History...blah, blah, blah

[ABuccs Fan]

Hey Escobar, how many players in the NFL are black? You think the head coaches'
should come from the players who have played in the NFL before? Yes? So your
comparison of the percentage of white/black people there are in society should
really be the percentage of blacks there are playing the game.

So what.....Gruden shouldn't be coaching now?

[ABuccs Fan]

Amazing!!!

[ufojoe]

What's amazing is this was about the media bringing up the fact that it's historic that two black
coaches are going to the SB. If the media (and Tomy and Lovie) commenting on this fact
upsets you, then maybe you should ask youself why.

Racism? No. I never said that. It's ignorance.

And what I meant is that coaches should have played the game at one point. Doesn't have
to be in the NFL. And of course, there are esceptions.

This post is a waste of time. Would you have complained that the media reported that
Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier? Was it okay to report on that?

[ufojoe]

You know, you're right. It shouldn't matter. But it does. And this article does
a great job of explaining why.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/4487467.html

Dungy's, Smith's feats prove more than a point

By JEROME SOLOMON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

CHICAGO - Finally, a black man has coached an NFL team to the Super Bowl.

Make that: Two black men have coached their teams to the Super Bowl.

Chicago's Lovie Smith and Indianapolis' Tony Dungy, longtime friends, will stand on opposite sidelines in Miami 13 days from now, with the winner guaranteed to be the first African-American head coach to be a Super Bowl victor.

Smith's Bears rolled New Orleans 39-14 at Soldier Field, and Dungy's Colts had an amazing comeback to topple the New England Patriots in Indianapolis and set up the historic meeting.

"I feel blessed to be in that position. But I'll feel even better to be the first black coach to hold up the world championship trophy," Smith said.

The next time a black head coach advances to the Super Bowl, his color won't be an issue. It shouldn't have been an issue this time.

At its most basic, football is about crossing lines. Yard lines. Goal lines. Not color lines.

Officially, the color line can't be found in league statistics. (And no, the color line is not that recent TV innovation that highlights the point needed to reach a first down.)

Pro football has crossed every color line imaginable over the years. Twice, in fact. Charles Follis, recognized as the first known black professional player, started playing in the pre-NFL days of 1904. But the NFL went backward in thinking with an unwritten rule banning black players for many years. Kenny Washington crossed that invisible line when he joined the Rams in 1946, becoming the first black to sign an NFL contract in the modern era. But the last color line, the one dividing head coaches by race, wasn't breached until 1989.

A day to remember

That delay (43 years after the first modern-era black player and nearly 70 years after Fritz Pollard did double duty in 1921 as an NFL player and coach) is why Sunday's results are significant. Pollard lived to be 92 years old, yet he died in 1986 as the only black coach in NFL history. Twenty years later, two will be coaching in the country's largest sports spectacle.
Now no NFL owner can argue that a black coach can't take a team to Super Bowl. You might think that such a ridiculous argument never has been made, but it has. Remember, this is a group that had to be forced by rule to interview qualified minority candidates.

Hiring the best man for the job hasn't always been a priority. Hiring the best white man has.

There were seven black head coaches in the NFL this season, meaning that nearly a quarter of the league's 32 teams had an African American running the show on the sideline.

That is significant, albeit slow progress for a league whose players have been predominantly black for some time. But the sad history is that aside from those seven (down to five with the firing of Dennis Green in Arizona and the resignation of Art Shell at Oakland), only one other black man on the planet, Ray Rhodes, has even been an NFL head coach in the modern era. (Terry Robiskie has the unusual distinction of being a two-time interim coach with two teams: Washington in 2000 and Cleveland in 2004.)

Those eight black men grew up in a time when they were often told they had to be twice as good as the white counterparts.


Numbers don't lie

Oddly, and partly because of owners' reluctance to hire minority head coaches, even without any Super Bowl appearances the few who have been given opportunities have been far more successful than white coaches. The numbers don't lie, skewed though they may be because such a small pool generated them. But whose fault is that?
Half the NFL's black coaches have coached in conference championship games. Seven on the eight have coached playoff teams, and only two in the group (Cleveland's Romeo Crennel and Cincinnati's Marvin Lewis) do not have a playoff victory on their resume.

Now, a quarter of the black coaches in NFL's modern history have led their teams to a Super Bowl.

"It means a lot," said Dungy, who last week pointed out that as special as the accomplishment is, it is only special because of the guys before him who were never given the chance to notch such an accomplishment.

Race shouldn't matter.

Does it matter that 28 of the top 30 in pass receptions this season are of African American descent? Or that you have to look more than twice as deep as that number in the rushing rankings, 62 deep to be exact, to find a white running back? Or that only four of the top 20 rated passers are black?

No. (Well the quarterback thing is a bit of an issue.)

Statistics are colorblind. Maybe NFL owners are starting to become so as well. Certainly on Sunday they moved a little closer to being so.

One day it won't matter if one, both or none of the head coaches in the Super Bowl are black. Today, it matters.

[bradentonian]

All color-blindness aside, I think it's significant that we will be seing the first Superbowl between 2 Tampa-2 defenses.

[escobar]

What's amazing is this was about the media bringing up the fact that it's historic that two black
coaches are going to the SB. If the media (and Tomy and Lovie) commenting on this fact
upsets you, then maybe you should ask youself why.

Racism? No. I never said that. It's ignorance.

And what I meant is that coaches should have played the game at one point. Doesn't have
to be in the NFL. And of course, there are esceptions.

This post is a waste of time. Would you have complained that the media reported that
Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier? Was it okay to report on that?

Ignorance? My God that has to be the most annoying word people use on message boards. Untie yourself from that tree for a second or two and realize that not everyone agrees with everything you say. Ignorance has absolutely nothing to do with someone getting sick and tired of hearing about race every two seconds from clowns like you and Al Sharpton. I don't know if you are struggling to fit in in life so you try and attach yourself to whatever kind of "under dog" you can, but you sound like a freaking baby who got beat up one too many times on the playground growing up. From reading many of your posts UFO I honestly believe you couldn't care less about the black coach issue. You just seem to like trying to make yourself seem like the hero in debates like this.  Here comes Joe riding in on his pretty white horse to tell everyone how ignorant they are as he rides away into the sunset thinking to himself that he just saved another lost soul. Get a grip.

[You Got BUCd Up]

It took all of .2 seconds for the media to start the crap about african american this and that and blah blah blah. Any time it's an achievement it's okay to bring up race, other than that and you're bein racist.

this superbowl's gonna suck almost as much as last years.

my only hope is that urlacher hits peyton so hard eli dies.

How would you re-act if, you found out, Hillary Rodham Clinton was going to run for president?
Because, she IS going to...
Any time it's an achievement, it's okay to bring up sex. Other than that, are you chauvinist?

"Super Bowl XLI will have plenty of significance for Dungy, since he and Bears coach Lovie Smith, his close friend, will be the first African-American coaches to take their teams to a championship game." - Len Pasquarelli, ESPN.com

Damn right, they deserve to exploit this. This is a piece of sports history!

Matter of fact, I'm going to exploit this myself.

[nickerson56]

Ignorance? My God that has to be the most annoying word people use on message boards. Untie yourself from that tree for a second or two and realize that not everyone agrees with everything you say. Ignorance has absolutely nothing to do with someone getting sick and tired of hearing about race every two seconds from clowns like you and Al Sharpton. I don't know if you are struggling to fit in in life so you try and attach yourself to whatever kind of "under dog" you can, but you sound like a freaking baby who got beat up one too many times on the playground growing up. From reading many of your posts UFO I honestly believe you couldn't care less about the black coach issue. You just seem to like trying to make yourself seem like the hero in debates like this. Here comes Joe riding in on his pretty white horse to tell everyone how ignorant they are as he rides away into the sunset thinking to himself that he just saved another lost soul. Get a grip.

Escobar - the Al Sharpton reference does show you are ignorant.  I suppose I could throw out the name of a random politician, like Strom Thrumond, as a comparision to your ideas as well.  By the way, the reference to untying yourself from a tree is a little odd.  Using your argument, Thurgood Marshall's accomplishments should be ignored because there had been numerous Justices before him.  It would probably also be out of place to recognize the acheivements of Carol Moseley Braun or even Nancy Pelosi because of course, many other politicians have served our nation.  Tolerance is the name of the game... get some or die bitter.

[Rusty]

I think that ALL qualified minority candidates should have the OPPORTUNITY to be a head coach in the NFL as well as ALL qualified majority candidates should have the OPPORTUNITY to be a head coach in the NFL. This year, Tony Dungy & Lovie Smith are the best coaches. By the way, they happen to be of African American descent, the first time that's happened in NFL history.

[cheveliar]

It took all of .2 seconds for the media to start the crap about african american this and that and blah blah blah. Any time it's an achievement it's okay to bring up race, other than that and you're bein racist.

this superbowl's gonna suck almost as much as last years.

my only hope is that urlacher hits peyton so hard eli dies.

So I take it you'll be gardening that day in protest, huh?   [banghead]

[Timbuc2]

Hey Escobar, how many players in the NFL are black? You think the head coaches'
should come from the players who have played in the NFL before? Yes? So your
comparison of the percentage of white/black people there are in society should
really be the percentage of blacks there are playing the game.

By the way, for the longest time, there were NO head coaches in the NFL. Were
you okay with that?

You're true colors are showing here because what I was pointing out that this
current achievement of Lovie and Dungy is something that is noteworthy. That's
all. The only reason the past was brought up was to debate the claim that
this is not a big deal and shouldn't be mentioned by the press or by the
men (L&D) involved.

Nobody here is saying a black coach should be given a job if he's not qualified.

BTW, since we're here, here's a little history on blacks in the league...

From Wikipedia...

A few blacks played, and even starred for professional football teams in the American Professional Football Association and other early leagues as well as the APFA's successor, the NFL. But shortly after the entry of George Preston Marshall to the league in 1932 as owner of the Boston Braves/Washington Redskins franchise, blacks disappeared from NFL rosters. In the mid-1940's, following the lead of the All-America Football Conference, a few NFL teams signed blacks as individuals, but there were no blacks included in the NFL college draft until 1949. Though five blacks were on the draft list, the first of those to actually play NFL football was Wally Triplett, a halfback from Penn State who played for the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears. In those years, black players who did manage to make NFL rosters were subject to unwritten but stringent "quotas" for the number of black players on a team and the positions that could be filled by blacks. At that time, there were no black quarterbacks, centers, or middle linebackers in the NFL. One source of talent that had been traditionally ignored by the NFL was small, historically black colleges.

* * * * *

So, with that history, it's no wonder that the Lovie & Dungy story is getting some play
in the media.

My true colors are showing? AKA I don't agree with a black policy so I must be racist. What a perfect example of just how easily a white man can be labeled a racist in todays society. Did you ever think that I just want people to earn what they get? A policy FORCING a team to interview a man simply because that man is black is assanine. Just as assanine as AA, but that's an entirely different argument.

Do I want coaches to be former players? I don't know, but don't assume my answer is yes and then build the rest of your post from that. I want the best qualified coach, I don't care if it was a former player or if it is Brittany Spears' agent's second cousins dog groomer. That's what you don't seem to be understanding.

I will be the first one to say that I am a black man and will always be very proud of that fact. I have a degree, work to be the best that I can be on my job, and make over 100K a year. I was raised by my parents to be better educated than they were. This was very important to both of them and I will always thank them for instilling in me that "I put my pants on just like the next man".

Now, we all know for a fact that if "things" were not forced upon certain factions, the chances of me being where I am today would be remote. However, I was given the opportunity, and took advantage of it.  That is exactly what Dungy and Smith have done. No matter how much is written, one way or the other, no one can put a damper on how proud I am of them. History is written with your heros discovering this and discovering that. We were subjected to learn this in school and not learn about our history. Now people are bashing the fact that history is being made in this way and race is mentioned? This is the joke and by the way...It's mostly your own people who bring up the fact that your racist...not us. You get called racist, we get called other names. I guess you'll either live with it or keep crying!

I have a lot of white affluent friends, so my research and quotes are very much factual.

[cheveliar]

Hey Escobar, how many players in the NFL are black? You think the head coaches'
should come from the players who have played in the NFL before? Yes? So your
comparison of the percentage of white/black people there are in society should
really be the percentage of blacks there are playing the game.

By the way, for the longest time, there were NO head coaches in the NFL. Were
you okay with that?

You're true colors are showing here because what I was pointing out that this
current achievement of Lovie and Dungy is something that is noteworthy. That's
all. The only reason the past was brought up was to debate the claim that
this is not a big deal and shouldn't be mentioned by the press or by the
men (L&D) involved.

Nobody here is saying a black coach should be given a job if he's not qualified.

BTW, since we're here, here's a little history on blacks in the league...

From Wikipedia...

A few blacks played, and even starred for professional football teams in the American Professional Football Association and other early leagues as well as the APFA's successor, the NFL. But shortly after the entry of George Preston Marshall to the league in 1932 as owner of the Boston Braves/Washington Redskins franchise, blacks disappeared from NFL rosters. In the mid-1940's, following the lead of the All-America Football Conference, a few NFL teams signed blacks as individuals, but there were no blacks included in the NFL college draft until 1949. Though five blacks were on the draft list, the first of those to actually play NFL football was Wally Triplett, a halfback from Penn State who played for the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears. In those years, black players who did manage to make NFL rosters were subject to unwritten but stringent "quotas" for the number of black players on a team and the positions that could be filled by blacks. At that time, there were no black quarterbacks, centers, or middle linebackers in the NFL. One source of talent that had been traditionally ignored by the NFL was small, historically black colleges.

* * * * *

So, with that history, it's no wonder that the Lovie & Dungy story is getting some play
in the media.

My true colors are showing? AKA I don't agree with a black policy so I must be racist. What a perfect example of just how easily a white man can be labeled a racist in todays society. Did you ever think that I just want people to earn what they get? A policy FORCING a team to interview a man simply because that man is black is assanine. Just as assanine as AA, but that's an entirely different argument.

Do I want coaches to be former players? I don't know, but don't assume my answer is yes and then build the rest of your post from that. I want the best qualified coach, I don't care if it was a former player or if it is Brittany Spears' agent's second cousins dog groomer. That's what you don't seem to be understanding.

I will be the first one to say that I am a black man and will always be very proud of that fact. I have a degree, work to be the best that I can be on my job, and make over 100K a year. I was raised by my parents to be better educated than they were. This was very important to both of them and I will always thank them for instilling in me that "I put my pants on just like the next man".

Now, we all know for a fact that if "things" were not forced upon certain factions, the chances of me being where I am today would be remote. However, I was given the opportunity, and took advantage of it. That is exactly what Dungy and Smith have done. No matter how much is written, one way or the other, no one can put a damper on how proud I am of them. History is written with your heros discovering this and discovering that. We were subjected to learn this in school and not learn about our history. Now people are bashing the fact that history is being made in this way and race is mentioned? This is the joke and by the way...It's mostly your own people who bring up the fact that your racist...not us. You get called racist, we get called other names. I guess you'll either live with it or keep crying!

I have a lot of white affluent friends, so my research and quotes are very much factual.

Nice Tim, you know how it is when they "protest too much"....

[keeponbucn]

It's the first time this has happened, it's a huge deal no matter your skin color.

[nflinsider]

I agree they are both good coaches not good black coaches. We as a society already segregate ourselves enough, why seperate ourselves anymore by mentioning two coaches races? Will they make a big deal if it's a Jewish Coach against a German descent Coach?

Actually a great point. Puts it into perspective.