HBO's Lombardi Documentary Enlightens, but Fails In the Red Zone

The glimpses we get of images of Vince Lombardi mirror the broader insights we get into the man on HBO's newest sports documentary about the man. The pictures and video are as fleeting and vague as the man himself and, by the end, we're left wondering who he really was.

Of course, it's a tall task taking on the man whose name is on the championship trophy but who symbolizes a game no longer played, the football in the time before television remade as Rollerball on turf.

He was a celebrity before celebrity culture became the central focus of all media, and, thus we are left to try to piece him together from the dimming memories of those who were there.

The most intriguing part of the 90-minute film is the early stuff when he was figuring out who he was as a high school coach, Army assistant under Red Blaik and early days with the New York Giants. He was as ambitious as they come, a man who vowed to put Green Bay, Wis., on the map and then actually did it. But, he was also ready to leave Green Bay for the top job at the Giants, an intriguing twist on his vows of loyalty and devotion.

Anyone who dealt with him as a player or sportswriter has a lot of stories about his control of everything he could get his hands on about the team, payrolls, coverage and even the field. Little of that makes the film.

In spite of a good representation of interviews with Bart Starr, Dave Robinson, Jerry Kramer and Gary Knafelc, the Packer era material seems thin, as though everyone already knows the story.

And then there's the bombshells about his wife's drinking problem and his children's lack of connection to him as he blows hot and cold with the team's success.

In the end, I wondered who this guy was, the alleged author of sports' greatest aphorism, that winning isn't everything, it's the only thing (despite suggestions to the contrary, the doc actually has Lombardi saying it).

What would Vince make of the sport today? Unfortunately, this documentary doesn't have a clue and doesn't care to ask. Pity that.