The Vince Lombardi Trophy is arguably the most cherished prize in all of sports. Its beginnings, however, were much more humble.
In Don Weiss‘ 2003 book, “The Making of the Super Bowl,” the late, former NFL exec says that the task of designing the trophy was handed to Oscar Riedener, the design chief for Tiffany and Co., whose workshop is located in Parsippany, N.J. It was 1966, before the first game between champions of the NFL and AFL was to be played.
Riedener, a native of Switzerland, didn’t know a football from a bratwurst. He stopped by FAO Schwartz in Manhattan to buy one and study it.
According to Weiss’ book, Riedener “pulled out a pair of scissors and Scotch tape, then started cutting an empty cereal box. Five minutes later, after folding, cutting and taping, he had transformed the box into a trophy base so that the football could be perched on top.”
Reidener met with then NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle over lunch and sketched out his concept on a napkin. The Commish OK’d it, although what he did with the cocktail napkin will have to go into the dust bin of history.
“I’d like to know if there was a ring stain from the martini glass on it,” said Tom O’Rourke, VP of business sales for Tiffany.
It wasn’t initially called the Lombardi Trophy (Vince and his Packers hadn’t won it the first of two times yet), just as the game wasn’t yet called the Super Bowl. But oh, how the two have grown in stature the last 46 years.
On Feb. 5, more than 100 million people will see the Giants or Patriots raise the Lombardi high into the confetti-strewn air.
Not bad for a little piece of silver born in a New Jersey town.
With the exception of the ancient and perpetual Stanley Cup, Tiffany and Co. makes all of the major U.S. sports championship trophies: the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship trophy and the Commissioner’s Trophy that goes to the World Series winner.
And what 300-pound lineman wouldn’t want a shiny creation from the world-famous silversmith?
Lucky Giants and Patriots — they own three of them apiece, and get to play for another a week from Sunday.
Football’s holy grail is still carefully handmade at a workshop in Parsippany, where a team of 25, the majority of them silversmiths, began work on this year’s model in September, when dreams of winning it still consumed most NFL teams. Fourteen plates of sterling silver are cut and molded in separate components, then forged together to form the iconic trophy.
There are spinners, who mold the ball on a lathe with a chuck. There are chasers, who sculpt the seams of the football with a hammer and chisel. Individual laces are cut out of silver and soldered into the ball itself, which is placed on its triangular tee. Finally, after four months of work, the final polishing occurs.
This year’s creation left New Jersey in a Brink’s Truck on Wednesday and will arrive at a Tiffany’s store in Indianapolis on Thursday, placed in a vault overnight and ceremonially delivered to the league on Friday to officially kick off Super Bowl week. From now until the presentation, every care will be taken to keep it spotless.
“We have a no-touch policy,” O’Rourke said . “Nobody actually touches it unless they’re wearing white gloves. So at the ceremony on Friday, we will do everything we can do to keep people from touching it. It has its own case and is locked, and inside the case there are several pairs of these gloves. It then goes to the NFL Experience where it’s behind a glass display case.”
Finally, it will be moved to Lucas Oil Stadium for the game.
“The NFL has a former athlete or celebrity actually march the trophy for the presentation to midfield. That individual is still wearing the white gloves,” O’Rourke says. “While they’re walking from the tunnel to the 50-yard line, you have all these people just reaching out and tapping it, touching it as if it was a celebrity. So by the time it gets to the 50-yard line, it’s covered in fingerprints.
“For two weeks prior to the game we do everything we can to prevent anyone from even breathing on the trophy, and by the time it gets to Commissioner (Roger) Goodell, it’s covered in smudges.”
O’Rourke says the hardest thing after the game is to get the winning team to part with the trophy.
Unlike the British Open, for instance, where an engraver is on hand to etch the winner’s name onto the claret jug, the Lombardi trophy gets shipped to Parsippany for engraving, and to remove dents, fingerprints, and, adds O’Rourke, “champagne stains.”
