AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > January > 27 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USDungy, Smith on verge of milestone for sports, society
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The Question was simple, but not necessarily the answers. The Question was pondered by those ranging from a former United Nations ambassador to a legendary news anchor to the daughter of a baseball icon. The Question involved Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy, now seven days shy of becoming the first head coaches darker than Vince Lombardi to juggle X’s with O’s during a Super Bowl.
What’s the significance of this?
That was The Question.
I’ll go first. My answer begins and ends with the late Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, the NFL prognosticator and unofficial sociologist for CBS. He was fired by the network 19 years ago after his infamous television interview with a local Washington D.C. station. What you probably know is that he said blacks were bred to become great athletes courtesy of their big-boned maternal ancestors from slavery. What you probably don’t know is that he also said something else — something that was buried by the media. Something that tells you why the presence of African-Americans Smith and Dungy on the sideline next Sunday in Miami at Dolphin Stadium will have even more significance than you think.
Said Snyder in that interview on why he thought NFL teams weren’t hiring blacks as coaches: “There’s not going to be anything left for the white people. I mean, all the players are black. The only thing that the whites control is the coaching jobs.”
In other words, Snyder broke ranks with those in the shadows to expose an unspoken truth regarding discrimination: It’s mostly about power. It isn’t about believing that blacks haven’t the “necessities,” as the late Al Campanis once theorized on national television. It’s about fearing that blacks actually can do nearly anything and seeking ways through the good ol’ boy network (or beyond) to stop it.
The NFL is a microcosm of society. Take, for instance, those decades when blacks were shuffled away from the so-called thinking man’s positions up the middle of quarterback, center, middle linebacker and free safety. We’re back to fear. Fear that a Mike Singletary would join Snyder in exposing that truth by leading a defense filled with complexities to a Super Bowl rout as a middle linebacker. Fear that a Doug Williams would smash Super Bowl records along the way to winning it all with ease during the first start ever by a black quarterback in such a game. Fear that a Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and a Smith of the Chicago Bears would sit only a victory away from a world championship on the same night.
Fear that Snyder’s predictions about the majority losing power to the minority would occur sooner than later.
‘This makes it normal’ Said Martha Burk, whose women’s group sought and failed to force Augusta National to change its men’s only stance, “I have a very good friend who is an African-American woman, and what she said to me is so true, and it applies to this. She said, ‘On the one hand, we’re too lazy to work, and on the other hand, we’re taking all of the jobs. Now which is it?’?”
Burk laughed, before she gave her answer to The Question on the significance of Dungy and Smith in the Super Bowl. “First of all, it’s astounding that we’re in 2007, and this is just now happening. This makes it normal for African-Americans to be in this situation, because you can’t be a thing until you can imagine it. Secondly, I don’t think the white-male supremacy in this country is in much danger, just because two guys who happen to be black are coaching in the Super Bowl. Still, you have those who are afraid of it all.”
Such fear wasn’t in Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, when he inspired an NFL rule five years ago that requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for head coaching vacancies. There were a record seven black head coaches in the league last season. After two firings and a hiring, the number dropped to six. You can attribute that hiring to Rooney matching his actions with his words by acquiring Mike Tomlin, the former defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings.
So who better than Rooney to answer The Question?
“The significance of this is that it’s a good sign that you have two African-American coaches in the Super Bowl, but in reality, once African-Americans got this opportunity, which was inevitable that it would take place, they would be looked at as just coaches,” said Rooney, who made Tomlin only the Steelers’ third coach in 38 years. “What is happening here with Tony and Lovie — and I personally know them both as great people — goes beyond the sports world. There is no question that what happens in sports is a motivator for young people. I hate to use the word ‘role model,’ because it’s unfair to the kids and to the adults. But this is a situation where people are being looked up to. And it’s like saying, ‘Our people made it.’?”
There is Michale Adams, for instance, spending his senior year at Mays High School as the vice president of the student government association with a 3.8-grade-point average. He spoke of how watching Super Bowl XLI will encourage him in his goal of becoming an obstetrician gynecologist by way of the University of Georgia.
With emotion coming from his 17-year-old tongue, Adams gave his answer to The Question: “Having [Dungy and Smith] in the Super Bowl makes me want to strive even harder in school, because it proves that blacks can achieve as well as whites at high levels. … But when I see this, it just gives me a bigger reason to knock away all of the nonsense that I hear.”
Nobody experienced more mindless chatter than Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers legend who broke baseball’s color barrier 60 years ago. He survived all of the death threats, all of the name-calling and all of the physical abuse with the same inner strengths attributed to Dungy and Smith. Too bad Robinson isn’t around to see the latest offsprings of his legacy. He died in 1972 at 53 after making the transition from quiet dignity to outspoken social activist. Among other things, he blasted baseball for keeping blacks out of the power positions in that sport.
Just like the NFL used to do before Ozzie Newsome became its first black general manager with the Baltimore Ravens in 2002. Four years later, the New York Giants hired Jerry Reese as the league’s second black general manger. That was just before the black mentor (Dungy) and his black pupil (Smith) did much to push their teams into this Super Bowl with a Robinson-like combination of skill and character.
“Oh, if he were still alive, he’d want to be right there at the Super Bowl just cheering them on, you know?” said Sharon Robinson, chuckling at the thought. She is Jackie’s daughter and an educational consultant for the baseball commissioner’s office when she isn’t writing books for youth. “Believe me, if my father wasn’t at the Super Bowl, he’d be with my mother and I, sitting around the television set and being proud that both of these coaches are such great leaders away from the sports arena.”
And Sharon Robinson’s answer to The Question? “This is significant, because forever, the NFL has had a large percentage of African-American players, but to have two men that have moved beyond the playing field and who are in leadership positions and who have taken their teams to the highest level you can go, it’s very inspirational,” said Robinson, whose father once caused an 8-year-old white kid from South Dakota named Tom Brokaw to become his disciple forever.
‘We’ve gotten a long way’ Brokaw laughed, and then the former anchor of the NBC Nightly News added, “As soon as the Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson, my grandfather told me at that age, ‘We’re going to cheer for the Dodgers from now on,’ and that changed my whole life. He was my first really big sports hero, and I knew everything about him until the day that he died. I thought he was a critical part of changing attitudes in this country about race. We’re still a long way from home, but we’ve gotten a long way down the road.”
So, for Brokaw, what’s the significance of this upcoming Super Bowl? “I do think it’s an important signal. The NFL has done a pretty good job — when you look at the other sports — finding talented people who happen to be black,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of documentaries on race, and it’s been one of the two or three most important interests I’ve had throughout my entire professional career. Consider that you cannot over estimate the number of black faces we now see in commercials in America. They’re portrayed as executives or as upper-middle-class consumers or as participants in integrated social situations. All of those types of things help change the overall portrait of America.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a master painter of the portrait, and he had helpers such as Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. Ambassador.
To Young, the answer to The Question is as simple as this: “We are so racially influenced in this country, and some of us have been overlooked for so many things because of color that when somebody achieves such as this, everybody who ever has been discriminated against for any reason sort of takes a certain pride in a sense of redemption. You have to say that this is a significant event, because we’re still in a world where things like this are always going to be important.
“It even comes down to such fine tuning as that, as much as I love Tony Dungy, when Indianapolis wins, they give the credit to Peyton Manning. Lovie Smith was harassed and everything else for sticking with Rex Grossman. He could have found another quarterback, but he stuck with this kid, and look where Lovie and Tony are.”
Lovie and Tony are in the Super Bowl, helping to prove that Jimmy “The Greek” was right.
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