Over the past few days, so much has been made about this years Super Bowl matchup between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts. Besides Peyton Manning finally reaching the big game attention has been brought because of the coaches.
Chicago coach Lovie Smith and Indy coach and Jackson native Tony Dungy became the first two African-American coaches to reach the Super Bowl. I'm impressed with the duo making history and being a part of what is being called the "All-Black Super Bowl" I think its great for football and also believe it will open more doors for deserving coaches that aren't your stereotypical football coach.
Smith and Dungy have both experienced a tremendous amount of success with their coaching careers. Dungy helped turnaround the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has won four division titles in his six seasons with Indy. Smith has won back-to-back NFC North division titles with the Bears and helped them have the best record in the NFC. Other black coaches have had success in the NFL, like Marvin Lewis, Dennis Green and Art Shell.
While the race of the coaches in the Super Bowl has drawn most of the attention, it would be kind of nice if it wasn't necessarily a big deal that they were black coaches and that the focus was more on their accomplishments and teams. In other sports whenever a coach that is non-white makes the championship series/game it isn't a big deal at all and that shows football has a ways to go still when it comes to dealing with race.
For now though I'm impressed with the job Smith and Dungy have done and think they are both class acts and are nothing but great for the NFL.
