first super bowl teams coached by african americans-history

[musika man]

who are you rooting for? the bears will win.

The Times January 20, 2007

Coaches on a collision course in drive to make Super Bowl history
Gerard Baker

Manning and Brady lock horns

Saints get the sympathy vote

One of the last symbolic racial barriers in American sport could fall this weekend as two men seek to become the first black coach to take a team to the Super Bowl.
Strangely, for a sport dominated by African-American players, no black man has coached a team to American footballÂ’s biggest game. Black quarterbacks, once a rare sight, have won Super Bowls as far back as 20 years ago.



In baseball, a sport with far fewer black players than football, two African-American managers have led teams to the World Series. Basketball has had its share of highly regarded black coaches. Arthur Ashe leapt the ethnic hurdle in tennis 30 years ago and golf, that most socially conservative of sports, has been ruled for years by Tiger Woods, perhaps the most talented person to have played the game, who also happens to be black.

But in the Super Bowl’s 40-year history, every head coach of every team to reach the game has been white. If Sunday’s two conference championship games — the semi-finals in the contest for the big game — go according to form, that will change.

In the AFC Championship game, Tony Dungy, head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, will face the New England Patriots. In the NFC, Lovie Smith will coach the Chicago Bears against the New Orleans Saints.

The prospect of a Colts versus Bears match-up for Super Bowl XLI during the first weekend of Black History Month (February 4) is made all the more poignant because Dungy and Smith are close friends and former colleagues. Smith worked under Dungy in the late 1990s as defensive co-ordinator when the latter was head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the team owned by the Glazer family, of Manchester United fame.

The National Football League has been heavily criticised by civil rights groups for the relative paucity of black head coaches. Of the 32 NFL teams, only seven were coached by blacks this year (and two of them were dismissed this month).

A few years ago, the NFL ruled that teams seeking a new head coach must interview any available black candidate, although that has not appeared to have made a significant difference to the selection.

It will not be an easy ride for either Dungy or Smith this weekend. In the NFC, the Saints will be the sympathetic favourites of most Americans after their fairytale recovery from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated their home town and wrecked the notorious Superdome.

In the AFC, Indianapolis will be up against their nemesis. The Patriots, who have won the Super Bowl three times in the past five years, have beaten the Colts in the play-offs twice in that stretch. Last week, the Patriots underscored their reputation for improbable late comebacks when they came from behind to beat the heavily favoured San Diego Chargers in the divisional round.

The AFC game also promises a classic rematch between two of the sport’s great quarterbacks — the Colts’ Peyton Manning, who, despite being among the best to play the game, has never been to a Super Bowl, and Tom Brady, who has won it three times.

[COSTA]

Are there Somalis who watch American football???


better watch NHL icehockey is better than NBA

[AbdiWahab252]

Go COLTS !!!

[Alluring]

And?

Does nothing for the greater Somali population.

[musika man]

[quote="Alluring"]And?

Does nothing for the greater Somali population.[/quote]

who? puntland? nfl is better and more exicitng than puntland.