... Bart Starr removes that boulder of a ring from his right hand and sets it on the marble table.
For a moment, he's speechless. Starr stares at the three diamonds without comment. Inside the Hall of Famer's office building in Birmingham — his cozy home away from home tucked against the woods — he lets the ring do the talking for him.
Forty-five years later, he can still hear Vince Lombardi's voice. The players were seated; Lombardi was standing. Wear any of the championship rings you'd like, Lombardi told the team. But this one is historic. The three diamonds represented three consecutive championships. Three in a row to cap five in all.
No other team in NFL history, Lombardi told his players, had accomplished that feat.
"He paused for a moment," Starr said, "and he's looking at us, he's close to us sitting there in the first row of the meeting room and he said, 'I'll be surprised if anybody ever does.'"
Starr lets those words drift through the room like a cold front.
He leans in.
"No one ever has," Starr said. "That's why I wear this one. Three consecutive championships."
Tyler Dunne outdoes himself. A great tribute to the NFL's most underrated player ever.
