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What: “When Pride Still Mattered”

Author: David Maraniss

Publisher: Simon & Schuster.

Price: $26

In this remarkably insightful look at the life, times and death of America’s most famous football coach, Vincent Thomas Lombardi, the football follower finds old myths punctured, fundamental truths revealed.

Maraniss dispenses with one piece of Lombardi mythology, his alleged reaction to his first session with a player agent, in 1963. Confronted by offensive lineman Jim Ringo’s agent, demanding a substantial raise, Lombardi--so the story goes--abruptly went to another office, returned minutes later, and said, “Go talk to the Eagles about it. Mr. Ringo has just been traded to Philadelphia.”

One problem: It never happened. Not that way, anyhow.

The negotiating was done by Lombardi’s personnel director and there was another element: Ringo wanted to be traded to Philadelphia, his hometown.

Throughout the book, from Lombardi’s $1,700-a-year start at St. Cecilia’s High in New Jersey to his million-dollar deal with the Washington Redskins, the coaching portrait that Maraniss slowly brings to life is of Lombardi as a master psychologist, not as a brilliant game-day coach.

As Lombardi once said, “There are other coaches who know more about Xs and O’s. But I’ve got an edge. I know more about football players than they do.”

One of Lombardi’s safeties, Tom Brown, put it this way to Maraniss:

“Most pro football players are basically lazy guys. We want to take the easy way out. We are so far superior. We’ve always been better, as 9- and 10-year-olds--we never had to give 100% effort--if we gave 75% effort, we were still better than all the other kids.”

Lombardi, Brown said, extracted that missing 25% and he used the example of 1960s Detroit lineman Alex Karras, a noted underachiever.

If he had played for Lombardi, Brown said, Karras would have been “unstoppable.”

As a game-day coach, former players say, Lombardi contributed little. The NFL Films clips that have Lombardi shouting from the sidelines, “What the hell’s goin’ on out there?” really is the sum of it.