Black Super Bowl coaches will knock down another wall

MIAMI -- When Tony Dungy began coaching in the National Football League 25 years ago, it was a black and white league. Most of the players were black and nearly all the coaches were white. Next Sunday, Super Bowl XLI in Miami will be a vastly different place.

For the first time in the history of the league, both Super Bowl entrants will be coached by an African-American, Dungy leading the Indianapolis Colts against his former assistant, Lovie Smith, who is in his third season as head coach of the Chicago Bears. No black man has ever been the head coach of a Super Bowl participant, and only once in the history of American sports have two black men taken their teams into a league championship meeting: Al Attles and K.C. Jones, who in 1975 coached the Golden State Warriors and Washington Bullets to the NBA Finals.

In addition, both defensive coordinators will be men of color: the Bears' Ron Rivera, who is Hispanic, and the Colts' Ron Meeks, who is black. To say this is a seismic shift in professional football would be to downplay the moment, one Dungy never thought possible when he was a boy growing up in Jackson, Mich., as a black quarterback playing what was still a white man's position.

"Yes, it's a big deal because it's still being talked about," said Colts defensive tackle Anthony McFarland, who also played for Dungy in Tampa. "One of these days it's not going to be a big deal, but right now, it's a huge deal."

It certainly is to Dungy, who finished his college career at Minnesota ranked fourth in Big Ten history in total offense and held nearly every school passing record, a résumé that had no effect on the way he was perceived by the NFL. Left undrafted in 1977 -- only four years after James Harris had become the first black man to open a season as the starting quarterback of an NFL team -- Dungy signed as a free agent with the Pittsburgh Steelers and was shifted to wide receiver and then safety.

In those days, the only thing rarer in the NFL than a black quarterback was a black coach, but Dungy became one in 1981. After three years as a player and one as an assistant coach at his alma mater, he returned to the Steelers as an assistant to Hall of Fame head coach Chuck Noll. Dungy was one of only 14 African-American assistants in a league then made up of 28 teams. He can rattle off the names of the others nearly three decades later.

The first black head coach in the modern era of professional football was still eight years from being hired, so to think that in seven days Dungy and Smith will stand on the sidelines at Pro Player Stadium in Miami and coach their teams in the Super Bowl is something Dungy understands will have reverberations well beyond the outcome of the season's biggest game.

"There were black coaches who were exceptional back then but they never got to do what we've done," Dungy said. "They could have taken a team to the Super Bowl but they never got the chance.

"My generation of kids who watched the Super Bowl never saw African-American coaches. You could be a player. You couldn't necessarily be the quarterback. Then you saw Doug Williams play and win a Super Bowl at quarterback [in January 1988] and they thought they could be a quarterback.

"Now maybe a young kid will watch this game and think, 'Maybe I can be the coach one day.' That's special. We're all a product of our environment and our past."

That environment is set to be forever altered next Sunday, just as it was on Oct. 3, 1989, when Art Shell became the first black coach in professional football since Fritz Pollard in 1921, the pre-NFL days of barnstorming teams like Pollard's Akron Pros. Shell, who was hired to coach the Oakland Raiders, was named AFC Coach of the Year in his second season and finished his first tenure in Oakland six years later with a .587 winning percentage, three trips to the playoffs, and one appearance in the AFC Championship game, all signs of success that helped pave the way for Dungy, Dennis Green, and the seven others who followed him to become black head coaches in the NFL.

For Shell, next Sunday will be a proud day.

"I spoke with both of them and told them how very proud I am of them," Shell said. "I'm proud of how well they've done and of the way they handle themselves.

"Their being in the Super Bowl will open the door a little wider for minority coaches the same way Doug Williams opened the door for black quarterbacks. After he did what he did, guys after him were looked upon as quarterbacks, not just as great athletes.

"When I came into the league in 1968, they thought a black guy couldn't be the quarterback. You could play tackle but a black guy couldn't play center or guard. Those positions weren't for blacks. They were thinking man's positions. Same was true of coaches.

"I have no doubt that if I failed, it would have retarded the process for a lot of us. The night before my first game as Raiders coach, I remember sitting with Terry Robiskie [a former teammate who became an assistant under Shell] around 3 a.m.

"I couldn't sleep. I told him, 'I have to have success at this. I've got to win. If I don't, it will set us all back many years.' If we hadn't won in Oakland, a lot of people would have said, 'There. See that. They can't do it.'

"That's why having Tony and Lovie on the sidelines coaching in the Super Bowl is so important. Visual proof is very important. For black kids to see that there's a black face on the biggest stage and he's in charge of the team is important. It shows you that no matter where you were rated or where you were slated, if you fight, work hard, get organized, and believe in yourself, you have a chance to be successful."

Just as Dungy's chance was a result of Shell's success and the willingness of first Noll and then Green to make him defensive coordinator, Smith's chance came in large measure because of Dungy, who brought him into the NFL as linebackers coach in Tampa in 1996 and groomed him until he became the St. Louis Rams' defensive coordinator in 2001. The two remain close friends and colleagues although fierce competitors as well.

"A dream of mine was to have a chance to play the Colts," Smith said. "My dream was for Tony Dungy to get to the Super Bowl. That dream has been fulfilled. I feel good about it. I'll feel even better to be the first black coach to hold up the world championship trophy."

Last week, the Steelers hired Mike Tomlin -- another African-American and the fourth former Dungy assistant to become an NFL head coach. To Smith, that growing legacy says a lot about his mentor and more about the times.

"By the number of guys, it tells you a lot about what kind of man and what kind of football coach he is," Smith said. "Winning football is associated with Tony Dungy. Tony always talked about wanting to get teachers on his staff. Instead of 'coach,' he used the word 'teacher.' That's what I think I've tried to do."

Both teacher and pupil have now shattered a barrier. It is only the latest reflection of what Shell claims is a different NFL landscape from the one he invaded in 1989. The biggest change, he says, was not his arrival but the creation of the Rooney Rule in 2002, named after the man who helped craft it, Steelers owner Dan Rooney.

Under that rule, any team looking for a head coach or coordinator must interview at least one minority candidate, a demand Shell and others claim has put names that otherwise would have been forgotten into the coaching pipeline. A case in point is Tomlin, who was not initially a factor in the job search in Pittsburgh until he was invited for an interview and impressed Rooney so much that he leapfrogged two longtime Steeler assistants, Russ Grimm and Ken Whisenhunt, to win the job.

Some claim there was pressure put on Rooney from the office of new commissioner Roger Goodell to make a minority hire in a season in which two black head coaches were fired and none had been hired. Whatever the case, the process was enhanced by the success of Dungy and Smith, and the Rooney Rule, which allows the commissioner to fine any team that does not make a good-faith effort to identify and interview minority coaching candidates.

"Doug Williams said to me at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, 'Rooney not only talks the talk, he wants the walk,' " said NFL Players Association head Gene Upshaw. "What he did with Tomlin spoke volumes. He could have said he had two loyal guys who have been with him a long time and with whom he won a Super Bowl, but he looked beyond that and hired the best guy. If we didn't have that Rooney Rule, guys like Tomlin don't even get interviewed."

Dungy said the Rooney Rule is a good thing even if a team already knows whom it wants to hire because it at least gives exposure to people who otherwise have been historically ignored. Yet interviews are not always what they seem, as Dungy well remembers.

"For a long time, you hadn't seen a lot of African-American coaches, so owners had to go with what they knew," said Dungy, who first became a head coach in Tampa in 1996. "I think everybody wants to win. They just don't always know everyone who's available. What the Rooney Rule did was say, 'There may be another category of people to look at.'

"I remember when I first started interviewing for head coaching jobs, a guy asked me, 'How many black coaches are you going to have on your staff?' It startled you a little bit. When I was 28 or 29, I had a general manager tell me I had to shave my beard because people were looking for a certain style. I asked Coach Noll about it and he said for me not to worry about that.

"The only token interview I think I ever had was the second one. It was with the Green Bay Packers. I asked them what they were looking for in a head coach, and they said, 'An offensive guy with head coaching experience.' I just scratched my head. I didn't know where I fit there. I never did walk out of an interview, but after a couple of them were over, I felt I should have."

In the end, Dungy won, first in Tampa and now in Indianapolis, having established the best regular-season winning percentage of any active coach in the league. He is 8-8 in the playoffs and has been to the conference title game three times. Smith, after just three seasons, is 31-19 with a 2-1 playoff record.

In the NBA, 56 African-Americans have been head coaches. That is why no one talks about such things anymore in the NBA. In the NFL, the number is eight. Division 1 college football is even further behind. But next Sunday will be a step toward a color-blind society, at least in the NFL.

"That day is coming," Smith said, "but we're talking about it now, so it's not here now. Each year we've taken a step. That's all we're looking for. You look for steps that you take in your progress. We've taken another step by Tony and I having our teams in the Super Bowl. In years to come, it won't be talked about. I'll look forward to that day."

So will his players, but for now they are talking about it, because history is being made on a football field in Miami.

"It just shows how far we've come as a society to have black coaches even be in a position to coach in the Super Bowl," said Bears fullback Jason McKie. "As a black man, it makes you feel proud."