An Ultimate, and Hopefully Final Precedent for Black Coaches

Tony Dungy is the third coach to take a team to a conference championship game. This will be his third. (Chris Gardner - AP)

Occasionally still, a head coaching job becomes available in the NFL and you wonder why the candidate search is so limited, and seemingly so exclusionary. The latest news out of Miami is that the Dolphins are down to the recently fired Jim Mora, Chan Gailey and the recently fired Mike Shula to fill their head coaching vacancy. It's a list that, if true, makes you wonder why Wayne Huizenga, an owner who never has won anything, isn't looking in a deeper talent pool.

Thankfully, the search for coaches has expanded in most places in the NFL, even to the point where the presence of head coaches Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith in this weekend's conference championship games isn't earth-shattering news. While there has not yet been an African American coach in the Super Bowl, Art Shell (1990), Dennis Green (1998) and Dungy (1999, 2003) have taken teams to the conference championship game, and now Smith joins them. So it's happened enough that I didn't even think about it Sunday night until a colleague, who happens to be white, mentioned it.

The Colts' Dungy and the Bears' Smith probably are as close as any two head coaches in the NFL. Smith worked for Dungy in Tampa. And when the Bears were idle two weeks ago, Smith went to Indy to sit in the stands and support Dungy, whose Colts were playing the Kansas City Chiefs in a first-round playoff game, a gesture you simply never see in the NFL. Asked Monday if he had thought about the two possibly making history by getting to the Super Bowl, and ensuring that a black coach would win the Super Bowl, Smith said: "It would be special if that happened. Tony is a good friend. I'm a big Colts fan since they're on the AFC side. We realize the position we're in. . . . This is the first time that two black men have led their teams to the final four. You have to acknowledge that. I realize the responsibility that comes with that. . . . We have an opportunity to do something special. . . . I hope for a day when it is unnoticed, but that day isn't here."

No, it isn't. And 15 years ago, when Shell was the only black head coach in the league, it seemed impossibly far off. But perhaps Smith still will be in the league when multiple black coaches leading their teams into championship weekend does go unnoticed. This season, seven of the league's 32 coaches were black, though that number is down to five now that Shell and Green have been fired. But the most encouraging sign probably is that Green has been hired and fired (by the Vikings), hired and fired again (by the Cardinals), and reportedly was being considered to replace a fired black coach in Oakland.

The NBA has passed the point where it's a big deal when a black coach is hired or fired. Finally and thankfully, it's a waste of time to keep track. Major League Baseball isn't as far along as the NBA but seems much more at ease with black managers and executives than the NFL. The powers that be in football, Commissioner Roger Goodell and Paul Tagliabue before him, know the NFL can't afford to slip back into uninspired hiring and have been more active than the general public knows in pushing league owners to be smarter about interviewing and hiring the most talented people.

Another major development came last year when Kansas City thought enough of Herman Edwards to steal him away from the Jets. The Chiefs even had to send a fourth-round draft pick to the Jets as compensation because Edwards still was under contract. But the real evolution in that hiring was that a black boy was part of a good ol' boy network. Chiefs President Carl Peterson first encountered Edwards when he unsuccessfully tried to recruit him to UCLA as a player in the early '70s. Then, after becoming director of player personnel for the Eagles, Peterson was successful in getting Edwards to sign with Philadelphia as a rookie free agent in 1977, when the team was coached by Dick Vermeil, whom Edwards replaced in Kansas City.

There have been eight black coaches in the NFL's modern era: Shell, Green, Ray Rhodes, Dungy, Edwards, Marvin Lewis, Smith and Romeo Crennel. Lewis and Crennel are the only ones who haven't won playoff games, and Crennel is the only one who hasn't reached the playoffs. Dungy's success should have nothing to do with whether the Raiders hire, say, James Lofton away from the Chargers -- no more than a decision to replace a white coach, say, Dan Reeves, with another white coach, Jim Mora.

But the reality is there is a relationship. Had Shell bombed during his first stint in Oakland, the next owner considering a black coach very well might have been more reluctant. Certainly, his constituents might have been less embracing. But Shell reached the AFC championship game in his first full season as the Raiders' head coach, and Green made the playoffs in his first three seasons in Minnesota, and there was a sigh of relief, both from the reticent owners who needed some tangible reason to be more inclusive, to the black assistants who knew the pioneers had to be successful for the doors to open a little wider.

John Wooten, chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, the organization that is named after the first black pro football coach and monitors the hiring of minority coaches, told USA Today, "We can say it really shouldn't matter, but we know it does."

It also matters that there are younger owners in the NFL, men who simply don't carry around the prejudices of their predecessors, men whose friendships and associations are infinitely more diverse. The New York Giants just hired a black general manager, Jerry Reese, thankfully to little fanfare outside New York. The league's youngest owners, including the Redskins' Daniel Snyder and the Ravens' Steve Bisciotti, have at times wooed black coaches and executives at other levels even when they couldn't close the deal. And Bisciotti's very successful general manager in Baltimore, Ozzie Newsome, is black.

But the NFL powers-that-be still have to hold their breath from year to year. The league has a rule in place, initiated by the Steelers' Dan Rooney, that insists teams interview minority candidates before filling vacancies. Yet the names mentioned most prominently for jobs in Miami and Pittsburgh have been those of white assistants, even while there are as many promising minority assistants as ever.

Those names used to be Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith. Now they're James Lofton and Mark Carrier and Earnest Byner among many, many others. And while they'll have opportunities their predecessors didn't have, their best chance may still rest with Smith or Dungy or both getting through to the Super Bowl. That accomplishment, in a league where winning trumps everything, might be the r?sum? entry that finally bowls over the most resistant owner to do what's necessary to win -- something that that usually starts with hiring the best coach available.