Dungy helped pave path for black coaches in the NFL
When Tony Dungy broke into the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1977, there were 10 black assistant coaches in the league.
Four years later, that number was up to 14.
“So there weren’t a lot of role models in the league where you could say, ‘I’m going to be like this guy or that guy,’” said Dungy, who played quarterback in college before switching to defensive back in the NFL. “It wasn’t on my radar screen.
“Once I started coaching, I started realizing, ‘Gosh, there’s only 14 of us.' It just didn’t seem right. There were so many African-American players.”
Thanks to coaches like Dungy — the first black coach to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame — that situation has (slowly) improved. As he moved up the coaching ladder, from a defensive backs coach with the Steelers to head coaching jobs with the Buccaneers and Colts, Dungy tried to give opportunities to other black coaches.
“I was always thinking, ‘How can we get more people into the pipeline and more talented guys in?’ ” Dungy said. “It became kind of a second mindset of, ‘We need to do this.’ There were a lot of talented guys who, if they got a chance, could do some really good things and be beneficial for the league.”
One of Dungy’s biggest mentors was former Vikings coach Dennis Green, who hired him as defensive coordinator in Minnesota from 1992-95, setting the stage for Dungy to become the Buccaneers’ head coach in 1996.
“He knew that I was close to being ready to be a head coach, so he really taught me about being a head coach, the ins and outs of it,” Dungy said. “He brought me along those last four years.”
Green was Dungy’s special teams coach with the San Francisco 49ers in 1979 — “I knew then that he’d be a great coach,” said Green, who spoke to The Canton Repository on the phone before his death on July 21 — and he tried to hire him in 1981 when he became the head coach at Northwestern. When Green got the job with the Vikings in 1992, he hired Dungy away from the Chiefs, where he had been the defensive backs coach from 1989-91. (Dungy’s replacement, a black assistant coach named Herman Edwards, would later join Dungy’s staff in Tampa before becoming the head coach of the Jets and Chiefs.)
“He did a phenomenal job,” Green said of Dungy. “We had one of the best defenses in the National Football League. We also had Monte Kiffin and Tom Moore and Brian Billick (who are white) and we also had some outstanding African-American coaches.
“What it comes down to is hiring the best man for the job.”
Green nearly became the first black head coach to lead a team to the Super Bowl — his 1998 Vikings went 15-1 in the regular season and advanced to the NFC Championship game, only to lose in overtime to the Atlanta Falcons — and Dungy finally broke through in 2007, where he defeated another black head coach, Chicago’s Lovie Smith, who was on Dungy’s staff in Tampa Bay. Since then, Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin (who won in 2009 and lost in 2011) and Indianapolis’ Jim Caldwell (who lost in 2010) have also coached in Super Bowls.
There will be six minority head coaches in the NFL in 2016 (counting Carolina’s Ron Rivera, who is Hispanic), one fewer than the NFL record, set in 2006 and 2011.
“To look back and see Lovie Smith and Herm Edwards and Jim Caldwell and (ex-Vikings coach Leslie Frazier) get opportunities and blossom with them, it’s been gratifying,” said Dungy, who hired all four of those coaches as assistants either with the Buccaneers or Colts. “You want to make the league as great as it can be and it’s important to get input from everyone.
“You want young kids to play and think, ‘That’s not all I can do.’ Hey, there’s a lot of jobs in the NFL that kids can do, minority or not, so don’t close up your vision.”
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joe.scalzo@cantonrep.com
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