Newly cast, chased and polished each year by the silversmiths at Tiffany & Co., the Vince Lombardi Trophy is almost certainly recognisable to aficionados of American football, even if its name is less familiar. The Vince Lombardi Trophy is, of course, awarded to the winners of the championship game of the National Football League (NFL), otherwise known as the Super Bowl.
The trophy is named in honour of Vincent Thomas ‘Vince’ Lombardi, a celebrated head coach best known for leading the Green Bay Packers to victory in the first two American Football League (AFL) – National Football League (NFL) World Championship Games at the conclusion of the 1966 and 1967 seasons; those games would later be recognised, retrospectively, as Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. On March 3, 1969, Lombardi appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, having been hired as head coach to Washington Redskins. However, on June 24, 1970, he was diagnosed with a rare, highly aggressive colorectal cancer, known as anaplastic carcinoma, and died on September 3, aged 57.
The existing Super Bowl trophy, which originally bore the legend, ‘World Professional Football Championship’, was renamed in his memory and first presented, in its new guise, to the Baltimore Colts following Super Bowl V at the Miami Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida on January 17, 1971. The presentation of an new trophy was fitting insofar as Super Bowl V was the first championship game played since the AFL and NFL merged to form a single league with two conferences, ahead of the 1970 season, or effectively the first of the ‘modern era’.