Ol' Ricky's Washington Football Tales - Lombardi Time + Just Pick a Name

Ol’ Ricky is always early cause with Washington traffic you can lose 30 minutes in a blink and you can’t be late to practice or games. So, when people ask why I’m early, I just say “Lombardi Time.” Sometimes they nod, more often nowadays they’re confused.

When Lombardi took over the Redskins in 1969, players would arrive at meetings five minutes early only to hear the coach already teaching. If you weren’t 15 minutes early, he said, you weren’t committed to this team. It quickly became known that 10 a.m. meetings started at 9:45 under “Lombardi Time.”

The story was told to me by the late Steve Guback, who covered Washington sports for 75 years until passing in 2018 at age 91. He was my favorite writer while growing up. I read him in The Washington Star until its folding in 1981. He even wrote a Redskins insert that Jack Kent Cooke paid to include in regional papers in 1982. I started covering the Redskins in 1983 so we just missed each other, but he did 25 years and I’ve done 37 off and on so we’ve covered the franchise’s history pretty much.

Whenever I wanted to know something about the old days, I’d ask Steve, who even worked on the Redskins stats crew until 2017. His mind was sharp and hosted an in-house sports show at his retirement community. You wouldn’t have met a nicer person.

If you ask me who was the best Redskins reporter ever, I’d say Guback. He covered George Preston Marshall, Vince Lombardi and George Allen mercilessly. A great reporter and strong writer. His stories of dealing with people from the old days are pretty much the same that I talk about in recent years. People don’t change, just the names.

My favorite Guback story was about the 5 o’clock club in Carlisle. Lombardi and staff would meet with reporters at 5 p.m. daily for a beer, but the rule was nothing said could be used in stories. Man, that’s pretty much useless aside from just getting to know people.

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Lombardi was basically done game-planning each week by 5 p.m. Fridays. The team did a walk through on Saturdays, but Lombardi said, “The hay’s in the barn” by Friday. I once repeated that line to my young colleague Jody and he said, “What’s that mean?” Uh, well, if the hay’s in the barn it’s not in the field so the work is done. “Dude, you’re such a farmer,” Jody said. Conversely, I once asked Jody why he was late and he said, “Dude (he liked that word) traffic on the bridge was gnarly.” I’m not sure what that meant.

Tomorrow: Ol’ Ricky remembers road trips.

Rick Snider is an award-winning sports writer who has covered Washington sports since 1978. He first wrote about the Washington football team in 1983 before becoming a beat writer in 1993. Snider currently writes for several national and international publications and is a Washington tour guide. Follow Rick on Twitter at @Snide_Remarks.