Article - January 22nd, 2007
History-makers are mostly just a couple of fine coaches
By Jerry Izenberg, Star-Ledger
Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy are going where no head coach who happens to be an African-American has ever gone before. Together, these two coaches and old friends made history.
So there is nothing wrong with pausing to consider the fact that a once divisive roadblock has been erased for the NFL. But… it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the shame of "the black quarterback" revisited.
There was nothing accidental about the blinders NFL owners and coaches hammered into place for years each time a black quarterback came into view. It was deeply ingrained in the NFL fabric, and it took Doug Williams and a Super Bowl performance that shook America's 100-yard world to dispatch those notions.
But that's not the way it was in recent years for potential African-American coaches. [Dan Rooney] spoke out hard and clear about the need to give more African-Americans serious interviews and a shot at the head coaching jobs.
There was also pressure from a group of former players and concerned citizens named after Fritz Pollard, the first black man to coach (1921) in the NFL. The league went 68 years until it had another when Art Shell took over the Oakland Raiders.
Now it has seven, and just like white coaches, the good ones will win, the bad ones will lose and the rest will sort themselves out.