In addition to having a successful playoff record and winning the Super Bowl, one of the marks of coaching success in the NFL is having a “coaching tree,” or for a coach to have his assistants hired as head coaches around the League. In a post on Sports Illustrated, Don Banks shows the coaching tree of two coaches who worked under Dennis Green, Brian Billick, who formerly coached in Baltimore, and Tony Dungy, head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. The significance is this: Dennis Green was given a shot in the pros after a very successful stint as head coach at Stanford. A major voice in getting him that job was Condoleeza Rice.
Looking particularly at the Dungy branch of the Green tree, I think that’s how Affirmative Action was supposed to work.
Dungy also has four of his former assistants in NFL head coaching jobs, and all of them worked for him during his six-season tenure in Tampa Bay (1996-2001): Kansas City’s Herman Edwards, Chicago’s Lovie Smith, Detroit’s Rod Marinelli and Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin. Coincidentally, all four worked on the defensive side of the ball with the Bucs, but that was Tampa Bay’s strength as well as Dungy’s background too. Whenever Dungy retires, he’ll have a fifth member of that club, because the Colts have already named assistant head coach/quarterbacks coach Jim Caldwell as his successor.
Somebody gave Denny a shot, then Denny gave Tony an opportunity to shine, and so on. This ain’t a question of hiring somebody who’s not qualified just because he’s Black, it’s about giving highly-qualified Black candidates the chance to shine. If we were focused on that, government intervention might not be as necessary.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:17 am
I can’t imagine that this was part of her official duties. Rather, it demonstrates a new old boy network of blacks.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:30 am
while she was at stanford, she stayed on the selection committee for the football coach. if i remember correctly, she was the head of the committee, although she obviously didn’t have final decision, since she was the provost, not the athletic director.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:22 am
The NFL’s efforts on recruiting minority coaches and front office workers is laudable. If every institution in every industry adopted a similar set of policies, we wouldn’t need Affirmative Action.
But the real world doesn’t work this way and there will always be employers demonstrating current patterns of discrimination — racial, gender, etc. — which require remedies. That’s all Affirmative Action is. I wish people would stop mischaracterizing AA as the Black entitlement initiative.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:38 am
there will always be employers demonstrating current patterns of discrimination — racial, gender, etc. — which require remedies
sorta. that’s why i think denny green, et al. actually provides the template. cuz the origin of this current crop of Black head coaches in the League isn’t the result of a concerted effort on the part of the NFL. the only coach who was hired during that time was Tomlin. All the rest were hired because they were part of successful regimes. Dungy had a particularly difficult time getting hired, mostly because owners didn’t think his demeanor would be successful. All that to say, though, that I think part of the reason AA is still necessary for us is that we haven’t minded the store as carefully as we could have. I’m sayin that Condi and Denny and Tony have been minding the store.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
The NFL had to enact the Rooney Rule, and as MIB says, it is the model for leveling a playing field.
College admissions professionals are changing their game. How about no more SAT scores that one of hte Ivy leagers is switching to?
June 26th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“… cuz the origin of this current crop of Black head coaches in the League isn’t the result of a concerted effort on the part of the NFL. the only coach who was hired during that time was Tomlin.”
That’s very incorrect. The NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship Program, started by Bill Walsh in 1987 (and formally adopted by the league shortly thereafter), is the incubator for every Black NFL head coach — save for maybe the exception of Art Shell. Four current Black NFL head coaches are hires under the Rooney Rule (started in 2003) — Marvin Lewis, Herm Edwards, Mike Tomlin, and Lovie Smith. Smith, Edwards, and Dungy are part of Dennis Green’s coaching tree, but Dennis Green, Ray Rhodes, and Ty Willingham are all branches of Bill Walsh’s coaching tree. In fact, Bill Walsh — ex-Cardinal head coach (!) –was the most likely force behind Green’s hire at Stanford. As a matter of fact, Rice wasn’t yet at Stanford when Green was hired. So let’s give credit where credit’s due.
Dennis Green was head coach at Northwestern before the gig at Stanford. Willie Jeffries (HBCU aficionados know about him) coached at Wichita State before that.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
i stand corrected. *bows*
but do you think that those guys would’ve gotten hired had they not come from a winning tradition? like, does art shell a tree? i don’t know, but i doubt it. i’m also not sure why it took him so long to get a second head coaching job, though.