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"Don't Cross Me." Lombardi hit Green Bay so hard the grass is still quivering. He demanded absolute authority—the power to hire and fire, to set salaries, even to design Packer uniforms. Once the whip was in his hand, he set it singing. "This is a violent sport," he told the Packers. "To play in this league, you've got to be tough —physically tough and mentally tough." He chased grandstand kibitzers off the training field, declared the rowdier Green Bay taverns off-limits, slapped $25 fines on players who showed up as little as one minute late for practice, $50 fines on those who broke his 11 p.m. training-camp curfew. He ordered injured Packers to run in practice ("You're preparing yourselves mentally"), and slackers found themselves heading out of town on the evening train. "Don't cross me," Lombardi warned Quarterback Bart Starr. "If you cross me a second time, you're gone." Self-pity provoked only scorn. "When Lombardi came," recalls Center Jim Ringo, "I told him I wanted out. I said I wanted to play on a winning team. He looked at me and said, 'This is going to be a winning team.' You know his voice. You know his eyes. If he said so, I knew it must be true."
Methodically, relentlessly, Lombardi set out to build his winner. He traded boldly and shrewdly; from Cleveland alone, he got four of this year's Packer stars: Halfback Lew Carpenter, Tackle Henry Jordan, Defensive Ends Bill Quinlan and Willie Davis—two of the fiercest pass rushers in pro ball. Safetyman Willie Wood, an agile opportunist who leads the N.F.L. with nine pass interceptions this year, was signed as a free agent—nobody else wanted him—and All-League Guard Fred Thurston was a three-time loser (Chicago. Philadelphia. Baltimore) when Lombardi rescued him from obscurity in a trade with the Colts. About 50% of today's Packers were already on the roster, but nobody would have known it: Jim Taylor was a second-string fullback; Paul Hornung was a sometime quarterback, sometime halfback, sometime fullback, who spent most of his time in a state of total confusion. "Before Lombardi arrived. I was a jumping jack." says Hornung. ''When he came, everything changed. He said. 'You're going to be my left halfback, period. The only way you can get out of it is to get killed.' Having a coach's backing was like coming out of the dark."