In praise of Jack Vainisi: NFL draft genius
By Denis Gullickson
It’s time Packers fans gave Jack Vainisi a great big “Thank You!”
“Who the heck is Jack Vainisi?” you ask. “What did he ever do for us?”
Well, brace yourself if you haven’t heard of the guy. Fact is that — without Vainisi (pronounced “va-NEE-see”) — there might not be a “Green Bay Packers.”
That’s right: Vainisi’s too-often-unsung impact on our NFL team is such that — without it — the Packers might well be doing business in some other city… under a different name.
Add to that the likelihood that Vainisi’s contributions to the team may have cost him his life.
The Unfabulous Fifties
Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau was an athletic institution in this town. A cocksure kid with a saucy pompadour — Curly marked his territory all over GB’s east side.
His coming out party at the tender age of 13, when his eighth grade Whitney School team stymied East High’s freshman squad, sounded the horns for Curly as he embarked on his own illustrious high school sports career.
The quote under his senior picture said it all: After athletics, he was going to “conquer the rest of the world.” He damned near did, too.
In 1917, after getting his diploma, Lambeau left for UW-Madison — returning when frosh football was canceled. The next autumn, he lined up in the Notre Dame backfield next to one George Gipp under the auspices of one Knute Rockne.
That winter, he wound up back in GB sidelined by tonsillitis, eventually going to work for the Acme — nee Indian — Packing Company.
Curly had a cameo with the Green Bay town team in 1917, but was in South Bend when the “Big Bay Blues” lined up in 1918. Back in town for good in 1919, he was the oomph as GB’s football boys reorganized for a two-year tear as the preeminent town team in the state.
In 1921, the Packers went national. In 1922, Lambeau became the team’s player-coach, continuing in that role into the 1929 season when he stepped off the field once and for all.
Through the 1949 season, Lambeau’s name was interchangeable with “Green Bay Packers.” His six championships — including the NFL’s only three-peat — made him a celebrity and a coaching legend.
As the thirties morphed into the forties, however, championships were fewer and further between: Five NFL titles came between 1929 and 1939; just one was tacked on after that, in 1944.
As the forties drifted into the fifties, some whispered that football’s evolution had fossilized Lambeau. In early 1950, Lambeau and the Packers executive committee sighted irreconcilable differences and split.
Lambeau went on to coach the Chicago Cardinals and Washington Redskins — both pathetic performances for a would-be conqueror. Back in Green Bay, the Packers had become a rudderless ship lacking steam.
From 1950 through 1958, the Packers logged a lousy record of 34-74-2. A succession of coaches blew the whistle at the team, but none of them could regain the glory. Gene Ronzanni was first – 1950-1953; then, Lisle Blackbourn – 1954-1957; then, Ray “Scooter” McLean in 1958.
McLean’s lone 1-10-1 season prompted sports scribe Red Smith to say the team “overwhelmed one opponent, underwhelmed ten, and whelmed one.”
Truth be told, the Packers had pretty much underwhelmed everyone who was still paying attention. Young quarterback Bart Starr was less-clever and more-damning of that ’58 season — calling it “miserable… sickening… disappointing… testing.”
The little town that had been so proud of itself and its mighty football team was feeling frustration bordering on ennui. Voices across the NFL were talking about the league being too big for Green Bay and relocating the team — perhaps to Milwaukee or Minneapolis.
In GB, a 1956-referendum for a new stadium passed overwhelmingly.
Renaissance
Lambeau had faltered in later years, but Ronzani was still replacing a legend. It wasn’t easy. Ronazani’s overall tally — 14-31-1— was so anemic that he resigned with two games left in the 1953 campaign.
It was especially disconcerting because — as a young guy relatively fresh off the field as a player — Ronzani had represented a clean start, a break with the albatross of the Packers’ lost glory.
Given his record and the fact that it would take another decade for the Packers to climb back into the thick of things, Ronzani’s own impact on Green Bay football is also likely underappreciated. His, however, was at least one pair of hands that set the ship toward what is often seen as the Packers second golden age of the 1960s.
A seemingly superficial step, perhaps, Ronzani introduced green and gold uniforms in contrast to Lambeau’s vainglorious use of Notre Dame’s blue and gold following Curly’s lone semester as a Domer. “We’re the Green Bay Packers,” Ronzani said — looking to cleave the past as he pointed the team’s prow in a different direction.
Amid some controversy, he also introduced the first African-American player, Bob Mann, to the GB lineup. Mann became a star receiver — though for just four seasons. Ronzani also introduced several innovative offensive formations including the double-wing and shotgun.
It was another of Ronzani’s moves that would change everything — eventually. Indeed, his 1950-hiring of Jack Vainisi as a “player talent scout” — coupled with the 1959 arrival of Vince Lombardi — might well rank right up there in Packers history with such things as signing Don Hutson, plucking Brett Favre off the Atlanta Falcons’ bench or landing Reggie White.
Sure, Lombardi would hammer his men into one of the elite units in football annals, but he was little without players who could answer the call. Vainisi stocked Lombardi’s shelves with the right guys. What few know, however, is that Vainisi also played a pivotal role in securing Lombardi.
While the team on the field mostly stunk up the joint, Vainisi kept tweaking the roster. While not all of the players would do battle under Lombardi, several of his lesser-known players would at least give the ‘50s Packers marginal credibility. Selections of note taken over his ten drafts included:
1951 — Fred Cone.
1952 — Babe Parilli, Billy Howton, Bobby Dillon, Dave Hanner, Darel Teteak.
1953 — Al Carmichael, Bill Forester, Roger Zatkoff, Jim Ringo, Joe Johnson.
1954 — Max McGee.
1955 — Tom Bettis, Jim Temp.
1956 — Forrest Gregg, Bob Skoronski, Hank Gremminger, Bart Starr.
1957 — Paul Hornung, Ron Kramer, John Symank.
1958 — Dan Currie, Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke, Jerry Kramer.
1959 — Boyd Dowler.
1960 (with Lombardi) — Tom Moore, Bob Jeter.
Vainisi’s input was also key in acquiring contributing free agents such as Fuzzy Thurston, Henry Jordan, Willie Davis and Willie Wood.
Eleven players Vainisi brought to Titletown have busts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, to date. Others will join them in years to come. Still other players Vainisi drafted — like Billy Butler, Timmy Brown and Alex Hawkins — went on to stellar careers elsewhere. Remarkable, really, from a guy who conducted his first NFL draft at age 23.
Early Years
If football is a boy’s game played by grown men, then Vainisi is the kid who cleared the sandlot, gathered and sorted out the other kids and got one of the dads to coach them — all the while calming the neighbors who griped that he was wasting his time. In the process, he helped shape a championship team.
His official titles included scouting director, personnel director, business operations director and chief contract negotiator. Many suggest that “general manager” would have been more fitting — putting him in a regal tier with guys like Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson.
Several football historians have suggested that Vainisi’s diligence to his craft transformed the NFL draft from a good-old-boy, backslapping soiree into the serious endeavor it is today. Prior picks often relied on the nod of a college coach to a buddy who headed up a pro team.
Vainisi grew up on Chicago’s near-north side, surrounded by Bears players of the late ‘30s and early ‘40s. Dad, Tony, ran a grocery store and delicatessen across from the Sheraton Plaza Hotel where several Bears players lived during the season. “Tony’s” was a hangout and young Jack got to know players — including Ronzani.
Jack was a decent footballer himself — attending St. George High School and battling on the gridiron alongside Mugsy Halas, Bears’ coach George Halas’s kid. Vainisi was named an All-City lineman, earning a scholarship to Notre Dame.
Drafted into the Army, he took sick and was misdiagnosed with scarlet fever while serving in post-war Japan and playing football on a service team. Actually, he had rheumatic fever and it and football’s rigors permanently damaged his heart. He returned to Notre Dame, but football was out.
Ronzani had gone from Bears player to assistant coach, then to Packers head coach and general manager. He’d promised Vainisi a job should he ever get an NFL head coaching position. Vainisi was backpacking in Europe following graduation when he learned that he was going to work for the Packers. He hadn’t yet seen his 24th birthday.
Vainisi took the task of scouting and drafting seriously. He set up intricate data systems on college and pro players — calling around the league to establish reports on players, putting his scouting reports into 18 big binders and, eventually, ranking and coding some 4,000 players. He also traveled extensively — even convincing his new wife, Jackie, to honeymoon in the southeast so he could scout potential draft choices.
“He became known around the league as a boy wonder, lending Green Bay a measure of respect that it could not gain on the football field,” David Maraniss wrote in “When Pride Still Mattered.”
Vainisi’s drafts were a mix of short-term attempts at fixing the team and long-term investments in overhauling the thing. Guys like Babe Parilli, Billy Howton, Bobby Dillon and Al Carmichael would contribute for a few years while the Packers languished at the league’s bottom.
But the team was also slowly accumulating guys like Dave Hanner, Bill Forester, Jim Ringo and Max McGee. The ’56 draft added Forrest Gregg, Bob Skoronski, Hank Gremminger and Bart Starr. ’57 brought Paul Hornung, Ron Kramer and John Symank. Vainisi’s ’58 effort is hailed as one of NFL history’s best with Dan Currie, Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke and Jerry Kramer joining the huddle. In ’59, Boyd Dowler was added.
Heaven’s firmament was twinkling a tad.
Landing Lombardi
It wasn’t all actuarial drudgery spent pouring over the copious notes in those binders, however. On the road, Vainisi interacted with players and those around them. On a visit to Tulane University, he encountered the man and the myth of Max McGee.
McGee, of course, was a famous partier who could also play darned good football. The combination of those two talents fired in the first Super Bowl when a hung-over McGee challenged Starr for MVP honors. “When it’s third and 10,” McGee once said, “you can take the milk drinkers and I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time.”
At Tulane, Vainisi located McGee’s dormitory, but it was after midnight. The doors were locked. Vainisi shouted up to some rooms that still had the lights on, “Can anyone get me Max McGee?”
Someone came to a window and yelled back, “What?”
“McGee,” Vainisi replied, “Max McGee!”
“Thanks for bringing him,” said the guy at the window. “Just leave him there and a couple of us will come down and carry him up.”
Vainisi wasn’t toiling in the trenches without some trepidation, however. What was the point of putting together an able crew if the guy at the helm couldn’t steer the ship? Vainisi was also perturbed by the sometimes-petty meddling of the Packers Executive Committee; players with complaints about position or playing time approached committee members who then pled the players’ case to the coach.
After watching Ronzani’s ignominious departure, Vainisi had to have had some doubts. After adding capable players to the lineup but watching two more coaches flail, he might have had some regrets.
So, he took action.
Now Vainisi wasn’t in charge of the coaching staff, mind you. His focus was player personnel. However, in his many contacts throughout the league, he’d begun asking around for the name of a coach who could right the ship. Halas and Paul Brown were consulted, as were various college coaches.
Based on that input, Vainisi contacted Lombardi on the Giants coaching staff and told him to apply for the job. He also told him to demand complete control of team operations to avoid the interference of the Packers executive committee.
Vainisi then suggested that the executive committee check in with Halas, Brown and Vainisi’s other contacts for their recommendations — knowing they’d name Lombardi.
Vainisi’s machinations might have seemed like subterfuge, but, then, who cares?
On February 2, 1959, Vince Lombardi took charge of the hapless Packers and began melding them into World Champions. Lombardi told the committee he would not have considered taking the job had Vainisi not been there. He also demanded complete control of the operation.
The relationship between Lombardi and Vainisi was crucial in creating a winner. As Maraniss suggested, “They had known each other for years through mutual friends, and they shared the same passion for football and a desire to make the Packers a first-class organization.”
They also shared an Italian ethnicity, which the Executive Committee viewed in condescending terms, suggested Maraniss.
“There’s the Italian Mafia,” was a frequent slur when Lombardi and Vainis were seen together. En route to five championships, that “Italian Mafia” would coalesce a football unit mob bosses would have found intimidating.
Tragically, Vainisi died of a heart attack the Sunday after a Thanksgiving Day loss to the Lions in 1960. His funeral was the following Wednesday — the Packers in full attendance. Hornung, a player taken at Vainisi’s insistence, offered his condolences to Jackie, Vainisi’s widow, asking if there was anything he could do. “Yes,” Jackie replied, “Become the kind of football player Jack knew you could be.”
The following Sunday, Hornung had a field day as the Packers skinned the Bears 41-13. Three weeks later, they were nipped by the Eagles, 17-13, in the NFL Championship Game. It was the only playoff game that Lombardi and his team — largely assembled by Vainisi — would ever lose.
Vainisi would never see the fruits of his labors — at least not from this mortal coil.
Honoring Vainisi
So, here comes this year’s NFL draft — an annual celebration of our football passion and every fan’s prayer that their team might add some players — even just one — who can take the team to pearly gates of the Super Bowl.
It’s also an era when every doohickey on a stadium is named for some corporation or another. As one writer suggested, perhaps it’s fitting that the NFL draft be named for Jack Vainisi — a guy who turned selecting players into an art form and an applied science.
Vanissi’s was “one of the most exceptional and underappreciated careers in professional football,” penned Mariniss. “The Glory Years of Lombardi’s Packers 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.”
More than one person said the task killed him. Vainisi’s brother Jerry, who served as Bears GM in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but was also a Packers ball boy as a kid, said, “they told him the pressures were too much, that if he didn`t slow down, he wouldn`t make it to 40. He didn`t. Heart attack.”
Jack Vainisi’s passing even prompted the great Lombardi to ask Jackie Vainisi, “Do you think I was at all the cause of Jack’s death.”
Jackie carefully considered the question and her husband’s willingness to give his all to help shape Lombardi’s huddle. She remembered the long, long hours, day upon day. She recalled the mental toll from all of those miles and all of that record keeping and negotiating. She knew full well the savaging of a life like that on a heart twice the normal size. And, then, she told Lombardi, “No. Nobody could do that to Jack but Jack.”
Jerry Vainisi recalled that many in the NFL’s front offices understood his brother’s significance to the Packers. Paul Brown, for instance, who had helped guide Jack Vainisi toward pressing Lombardi into the Packers coaching job, assured Jerry that “one of the reasons Lombardi had so many great years in Green Bay was because of all that work Jack did, behind the scenes.”
So, why have so few people heard of Jack Vainisi?
There are likely several reasons: Vainisi’s own demure personality…. laboring in that abysmal stretch of 1950s … eclipsed by the gigantic super nova that was Vince Lombardi and the staggering success of the guys he drafted — each a future legend in his own right… his untimely death just a month before the Packers made it back to their first NFL championship game in sixteen years…
Some even aver that the resurgence of baseball in Milwaukee overshadowed the Packers in the 1950s — shading Vainisi’s efforts.
John Gaie, who attended his first Packers game in 1949, said, “Vainisi’s name was uncommon in Green Bay, so I do, somewhat, remember him putting the team together.”
Whatever the reason for the preponderance of neglect to this point, let’s all celebrate the contribution of Jack Vainisi, a young man — a Chicago kid — whose tireless efforts helped turn around the football fortunes of the NFL’s smallest member city and likely helped keep the franchise put.
It may have cost him everything. n
It’s time Packers fans gave Jack Vainisi a great big “Thank You!”
“Who the heck is Jack Vainisi?” you ask. “What did he ever do for us?”
Well, brace yourself if you haven’t heard of the guy. Fact is that — without Vainisi (pronounced “va-NEE-see”) — there might not be a “Green Bay Packers.”
That’s right: Vainisi’s too-often-unsung impact on our NFL team is such that — without it — the Packers might well be doing business in some other city… under a different name.
Add to that the likelihood that Vainisi’s contributions to the team may have cost him his life.
The Unfabulous Fifties
Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau was an athletic institution in this town. A cocksure kid with a saucy pompadour — Curly marked his territory all over GB’s east side.
His coming out party at the tender age of 13, when his eighth grade Whitney School team stymied East High’s freshman squad, sounded the horns for Curly as he embarked on his own illustrious high school sports career.
The quote under his senior picture said it all: After athletics, he was going to “conquer the rest of the world.” He damned near did, too.
In 1917, after getting his diploma, Lambeau left for UW-Madison — returning when frosh football was canceled. The next autumn, he lined up in the Notre Dame backfield next to one George Gipp under the auspices of one Knute Rockne.
That winter, he wound up back in GB sidelined by tonsillitis, eventually going to work for the Acme — nee Indian — Packing Company.
Curly had a cameo with the Green Bay town team in 1917, but was in South Bend when the “Big Bay Blues” lined up in 1918. Back in town for good in 1919, he was the oomph as GB’s football boys reorganized for a two-year tear as the preeminent town team in the state.
In 1921, the Packers went national. In 1922, Lambeau became the team’s player-coach, continuing in that role into the 1929 season when he stepped off the field once and for all.
Through the 1949 season, Lambeau’s name was interchangeable with “Green Bay Packers.” His six championships — including the NFL’s only three-peat — made him a celebrity and a coaching legend.
As the thirties morphed into the forties, however, championships were fewer and further between: Five NFL titles came between 1929 and 1939; just one was tacked on after that, in 1944.
As the forties drifted into the fifties, some whispered that football’s evolution had fossilized Lambeau. In early 1950, Lambeau and the Packers executive committee sighted irreconcilable differences and split.
Lambeau went on to coach the Chicago Cardinals and Washington Redskins — both pathetic performances for a would-be conqueror. Back in Green Bay, the Packers had become a rudderless ship lacking steam.
From 1950 through 1958, the Packers logged a lousy record of 34-74-2. A succession of coaches blew the whistle at the team, but none of them could regain the glory. Gene Ronzanni was first – 1950-1953; then, Lisle Blackbourn – 1954-1957; then, Ray “Scooter” McLean in 1958.
McLean’s lone 1-10-1 season prompted sports scribe Red Smith to say the team “overwhelmed one opponent, underwhelmed ten, and whelmed one.”
Truth be told, the Packers had pretty much underwhelmed everyone who was still paying attention. Young quarterback Bart Starr was less-clever and more-damning of that ’58 season — calling it “miserable… sickening… disappointing… testing.”
The little town that had been so proud of itself and its mighty football team was feeling frustration bordering on ennui. Voices across the NFL were talking about the league being too big for Green Bay and relocating the team — perhaps to Milwaukee or Minneapolis.
 |
| I guess it was called "the new stadium"! |
In GB, a 1956-referendum for a new stadium passed overwhelmingly.
Renaissance
Lambeau had faltered in later years, but Ronzani was still replacing a legend. It wasn’t easy. Ronazani’s overall tally — 14-31-1— was so anemic that he resigned with two games left in the 1953 campaign.
It was especially disconcerting because — as a young guy relatively fresh off the field as a player — Ronzani had represented a clean start, a break with the albatross of the Packers’ lost glory.
Given his record and the fact that it would take another decade for the Packers to climb back into the thick of things, Ronzani’s own impact on Green Bay football is also likely underappreciated. His, however, was at least one pair of hands that set the ship toward what is often seen as the Packers second golden age of the 1960s.
A seemingly superficial step, perhaps, Ronzani introduced green and gold uniforms in contrast to Lambeau’s vainglorious use of Notre Dame’s blue and gold following Curly’s lone semester as a Domer. “We’re the Green Bay Packers,” Ronzani said — looking to cleave the past as he pointed the team’s prow in a different direction.
Amid some controversy, he also introduced the first African-American player, Bob Mann, to the GB lineup. Mann became a star receiver — though for just four seasons. Ronzani also introduced several innovative offensive formations including the double-wing and shotgun.
It was another of Ronzani’s moves that would change everything — eventually. Indeed, his 1950-hiring of Jack Vainisi as a “player talent scout” — coupled with the 1959 arrival of Vince Lombardi — might well rank right up there in Packers history with such things as signing Don Hutson, plucking Brett Favre off the Atlanta Falcons’ bench or landing Reggie White.
Sure, Lombardi would hammer his men into one of the elite units in football annals, but he was little without players who could answer the call. Vainisi stocked Lombardi’s shelves with the right guys. What few know, however, is that Vainisi also played a pivotal role in securing Lombardi.
While the team on the field mostly stunk up the joint, Vainisi kept tweaking the roster. While not all of the players would do battle under Lombardi, several of his lesser-known players would at least give the ‘50s Packers marginal credibility. Selections of note taken over his ten drafts included:
1951 — Fred Cone.
1952 — Babe Parilli, Billy Howton, Bobby Dillon, Dave Hanner, Darel Teteak.
1953 — Al Carmichael, Bill Forester, Roger Zatkoff, Jim Ringo, Joe Johnson.
1954 — Max McGee.
1955 — Tom Bettis, Jim Temp.
 |
| Vainisi also drafted Buck's good buddy Hank out of MSU in 1955 who would go on to a stellar coaching career and who whose 5 sons & grandsons would go on to play for MSU. |
1956 — Forrest Gregg, Bob Skoronski, Hank Gremminger, Bart Starr.
1957 — Paul Hornung, Ron Kramer, John Symank.
1958 — Dan Currie, Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke, Jerry Kramer.
 |
| Dan Currie, a great Detroiter & Spartan, drafted by Vainisi |
1959 — Boyd Dowler.
1960 (with Lombardi) — Tom Moore, Bob Jeter.
Vainisi’s input was also key in acquiring contributing free agents such as Fuzzy Thurston, Henry Jordan, Willie Davis and Willie Wood.
Eleven players Vainisi brought to Titletown have busts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, to date. Others will join them in years to come. Still other players Vainisi drafted — like Billy Butler, Timmy Brown and Alex Hawkins — went on to stellar careers elsewhere. Remarkable, really, from a guy who conducted his first NFL draft at age 23.
Early Years
If football is a boy’s game played by grown men, then Vainisi is the kid who cleared the sandlot, gathered and sorted out the other kids and got one of the dads to coach them — all the while calming the neighbors who griped that he was wasting his time. In the process, he helped shape a championship team.
His official titles included scouting director, personnel director, business operations director and chief contract negotiator. Many suggest that “general manager” would have been more fitting — putting him in a regal tier with guys like Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson.
Several football historians have suggested that Vainisi’s diligence to his craft transformed the NFL draft from a good-old-boy, backslapping soiree into the serious endeavor it is today. Prior picks often relied on the nod of a college coach to a buddy who headed up a pro team.
Vainisi grew up on Chicago’s near-north side, surrounded by Bears players of the late ‘30s and early ‘40s. Dad, Tony, ran a grocery store and delicatessen across from the Sheraton Plaza Hotel where several Bears players lived during the season. “Tony’s” was a hangout and young Jack got to know players — including Ronzani.
Jack was a decent footballer himself — attending St. George High School and battling on the gridiron alongside Mugsy Halas, Bears’ coach George Halas’s kid. Vainisi was named an All-City lineman, earning a scholarship to Notre Dame.
Drafted into the Army, he took sick and was misdiagnosed with scarlet fever while serving in post-war Japan and playing football on a service team. Actually, he had rheumatic fever and it and football’s rigors permanently damaged his heart. He returned to Notre Dame, but football was out.
Ronzani had gone from Bears player to assistant coach, then to Packers head coach and general manager. He’d promised Vainisi a job should he ever get an NFL head coaching position. Vainisi was backpacking in Europe following graduation when he learned that he was going to work for the Packers. He hadn’t yet seen his 24th birthday.
Vainisi took the task of scouting and drafting seriously. He set up intricate data systems on college and pro players — calling around the league to establish reports on players, putting his scouting reports into 18 big binders and, eventually, ranking and coding some 4,000 players. He also traveled extensively — even convincing his new wife, Jackie, to honeymoon in the southeast so he could scout potential draft choices.
“He became known around the league as a boy wonder, lending Green Bay a measure of respect that it could not gain on the football field,” David Maraniss wrote in “When Pride Still Mattered.”
Vainisi’s drafts were a mix of short-term attempts at fixing the team and long-term investments in overhauling the thing. Guys like Babe Parilli, Billy Howton, Bobby Dillon and Al Carmichael would contribute for a few years while the Packers languished at the league’s bottom.
But the team was also slowly accumulating guys like Dave Hanner, Bill Forester, Jim Ringo and Max McGee. The ’56 draft added Forrest Gregg, Bob Skoronski, Hank Gremminger and Bart Starr. ’57 brought Paul Hornung, Ron Kramer and John Symank. Vainisi’s ’58 effort is hailed as one of NFL history’s best with Dan Currie, Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke and Jerry Kramer joining the huddle. In ’59, Boyd Dowler was added.
Heaven’s firmament was twinkling a tad.
Landing Lombardi
It wasn’t all actuarial drudgery spent pouring over the copious notes in those binders, however. On the road, Vainisi interacted with players and those around them. On a visit to Tulane University, he encountered the man and the myth of Max McGee.
McGee, of course, was a famous partier who could also play darned good football. The combination of those two talents fired in the first Super Bowl when a hung-over McGee challenged Starr for MVP honors. “When it’s third and 10,” McGee once said, “you can take the milk drinkers and I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time.”
At Tulane, Vainisi located McGee’s dormitory, but it was after midnight. The doors were locked. Vainisi shouted up to some rooms that still had the lights on, “Can anyone get me Max McGee?”
Someone came to a window and yelled back, “What?”
“McGee,” Vainisi replied, “Max McGee!”
“Thanks for bringing him,” said the guy at the window. “Just leave him there and a couple of us will come down and carry him up.”
Vainisi wasn’t toiling in the trenches without some trepidation, however. What was the point of putting together an able crew if the guy at the helm couldn’t steer the ship? Vainisi was also perturbed by the sometimes-petty meddling of the Packers Executive Committee; players with complaints about position or playing time approached committee members who then pled the players’ case to the coach.
After watching Ronzani’s ignominious departure, Vainisi had to have had some doubts. After adding capable players to the lineup but watching two more coaches flail, he might have had some regrets.
So, he took action.
Now Vainisi wasn’t in charge of the coaching staff, mind you. His focus was player personnel. However, in his many contacts throughout the league, he’d begun asking around for the name of a coach who could right the ship. Halas and Paul Brown were consulted, as were various college coaches.
Based on that input, Vainisi contacted Lombardi on the Giants coaching staff and told him to apply for the job. He also told him to demand complete control of team operations to avoid the interference of the Packers executive committee.
Vainisi then suggested that the executive committee check in with Halas, Brown and Vainisi’s other contacts for their recommendations — knowing they’d name Lombardi.
Vainisi’s machinations might have seemed like subterfuge, but, then, who cares?
On February 2, 1959, Vince Lombardi took charge of the hapless Packers and began melding them into World Champions. Lombardi told the committee he would not have considered taking the job had Vainisi not been there. He also demanded complete control of the operation.
The relationship between Lombardi and Vainisi was crucial in creating a winner. As Maraniss suggested, “They had known each other for years through mutual friends, and they shared the same passion for football and a desire to make the Packers a first-class organization.”
They also shared an Italian ethnicity, which the Executive Committee viewed in condescending terms, suggested Maraniss.
“There’s the Italian Mafia,” was a frequent slur when Lombardi and Vainis were seen together. En route to five championships, that “Italian Mafia” would coalesce a football unit mob bosses would have found intimidating.
Tragically, Vainisi died of a heart attack the Sunday after a Thanksgiving Day loss to the Lions in 1960. His funeral was the following Wednesday — the Packers in full attendance. Hornung, a player taken at Vainisi’s insistence, offered his condolences to Jackie, Vainisi’s widow, asking if there was anything he could do. “Yes,” Jackie replied, “Become the kind of football player Jack knew you could be.”
The following Sunday, Hornung had a field day as the Packers skinned the Bears 41-13. Three weeks later, they were nipped by the Eagles, 17-13, in the NFL Championship Game. It was the only playoff game that Lombardi and his team — largely assembled by Vainisi — would ever lose.
Vainisi would never see the fruits of his labors — at least not from this mortal coil.
Honoring Vainisi
So, here comes this year’s NFL draft — an annual celebration of our football passion and every fan’s prayer that their team might add some players — even just one — who can take the team to pearly gates of the Super Bowl.
It’s also an era when every doohickey on a stadium is named for some corporation or another. As one writer suggested, perhaps it’s fitting that the NFL draft be named for Jack Vainisi — a guy who turned selecting players into an art form and an applied science.
Vanissi’s was “one of the most exceptional and underappreciated careers in professional football,” penned Mariniss. “The Glory Years of Lombardi’s Packers 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.”
More than one person said the task killed him. Vainisi’s brother Jerry, who served as Bears GM in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but was also a Packers ball boy as a kid, said, “they told him the pressures were too much, that if he didn`t slow down, he wouldn`t make it to 40. He didn`t. Heart attack.”
Jack Vainisi’s passing even prompted the great Lombardi to ask Jackie Vainisi, “Do you think I was at all the cause of Jack’s death.”
Jackie carefully considered the question and her husband’s willingness to give his all to help shape Lombardi’s huddle. She remembered the long, long hours, day upon day. She recalled the mental toll from all of those miles and all of that record keeping and negotiating. She knew full well the savaging of a life like that on a heart twice the normal size. And, then, she told Lombardi, “No. Nobody could do that to Jack but Jack.”
Jerry Vainisi recalled that many in the NFL’s front offices understood his brother’s significance to the Packers. Paul Brown, for instance, who had helped guide Jack Vainisi toward pressing Lombardi into the Packers coaching job, assured Jerry that “one of the reasons Lombardi had so many great years in Green Bay was because of all that work Jack did, behind the scenes.”
So, why have so few people heard of Jack Vainisi?
There are likely several reasons: Vainisi’s own demure personality…. laboring in that abysmal stretch of 1950s … eclipsed by the gigantic super nova that was Vince Lombardi and the staggering success of the guys he drafted — each a future legend in his own right… his untimely death just a month before the Packers made it back to their first NFL championship game in sixteen years…
Some even aver that the resurgence of baseball in Milwaukee overshadowed the Packers in the 1950s — shading Vainisi’s efforts.
John Gaie, who attended his first Packers game in 1949, said, “Vainisi’s name was uncommon in Green Bay, so I do, somewhat, remember him putting the team together.”
Whatever the reason for the preponderance of neglect to this point, let’s all celebrate the contribution of Jack Vainisi, a young man — a Chicago kid — whose tireless efforts helped turn around the football fortunes of the NFL’s smallest member city and likely helped keep the franchise put.
It may have cost him everything. n
1 comment:
Watch ESPN college football, NFL Football live stream online. If you want to never miss a moment of your favorite team this season with on-demand options from Live stream portals. Watch each touchdown, every sack, and each interception from every team live stream each and every week.
Watch ESPN College Football Live Stream
NFL Network Live Streaming Online Television Game Pass
Watch NFL Network Live Stream
Football Game Live Stream
Watch Football Game Live Stream Online
Post a Comment