There will be a black president of the United States in two years, so maybe we shouldn’t get too worked up about the historical significance of a football game. There will be a black man in the White House in time for Super Bowl XLIII — how’s that for a Super Bowl XLI prediction? — so maybe we shouldn’t pound our brains too hard for the significance of this racial milestone.
A much bigger train from Chicago is coming.
Then again, only 62 million Americans voted for the winner of the last presidential election and more than 90 million Americans will tune in to CBS tonight to watch Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears become the first African Americans to coach in the Super Bowl.
So maybe Jesse Jackson isn’t too far out of line when he calls the game tonight one of the great moments in American history.
The Constitutional Convention, Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech aside, was Rev. Jackson dealing in a degree of hyperbole?
Probably.
After all, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball 60 years ago. Bill Russell coached the Celtics to the NBA title in 1969. Al Attles coached against K.C. Jones in the NBA Finals in 1975. John Thompson won an NCAA basketball title and Doug Williams quarterbacked a Super Bowl champion back in the Eighties.
But answer this: What isn’t a tad excessive about Super Bowl Sunday?
From what we eat to how much we drink to how we root for our teams to whose nipple is exposed at halftime to what commercials we deem most entertaining — if that’s not commercialism at its most literal, what is? — everything is a tad excessive on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s our National Over The Top Day.
The NFL stages an event so self-important and self-indulgent that for four decades it has numbered itself like the Romans. And, finally, we have reached the game that fits best — XLI — I, Extra Large.
Super Bowl Sunday is the day of the calendar when pop psychologists and dot-com sociologists tell America to open its mouth and say, “ah.” It is the day we measure the American condition. It is the day we take the pulse on our society. It is the day we look in the mirror and see ourselves.
Usually it’s Terrell Owens or Janet Jackson. This Super Bowl Sunday is different.
Today it is Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith.
America never looked better. America never looked more beautiful.
“This is definitely going to be written in the history books,” Bears wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad said. “I don’t think a lot of the guys playing in this game really understand the magnitude.”
Last week, both Bryant Gumbel of HBO and James Brown of CBS said they were eager to see how the viewpoints of this milestone were articulated. At the time, Gumbel’s and Brown’s words scared me a little. How can one middle-aged white observer deem himself worthy to articulate what this game means?
As Dungy and Smith addressed the subject over and over with grace and elegance, the answer became more and more apparent. This is less a barrier-shattering event than it is a celebration of the American experience.
It can work. We can work.
Dungy’s and Smith’s successes absolutely will open more and more doors for minority candidates. And they should. There were seven black head coaches and 197 total minority coaches in the NFL this season. Thanks to a Rooney Rule instituted in 2002 that requires one minority candidate to be interviewed for head coaching vacancies, the NFL has opened to fresh faces such as Mike Tomlin. The NFL is headed in the right direction. In Division I college football — six of 119 head coaches are black — the numbers are dismal. Wake up, ye ivory towers.
These numbers are important. They must be examined and re-examined. They are our society’s motion picture. Yet Super Bowl Sunday is our society’s snapshot, and to miss out on who Dungy and Smith are is to miss out on that picture.
Dungy’s father was a Tuskegee Airman who became a college science professor. Dungy’s mother taught Shakespeare in high school. His younger sister is of one of the foremost perinatologists in the nation. Smith is from a family in Big Sandy, Texas, that didn’t have much money. He battled through the college ranks before Dungy, who would become his close friend and mentor, gave him a chance at Tampa Bay. When Big Sandy wanted to name a street in his honor, Smith didn’t take the main thoroughfare. He chose the little path where his family lived.
They are men of great faith. They are family men. They are men of humility. Player after player went on about how these guys don’t yell and how they don’t cuss.
“Coach Dungy has broken the mold that you have to intimidate players,” Tarik Glenn said.
“He faced the toughest thing any of us have to face, the loss of a child [to suicide in December 2005],” Jeff Saturday said. “Yet he never wavered from his faith. You see that in the most tragic time, you know what he’s really about. He’s a great man.”
On the other side, Brian Urlacher said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard Lovie yell. I know he has never cussed. He doesn’t gripe-coach.”
“Lovie Smith doesn’t yell,” Lance Briggs said. “He is incapable of yelling.”
No player on either team went cuckoo this Super Bowl week.
Nobody got arrested on South Beach. There was almost no trash talk.
The players respected the moment. The players respected a moment long overdue.
“I think at one point there was a subconscious barrier [against hiring outside the mold],” Dungy said. “I don’t think it was directed at African Americans per se, but I think we had a vision of what a head coach looked like. The head coach of successful teams, to many people, looked like Vince Lombardi. It was a middle-aged coach who screamed fire and brimstone. That’s what we saw in NFL Films, and it was a great picture. The thing we didn’t see is that there were a lot of other people who were successful. I grew up under Bud Grant, and he was just as successful in a completely different way. I grew up under Chuck Noll, and I saw you could win Super Bowls and still go home to your family for dinner.
“I don’t think there was ever a picture of somebody who was not white. I know when I did some of those earlier interviews people were trying to figure out in their minds if this would work. We’ve never had this blueprint. I think over the years and now with two guys coming to the Super Bowl with personalities different than what people would perceive as an NFL head coach, there’ll be room for a different value system, a different way of expressing yourself. People will say, ‘You know what? Anything can work if you get the right person.”‘
As America pauses today for its great indulgence, that is the message that must be sent. It doesn’t mean an aggressive coach can’t win and can’t lead brilliantly. It doesn’t mean every black coach has to be like Dungy and Smith. Not all of us are Al Green love songs. Some of us are smash-the-guitar songs. Yet to watch these two men of shared values share the great stage with such composure, you can’t help believing there is something in the African American experience that can produce such dignified men. Maybe it’s the faith. Maybe it’s the family. Maybe it’s the shared struggle. No matter how color blind we aspire to become, we should never be blind to celebrating the differences that can bring us together.
This Super Bowl Sunday is a good one for America.
Contact Jeff Jacobs at
jjacobs@courant.com.
