I don't like the idea of walking down a road that leads to this piece in the right-wing magazine Human Events, in which author Vincent Fiore writes that the focus should be on Smith and Dungy as coaches, not black men, but the media focuses on their color because it has its own political agenda.
"A good plurality of people don't get it," Fiore writes, "and the plurality I speak of is practically everyone outside the demographic of white males, ages one to 100."
Right. Only white guys get it. Thanks for proving that racism is dead there, Mr. Fiore.
The best sign of racial progress on the NFL coaching front Sunday may not have been Smith and Dungy winning their conference titles, but the Steelers' hiring of Tomlin, who, like, Smith, is a Dungy protégé. Tomlin is only 34. He didn't have to toil as an assistant for decades before he got his shot the way Smith did, the way Marvin Lewis and Romeo Crennel did.
It used to be all the boy-wonder coaches, the guys younger than a few of their players, were white. Except for player-coach Fritz Pollard in the prehistoric 1920s, Tomlin's the first black head coach in NFL history who's on the sunny side of 40.
Two black coaches have been fired this off-season, Shell of the Oakland Raiders and Denny Green of the Arizona Cardinals. But they had both represented progress too. They were both head coaches for the second time.
Green, who'll be 58 next month, had some success with the Minnesota Vikings, but is not obviously a great coach. He certainly worked no wonders in Phoenix, and his tenure will be best remembered for his postgame meltdown after a loss to the Bears this season, when he coined the catchphrase "Go ahead and crown their asses!"
But it's not inconceivable that Green could coach again. That's progress, black coaches getting second and third chances, getting to ride that coaching carousel. Used to be only mediocre white coaches got recycled again and again.
Just as I find it hard to believe there are reasonable people who remained unconvinced a black coach could make it big in the NFL, I find it hard to swallow that there are black kids who will watch Smith and Dungy on the sideline a week from Sunday and have it dawn on them for the first time that they too can achieve something fantastic.
Then again, I felt the same way about similar sentiments regarding Doug Williams when he became the first black quarterback to start a Super Bowl in January 1988. Are there really still black kids out there who didn't think they could play quarterback? I remember thinking. But a generation later, I've heard black quarterbacks talking about seeing Williams and being inspired in just that way.
So what do I know? I'm just a white guy trying to figure out what to make of the biggest story of Super Bowl Hype Week I. Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are good coaches, good men and black. We knew that Saturday. We know it now.
Leave it at that? Sure. But what is "that"?
This story has been corrected since it was first published.
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King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com or visit his MySpace page.
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