It had already been a long day, and nature beckoned, so Allie Sherman had ducked into a men’s room at the Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square during a break in the NFL draft that Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 27, 1960. He needed to get back quickly — the Giants would soon be on the clock to make a second-round pick.
Soon, he was startled by a voice.
“Allie, I have a proposition for you.”
Sherman recognized the scratchy tenor at once. Standing to his right was Vince Lombardi, who one day earlier had coached the Green Bay Packers in their feisty but futile 17-13 loss to the Eagles in the 1960 NFL Championship game at Franklin Field, not 2 miles west of where the two men now stood.
