Considering how many books on pro football are released every year, it's eye-opening that a definitive biography of the best man ever to take a snap from center has never been published. That man, of course, is Bart Starr, and if you didn't know that, then it is especially important that you read "America's Quarterback" by Keith Dunnavant, the most important pro football book this season.

Starr is the only quarterback in the modern NFL era to win five NFL championships. To quote myself (as cited by Dunnavant from a piece in the Wall Street Journal), he was "the greatest big-game quarterback in NFL history." He was also, in Dunnavant's words, "One man who long ago learned to accept being overlooked and underrated."

Alabama coach J.B. "Ears" Whitworth was so clueless he let Starr ride the bench in his senior year as the Crimson Tide finished 0-10. Nonetheless, Starr was drafted into the NFL -- just barely, in the 17th round -- by the Green Bay Packers. Teammate Paul Hornung said that Starr's first pro coach, Ray "Scooter" McLean, "had no business being a head coach in the NFL" and McLean proved it by posting a 1-10-1 record in Starr's first season.

In 1958, things would change forever when Vince Lombardi, previously the offensive coordinator of the New York Giants, was named the Packers' head coach. The forceful and charismatic Lombardi overshadowed his quarterback, but as Dunnavant artfully phrases it, "Bart Starr needed Vince Lombardi, but Vince Lombardi also needed Bart Starr."

"The dirty little secret of those days," said one of Starr's teammates, "was that during the week it was Lombardi's team, but on Sunday it was really Starr's team."

In the big game he always made the right call. He was the hero of perhaps the most famous pro football game ever played, the "Ice Bowl" against the Dallas Cowboys on Dec. 31, 1967. How much trust did the great Vince Lombardi put in Starr? When Starr came to the sidelines with 13 seconds on the clock and told his coach he wanted to carry the ball himself from the 1-yard line, Lombardi said, "then run it, and let's get the hell out of here." (Dunnavant's account of the final drive to Green Bay's 21-17 victory is almost more exciting than watching the replay.)

Star Tribune, Star Tribune
LOMBARDI AND LANDRY: HOW TWO OF PRO FOOTBALL�S GREATEST COACHES LAUNCHED THEIR LEGENDS AND CHANGED THE GAME FOREVER By Ernie Palladino

Lombardi, the Packers and Bart Starr dominated the 1960s, but only because they were able to beat Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys in two thrilling championship games to cap the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons. In his new book, "Lombardi and Landry," veteran football writer Ernie Palladino explores a subject that for some odd reason has escaped the close scrutiny of pro football historians: namely, that Lombardi and Landry, two of the greatest coaches of all time, both learned the ropes under the Giants' Jim Lee Howell in the late 1950s (Landry was the defensive coach).

"Lombardi and Landry," Palladino writes, "both became winners ... Lombardi learned about defense from Landry. Landry learned about the winning attitude from Lombardi.

"They were a head coach's dream."

Allen Barra's latest book is "Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark."