I suppose this might annoy some of the closet wingnuts in here, but I'll post it anyway.

In 2002, attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran Jr. decided that Blacks had been shut out of coaching long enough. They released a report entitled "Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performances, Inferior Opportunities" that called out the NFL's "dismal record of minority hiring."

The report highlighted two interesting facts.

a) While Blacks comprised 70% of NFL players, only 6% of coaches and 28% percent of assistant coaches were Black.

b) while only six of 400 NFL head coaches hired since 1929 were Black, they significantly outperformed their white counterparts in wins and play-off appearances.

Cochran and Mehri threatened to sue the NFL unless it agreed to change. The NFL went on to adopt the "Rooney Rule" which required teams to included at least one non-white candidate in the interview process.

The race of superbowl coaches is simply the rightful result of applying pressure on the NFL hierarchy. Not the result of sitting around waiting patiently for justice from an organisation that will illogically ignore talent and ability in order to keep power and control 'in the family'.

There is a lesson to be learnt there.

It would be completely short-sighted of a writer (Fiore) to inject a statement such as, "the focus should be on coaches Dungy and Smith, as coaches", if his concern is to progress the conversation. If I were a player, or coach, or on the staff of one their teams, that would be a sensible statement, because then it would only be about football. But as any man knows, including those who may not care to acknowledge it, sports are a microcosm of life - political, social, you name it.

And to another point, if sports were truly a meritocracy when it comes to coaching and upper-brass positions, there wouldn't be such a revolving door of losers getting the few jobs that come available. We all know that the candidates far out number the opportunities.

But as a black man, here is something. It's amazing the feeling when there is nobody in the room "like you". The whole circumstance is alien. You speak differently, and laugh differently, and dress better, but they don't know that which makes you forget, and things like that. When things go well I find the word "Black" in my back pocket with my hands and mind free, no longer denied the chance to be who I am.

That's why I don't see these coaches in the Super Bowl as being more than a watershed moment. Things are simply the way they should be. Dungy beat the best coach in football, and perhaps became the best coach. Smith ran through the league, handled controversy smoothly, and has arrived comfortably at football's biggest game.

Two great teams, two great stories, now let's enjoy the game!

Amazing how the media especially the sports side of the media covers black issues and events of great significance. I do understand that given the lack of black sports writers, editors, reporters that the story of black issues often get so slighted and shortchanged. I do know it has always been easy for white reporters, editors, pundits to worship and paint margainal white talents as the greatest thing since God and pussy.

I am under no illusion that black excellance in the culture will ever get a fair shake given the legacy of white envy and racism in our society and of course the media. At the end of the day everyone knows the elephant in the room which has dominated american society from sports to arts to culture are people that look like me, Lovie, Tony, Miles, Coltrane, MLK, ALI,Magic,Louis,Owens,Robinson,Paige, Doby, Ellington,Walker,Oprah....

Just wondering.

So first Dickenson, then Kayima, now King...was there a memo or something about this being "race week" on Salon ;)

I kid of course, it's funny (as in odd, not ha ha) that race is still so obviously an issue that it's the lead story for the Super Bowl. It still baffles me, I mean really fucks with my head, that it's only in the last ten years or so that black men have been seen as able quarterbacks...that's, pardon the expletive, really fucked up.

As for coaching, it seems to me that if a large majority of the players are black, then it would follow that there would be a large majority of black coaches (i.e people with an intimate knowledge of how the game works). Although maybe there's not the same correlation between coaching and playing football as there is in other sports (especially hockey, baseball, basketball), that the specialized nature of each position means that a player might not have as much of a head start with coaching as in say baseball (even there, one doesn't see too many ex-pitchers as coaches)...I dunno, could that be a reason? Are the majority of coaches former professional players or are they career coaches?

regardless, it's hard to root against a guy named "Lovie" ;)

Underneath King's shallow compliments regarding Tony & Lovie is the ever present envy of a white male . King is an off spring of a culture which has always had contempt for Black excellance from sports to music to arts. The envy is really ugly when the white jewish and black variables intersect..

King had no choice to write a token piece about the obvious...I am still not moved nor impressed... I expect excellance

The first gay, Asian head coach.

One positive: Assumptions will be challenged and revised. Like that old brain teaser about the doctor not being able to operate on the doctor's own son but the doctor is not the boy's father.

Chances are, as King noted, if someone is saying "Race doesn't matter," that person is white. Race does matter. But that's okay. The underlying thinking is that saying that race matters is a negative thing. I see it is a positive. The sooner we can acknowledge that it does matter, or that it at least can matter, we can have a much more accepting and engaging conversation. If we deny it's existence, we cut the conversation off.

We are squirrely about talking about race. We went from a very racist society to one that wants to see itself as colorblind. Truth lies somewhere in between. And yes we can say that the needle is moving, slowly, to the other side of the dial, we still have a ways to go.

So to call attention to Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith's color is okay with me. To call attention to this "first" allows us to examine the other "firsts" we have not yet reached. It allows us to examine race issues, even possibly think about how they are present in our own lives. It's very easy to get on a soapbox and say, "I see no color." It's much harder to admit that you do see color, and to acknowledge the difficulties that racism plays in our society, or to us personally, and how we can deal with that.

Race matters, Tony and Lovie's race matters, and that's not such a bad thing.