Snubs have continued for Vince Lombardi’s Black players

This being Black History Month, it seems timely to raise the question: How much has the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s bogus quote about Forrest Gregg hurt the African American players from the Vince Lombardi era in voting for all-time NFL teams?

In 2019, when a committee of coaches, media members and other league personnel voted on the 100 greatest players for the NFL’s Centennial Team, Gregg was the only Packer chosen from the greatest dynasty in league history. To this day, the 1965-67 Packers are the only team ever to win three consecutive league titles under a playoff format, while Lombardi’s five championships in a decade also remain unmatched.

Twenty-five years earlier, in 1994, when the NFL’s 75th anniversary team was chosen, Gregg and Ray Nitschke were the only Lombardi Packers to make that 49-man team.

The contention here isn’t that Gregg didn’t deserve serious consideration for those teams. After all, he was named to eight Pro Bowls, more than any other Lombardi-era player. Rather, the point is that there were other Packers from those teams no less deserving and whether a fabricated quote hurt their chances.

The question is: How much were voters influenced by a quote that appeared in the Hall of Fame’s 1977 release when Gregg was enshrined in Canton? The release stated that in his book, “Run to Daylight,” Lombardi said: “Forrest Gregg is the finest player I’ve ever coached.”
Lombardi wrote nothing of the kind in “Run to Daylight.”

In fact, there’s no credible evidence that he ever uttered words of praise about Gregg that even came close to that. Gregg himself could never answer where the quote originated, only that his wife had informed him about it. And George Flynn, editor of the two-volume book, “Vince Lombardi on Football,” where those words appeared in a caption but not in Lombardi’s text, was later involved in at least two lawsuits over copyright issues that raise questions about the integrity of his work.

Gregg also received more hype than he deserved for his matchup with Deacon Jones in the Packers’ 28-7 upset over the Los Angeles Rams in the 1967 Western Conference playoff. Jones called it “his worst day in football,” and thereafter continued to toss bouquets Gregg’s way, which in itself was no small endorsement considering Jones’ stature as one of the game’s greatest pass rushers.

But Gregg also has benefited from arms of the NFL focusing almost entirely on that angle of the story. As Lombardi often did, he game-planned to run at the Rams’…