Glenn Dickey - San Francisco 49ers Head Coach Bill Walsh Caused Increase In Hiring Of Black Coaches In NFL

My friend and SF Examiner columnist Glenn Dickey wrote this great column on ex-49ers coach Bill Walsh, which I post here and link to here.

Dickey: Walsh laid groundwork for black coaches

"Bill Walsh was not only a groundbreaking offensive coach with Stanford and then the 49ers, he also was instrumentral in integrating blacks into the coaching ranks. Notably, Denny Green and Ray Rhodes were on his staffs and went on to become head coaches." - Glenn Dickey.

Feb 2, 2007 3:00 AM (5 days ago)

SAN FRANCISCO - Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith will be the first black head coaches to face each other in the Super Bowl because of groundwork laid by Bill Walsh.

From his first year as a head coach — at Stanford in 1977 — Walsh looked for black assistant coaches. Denny Green was on his first staff.

“Denny was one of our first hires,” Walsh said this week. Green later became head coach at Stanford and then one of the first half-dozen black head coaches in the NFL.

When he came to the 49ers, Walsh started an intern program to bring in black assistants. One of them was Ray Rhodes, who also became one of that first group of black head coaches in the NFL.

“You have to start somewhere,” Walsh said. “At that time, NFL teams weren’t even hiring black assistants.”

In 1987, Walsh created the Minority Coaching Fellowship program, which has produced several black college coaches, including Tyrone Willingham, who has coached at Stanford, Notre Dame and Washington.

He also started a yearly conference of black college coaches to discuss their situation among themselves. Lowell Cohn and I were the only writers present at one memorable meeting, when coaches talked frankly among themselves and then listened to a candid message by Dr. Harry Edwards about their specific role and the condition of black society. An organizer of the black athletes’ protest at the 1968 Olympics, Edwards was a sociology professor at the University of California who had been brought to the 49ers by Walsh to counsel players. He is still on the 49ers’ payroll.

Walsh then turned his focus to the NFL, working with Roger Goodell, now the NFL commissioner but then an assistant to Paul Tagliabue, on a program to help black assistants get head-coaching jobs.

“They weren’t even getting interviews,” Walsh said. “I don’t think it was racism so much as just indifference. White coaches and administrators had their own jobs, their own concerns.”

“I’ve worked with Bill almost from the time I came into the league in 1982,” Goodell said when I interviewed him before he became commissioner, “and I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the depth of his knowledge and understanding. He has a way of processing information and formulating a plan quickly.”

That’s exactly what Walsh did with his program to get black assistants into head-coaching jobs.

“They weren’t even getting interviews,” he noted, “So, we set up a video program where these coaches were interviewed and could then send tapes to clubs.”

One black assistant who did get interviewed was Marvin Lewis, but Lewis didn’t interview well because he didn’t know what was expected. So, Walsh set up seminars with other NFL executives to instruct the black assistants on how to interview.

The black assistants were prepared when the Rooney Rule, which mandates the interviewing of at least one minority candidate for head-coaching jobs, was installed in 2002. There were seven black NFL head coaches last season.

It all comes back to Walsh, who has affected so many people with his intelligence and compassion.

“To focus on him as a football coach is really a mistake,” Goodell said, “because it ignores the breadth of the man. He’s been involved in our league in so many ways.”

Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith can attest to that.

Glenn Dickey has been covering Bay Area sports since 1963 and also writes on www.GlennDickey.com. E-mail him at glenndickey@hotmail.com.

Tony Dungy Proud of Two Black Coaches In Super Bowl

Dungy proud of two black coaches in Super Bowl
After a decades-long struggle for minority coaches in professional football, the Colts' Tony Dungy fully embraces the significance of two black head coaches in the Super Bowl.
BY MICHAEL WALLACE
mwallace@MiamiHerald.com

INDIANAPOLIS - Tony Dungy could only shake his head in disbelief as he reflected on the numbers back then.

Way back when black head coaches in the NFL didn't exist. Back when any thought of establishing a pipeline of minority head coaches essentially was a pipe dream.

That was the reality the Indianapolis Colts' coach stepped into in 1981 when he accepted his first NFL coaching job as an assistant with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Dungy quickly did the math. Then, he set out to alter the equation.

''When I came into the league, there were 14 African-American assistant coaches and 28 teams,'' Dungy, 51, said Monday, a day after he and the Bears' Lovie Smith became the first black head coaches to reach the Super Bowl.

``People who had an opportunity to change that were going to have to do it. It was about bringing good coaches and people into the league. In my heart of hearts, it was also to bring good African-American coaches.''

On Feb. 4, Dungy faces one of the protégés he groomed when the Colts play Smith's Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI at Dolphin Stadium. It will be the first meeting between black head coaches in the Super Bowl, which guarantees a black coach will lead his team to the title for the first time in NFL history.

For that reason, Dungy said next week's historical matchup represents ''a win-win'' situation.

It's also the high-water mark in a decades-long struggle for minority coaches who have had to overcome discriminatory hiring practices to land jobs at the top level.

''I realize the position we're in,'' Smith, 49, told reporters in Chicago after the Bears beat the New Orleans Saints to get to the Super Bowl. ``It's hard to put into words, but I know a lot of great coaches who came before me that didn't get this opportunity.''

Smith was a college assistant until 1996 when Dungy, then head coach at Tampa Bay, hired him to coach linebackers. Of the 45 questions Dungy was asked at Monday's news conference, 20 were related to his role in fighting through obstacles to create opportunities for himself and other black coaches.

COACHING TREE

Dungy is the league's only active coach to lead his team to the playoffs seven consecutive seasons. He is at the top of a coaching tree that saw a fourth former assistant land a top job on Monday when Mike Tomlin became the Steelers' first black head coach. Herm Edwards (Kansas City) and Rod Marinelli (Detroit), who is white, also have worked for Dungy.

''An opportunity like this, to get to the big game, has been a long time coming for him,'' said Colts lineman Anthony McFarland, who also played for Dungy in Tampa. ``I wish it would have happened for him years ago in Tampa. But he's got it now, and it couldn't be any better.''

The attention on Dungy and Smith leading to the Super Bowl should raise concerns about the overall low number of minority head coaches, said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Indianapolis-based Black Coaches Association.

There were seven black head coaches among the NFL's 32 teams this season, and two -- Dennis Green (Arizona) and Art Shell (Oakland) -- since have been fired. In college, there were only five among 119 Division I-A schools. The University of Miami made Randy Shannon the sixth after the season.

''I don't know if we'll ever match a day in the NFL of this magnitude,'' Keith said Monday. ``I don't know if you can adequately describe it, but you just appreciate it. It should send a message that color should never be a barrier. The issue is the quality. But some of the breakthroughs in the NFL, we're not seeing in college.''

Shannon's hiring was a significant step, but more need to be taken, said Florida State associate athletic director Bob Minnix, a member of the BCA's board of directors.

EVALUATING COLLEGES

Minnix said the BCA has started to circulate a report card that evaluates hiring practices of college athletic departments. It serves a purpose similar to that of the NFL's so-called ''Rooney Rule,'' which mandates that owners must interview minority candidates in coaching searches.

''On the collegiate level, we're woefully behind the times,'' Minnix said. ``We're just trying to help colleges make up ground. I applaud the University of Miami. But with Randy's hire, it's slow progress.''

Dungy sees that progress with programs now in place that once didn't exist. He said being one of two black coaches in the Super Bowl should continue to raise awareness.

''Some of the impediments are out of the way,'' he said. 'I think about my generation of kids who watched Super Bowls and never saw African-American coaches and didn't think that you could coach. Now, they can look at us and say, `Hey, I might be the coach one day.' That's special.''

With Dungy and Smith In Super Bowl XLI, African Americans Forced To See Positive Role Models

Yes, I know the title of my post is controversial. But it's also true. It comes from several episodes in my personal life that I will never forget and caused me to think that we -- African Americans or "blacks" if you will (I use the terms interchangebly) -- have actually conditioned ourselves to accept a second class place in American Life. (Oh, if youre wondering, that's me on the left, in the suit.)



Now, with the two teams in Super Bowl XLI being coached by African Americans -- the Chicago Bears by Lovie Smith and the Indianapolis Colts by Tony Dungy, Blacks are actually forced to see ourselves in positive role model positions. It's about time and will help me reduce, but not erase the memory of the following occurences in my life.

The first one was when I was 14-years-old. (I'm 44 now.) I was just leaving a McDonald's Restaurant located in South Chicago and just off Avalon Avenue, when an older Black man walked in and yelled "I want the manager! Where's the manager?!" I don't know what his complaint was but he seemed angry. So a tall, well dressed Black man walked out from behind the counter and identified himself as the manager. "Can I help you?" He asked.

"Naw. You're not the manager. I wanna see the White Man." That's what he said, and I obviously never forgot it. I left the place as my Mom was waiting for me outside, but those words "I wanna see the White Man" never left my head.

The second occurence was during a visit to see my auntie in Tennessee when I was 17-years-old. One of her family friends was bragging about how he purchased a new car almost every year "Like the White man does" he said. And he kept saying it. It was annoying to me and so I asked Mom about it. "That's how some of us think," she said. "It's not right, but you're being exposed to it."

No kidding.

I was never told or even allowed to think that I could not do something because I am Black. I was never instructed that there are "two rules" -- one for Blacks and the other for Whites. I was also never discouraged from seeing the late Economist John Kenneth Galbraith as my hero even though he's White. No one ever told me that his position or way of thinking was not attainable to me or anyone else because they were or I am Black. I was never told not to date interracially because I was Black. I was never told that I could not be with Asian or White or Latino or any "different" friends because I am African American. Never.

I was always instructed to expect to see Blacks in important positions and indeed my Mom knew Blacks who were. Blacks like Arnold Grant, who was the first African American Regional Director of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the 60s. Or my father, who I'm named after, and who invented an electric ladder. Or my late stepfather Chester Yerger, Jr., who fought in World War II and who's father was part of one of Arkansas' most prominent families. Thus, I'm happy that at least one of the members of the Federal Reserve Board are Black -- there should be more. The point is, I was brought up to expect greatness from Blacks.

But I digress.

I've seen more examples of Black self-hatred and dislike of other Blacks who rise to positions of power or prominence than the opposite. You can take the examples I gave, or San Francisco Radio Station KNBR's Personality Rod Brooks' recent statements calling Black Coaches "one of those" as if they were a bad thing, or Black on Black crime, I could go on and on.



But now, with Colts Coach Tony Dungy exorcising the demons of Patriots past, and Lovie Smith expecting his Chicago Bears to be Super Bowl champions and then willing his team to the game, I have a reason to smile. And Blacks everywhere do as well.

This adds to the expected greatness of Tiger Woods, and the rise of Barack Obama to Senator and perhaps President of the United States of America. It means we can expect greatness from us, and indeed should insist on it. Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith coaching in the World's largest single day sports event seen by almost 1 Billion people, will do almost as much for Black self-esteem as Martin Luther King did decades ago and today. A tall statement, perhaps. But consider the size of the Super Bowl TV audience once again and then think about it.

Still, it's a jarring experience for some of us to see this. Derrick Bell, the noted Black law professor formerly of Harvard and now at New York University, told the story of an African American cab driver who asked what he did, and when he told him, the driver said "Man, it's guys like you that make it hard for me." What he meant, was that he could not easily use the fact that he's Black as a reason for not succeeding. Indeed, it's a reason to at least try. We all know that racism is alive and well but it makes life harder when we as Blacks don't expect to excell because of it. It's better to fight racism and battle through it, but not destroy one's self because of it.

Thus, the next time -- regardless of who you are as we need all hands on deck to rid ourselves of this self-esteem problem -- you hear someone Black ask "Where's the White Man?" when an African American manager appears, don't slap the crap out of him, just say to him "He's in line, ordering from the Black man who runs the place."

Coming to Miami? Come to the Bauer's Super Bowl Party!