.
Still without authority, Vainisi called Lombardi and told him he should seek the job, and should demand to be put in complete charge, to overcome what Vainisi perceived as improper attempts by executive committee members to interfere with the three prior coaches, Ronzani, Lisle Blackbourn and McLean.
Then he suggested to the executive committee that they should consult Halas, Brown and others to find a candidate, naming all those he had already checked with.
The committee made those calls, and after interviewing candidates, picked Lombardi as the next coach. When he got the job, Lombardi bluntly told the committee he never would have considered coming to Green Bay had Vainisi not been there, according to Maraniss and other writers.
Along with Lombardi, Vainisi had a hand, by draft or by trade, in bringing 10 men to Green Bay who would be enshrined at Canton, including Taylor, Gregg, Starr, Nitchscke, Willie Davis, Ringo, Hornung, Willie Wood, and Henry Jordan.
Acting largely on Vainisi's recommendation, one more was added after his death when the Packers took Herb Adderly in the next draft. Yet the Packers have relatively little information and no photos of Vainisi, only a two paragraph summary on its Hall of Fame page.
Vainisi died of a heart attack on the Sunday following a Thanksgiving Day loss to the Lions in 1960. The funeral was Wednesday and the Packers were all in attendance, having an early practice to make the 11 a.m. funeral Mass.
Paul Hornung, the Golden Boy taken at Vainisi's insistence, approached his widow Jackie and asked if there was anything he could do, wrote Maraniss in his book.
"Yes," replied Jackie, "Become the kind of football player Jack knew you could be."
That Sunday, largely behind Hornung, the Packers whipped the arch-rival Bears 41-13, and went on to win the Western Conference title, but lost to the Eagles in the NFL Championship game.
Vainisi was sadly missing when Hornung set the all-time league scoring record that year and the Packers won their first title with the players he obtained by draft and trade.
Mike Miller - 4/23/2009 7:55 am
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