Edwards, Dungy unhappy that race is still an issue

SportsBusinessNews.com e-mail newsletter/ St. Louis Post-Dispatch ^ | 1.7.02 | Bryan Burwell

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Edwards, Dungy unhappy that race is still an issue      The hallways are fairly empty when coach Herman Edwards arrives at the New York Jets' training complex every morning. He enjoys the solitude because it allows him to hit the weight room, do a little workout and occasionally be alone with his thoughts before the day picks up its normal hectic pace. That and this report from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bryan Burwell

Monday was one of those peaceful mornings, made even more pleasurable by a phone call from Indianapolis. It was his good friend and coaching mentor Tony Dungy. Dungy's Colts will face Edwards' Jets this afternoon in the AFC's wild-card game at the Meadowlands. And as the two men reminisced about old times, they also stopped for a moment to consider the historical import of this meeting.

When the 10-6 Colts meet the 9-7 Jets, it will mark the first time in pro football history that two African-American head coaches will meet in an NFL playoff game. And while they both felt a tremendous amount of pride, it also annoyed them more that the issue of race and coaching in the NFL is still unresolved.

"It's just a shame that we're the only ones out there," said Edwards. "We're not the first ones who could do this, we're just the first ones to get the opportunity. Sooner or later, that has to change."

But when will it? Every year, we keep waiting for some NFL decision-maker to level the playing field, break up the good ol' boy network and open up the interviewing process to involve serious talks with minority coaching candidates. Yet each year, the jobs open, and they close, and rarely does a minority get a legitimate shot at cracking pro football's most exclusive fraternity.

The NFL has urged league owners over the past few years to broaden their approach to hiring, yet with little success. There are 32 head coaches in the NFL, and Dungy and Edwards are the only two active African-American head coaches. In the modern era of the NFL, there have only been five black head coaches - Art Shell (Oakland Raiders), Ray Rhodes (Green Bay and Philadelphia), Dennis Green (Minnesota), Edwards and Dungy.

When given an opportunity, each has proved he knew how to win. In their 29 total seasons of coaching, their teams reached the playoffs 20 times. Dungy wins wherever he goes. He turned the Tampa Bay Bucs into one of the league's top teams, and then took only one season to turn around the woeful Colts. Indy was 6-10 last year with a defense ranked 28th in the league. This season, Dungy's first, the Colts improved to 10-6, and the defense soared to No. 8. That and this report from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bryan Burwell

Edwards' success has been just as impressive. In his two seasons with the Jets, they have gone to the playoffs twice, and this season may have been his best work. After his Jets floundered to a 2-5 start, they won seven of their next nine games to capture the AFC East title.

"I hope that the people who need to take notice do," Dungy said. "They ought to notice that we're both in the playoffs again. The point we're trying to make is that someone ought to notice that we're both highly successful head coaches, as have been other black men who have held these jobs. Hopefully, it will get the message across to the people who are doing the hiring in our league that they need to give more people opportunities. It's such a shame that we are still talking about this, but this is the situation we're in."

When the jobs open up each year, qualified black coaching candidates are getting phony consideration. As Edwards recalled back in the early '90s when Dungy's name kept coming up in news stories that he was being interviewed for several NFL head coaching jobs, "when I talked to Tony, he told me, 'Hey man, I never talked to anyone from those teams.'"

It happens every year. Last season, Jets defensive coordinator Ted Cotrell's so-called interview with the Chargers was conducted in the San Diego airport. When the Buffalo Bills were telling everyone last season how seriously they were pursuing Marvin Lewis, who was also being interviewed by the Browns, the Bills wouldn't allow Lewis' wife to make a visit to check out the schools and neighborhood housing.

After threats of lawsuits sparked another controversy in September, the NFL formed a management committee to again try to improve the hiring process. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue urged owners to interview at least one minority candidate before hiring a new coach this year.

The problem with Tagliabue's earnest effort is that owners know they can skirt the issue. While no one is questioning why Dallas' Jerry Jones hired Bill Parcells, you do have to question the sincerity of his hasty, last-minute telephone interview with Dennis Green.

"I think the NFL is doing what it can as a league," Edwards said. "The only way we will ever make this situation better is by talking about it. It might make some people nervous to talk about it, but unless we have communication, unless we make people more aware that they need to broaden their perspectives concerning giving more people opportunities to interview seriously, nothing will change." That and this report from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bryan Burwell

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Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[M. Peach]

This line of thinking is so ridiculous it's laughable. This is a business, winning is the goal and ultimately the riches, and as such - they will put in the most qualified person as a head coach.

Since the league currently consists of 70% black players, why aren't they complaining that we need more white and hispanic players on the field, not to mention Asian and Puerto Rican?

I understand each NFL owner is currently required to at least "talk" to one potential black coach before hiring a new one.

This is a typical liberal cause - It's only supposed to be good for the few and the rest be damned.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

In WWII the services were segregated; President Eisenhower is the one who desegregated Washington D.C.

The more clearly you understand how bad things were for blacks fifty years ago, the more you have to realize that the country has improved. But.

The but is that if anyone thinks racism is unusual in America they must first explain why most blacks marry other blacks even tho 9 out of 10 Americans is NOT black. Maybe an owner considers the team his pride and joy, and expects to be socially comfortable with a head coach he hires, and that simply doesn't often happen with black candidates for head coach any more regularly than it does for black potential husbands/wives of whites. For all I know, maybe football team owners are Republicans, and 90% of the otherwise interesting possible black candidates for head coach are notably abrasive Democrats.

All of which is no more than to point out that there aren't any black owners of NFL teams yet . . .

[Ol' Sparky]

The only message I'm getting is that Dungy's teams get a beating come playoff time.

There is an old boys network in coaching, but it's not based on race. Dungy was hired almost as soon as he was fired. And, Dennis Green will be recycled and get another job as well.

[EBUCK]

If more black coaches were in the same league as Dungy there would be more black coaches in the game.
Any coach that can turn around my pittiful Bucs (at least defensively) can pretty much write his own ticket.

Also, black coaches are pretty much an untried factor in the NFL. When you've got a whole season to bet on you go with what's tried and true, that happens to be white coaches. Dungy, more than any other Black coach, is setting the stage for far less risky expiriments. Even if it were partially about race, (which I don't think it is with all the young owners nowadays) it's more about winning and we all know how quickley the barriers came down in Baseball, Football and Basketball once it was realized that black players made a BIG difference. All they gotta do is prove themselves as coaches and the rest will fall into place. And Dungy is doing just that.

EBUCK

[EBUCK]

Dungy's teams get a beating come playoff time.

A little too much emphasis on Defence IMO. A really good offensive coordinator would do wonders for his team (if he could give up a bit of the control, which I hear isn't that easy for him).

EBUCK

[dfwgator]

It's just plane stupid for a team to not take the best man for the job, black or white. Trust me, if a qualified black coach is available who can win, he will be hired. Dennis Green was a terrible coach at Minnesota, that's why noone will hire as a head coach.

[maro]

Well, I think that there are black coaches who "deserve" to be head coaches. "Deserve"? In some abstract sense. But I haven't spent 200 million for a football franchise, so what does my opinion mean. Seriously, the only real question is whether anyone should do anything about this "problem." (It's not a huge one in a country where schizophrenics wander the streets in the cold endangering themselves and the public, when little boys and girls grow up with drug addict parents, when the schools in the inner cities are free fire zones, etc.) I think there should be very little done here. The teams that don't hire excellent black coaches will suffer and lose to those that do. It's that simple. In that process, black coaches will not be stigmatized as second-rate. The closest parallel is the "problem" of black QBs. Blacks were underrepresented in this position, but that's changing in a hurry, isn't it? Look at what Michael Vick did to my poor Packers this weekend. Anyone stupid enough to pass over a great QB because of his racial background will lose games and lose money.

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Any coach that can turn around my pittiful Bucs (at least defensively) can pretty much write his own ticket.

I feel for you - I've been a long-suffering Bucs fan dating back to the beginning; I had a Doug Williams jersey for a long time (which I've long since outgrown)...

[mrustow]

When given an opportunity, each has proved he knew how to win.

This article is pure affirmative action propaganda. First of all, the writer is saying you can simply extrapolate from Dungy and Edwards to other black head coaches, which is nonsense on stilts. (If someone wrote that you could extrapolate from Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick to other white coaches, no editor would publish him, let alone pay him for it.)

The author is also dishonest about the black coaches he praises. Ray Rhodes initially won in Philly, but in his last season, things fell apart for him. He lost control of the team, and the season went down the tubes. Then he was handed a team right out of the Super Bowl in Green Bay, and he took it down to 8-8 mediocrity, in large part due to his own incompetence (e.g., bad clock management late in close games). I hear that Rhodes, now an assistant head coach/defensive coordinator with the Broncos, is in no hurry to go back into head coaching.

Denny Green hung on to his job in Minny early in his head coaching career by threatening a lawsuit. That'll make him real popular with prospective bosses. And his teams were favored in big games, and always choked big time (e.g., against Atlanta and the N.Y. Giants). Dungy's teams have also always choked in the playoffs, but as another FReeper noted, when he was fired by Tampa Bay, he was immediately hired by Indy, as well he should have been. Art Shell lost his job in Oakland due to a racial epithet he hurled at quarterback Jeff Hostetler ("You're just another white quarterback.")

(Look for Mo Carthon, just named offensive coordinator with the Cowboys, to become a head coach in about two years, possibly as Parcells' successor, once Crazy Jerry decides to give Parcells some Arkansas justice.)

This guy is not writing for people who know anything about pro football.

[driftless]

Green was hardly a terrible coach. He went into Northwestern and won which was no mean accomplishment. He took over the Vikings and produced winners and came within an eyelash of getting into the Superbowl....where they would have lost again (ha, ha, as a Packer fan, I just couldn't resist that swipe). But he's a very good coach who should get another crack.

[EBUCK]

Look at what Michael Vick did to my poor Packers this weekend. Anyone stupid enough to pass over a great QB because of his racial background will lose games and lose money.

Exactly. Same with Black pitching in baseball (although that seems to have ebbed)

EBUCK

[EBUCK]

I've been watching (usually in disgust) since Sam Wyche became head coach, ?'92?. Mostly because of the origin of my last name (Buckner) and partly because Oregon aint got no team (the Seattle Sea Chickens don't count). The only Jersey I've got is Dilfer, not that I wear it out of doors though LOL.

EBUCK