Two years ago the Colts’ Tony Dungy and Bears’ Lovie Smith became the first African-American head coaches to reach the Super Bowl — and at the same time, no less.

The Colts of course won, 29-17, making Dungy the first African-American football coach in NFL history to win the Super Bowl. But, as Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star writes, one day removed from Barack Obama’s historic election to the presidency of the United States, Dungy laughed at how insignificant his own milestone must now seem.

“As Dungy spoke privately Wednesday, he wondered if his players, most of them in their 20s, truly understood what had happened one night earlier,” writes Kravitz. “They surely knew about Martin Luther King Jr., understood some of the broad historical outlines of the struggle for equality, but did they know — could they know — just what it meant to people like Dungy, or to two of his assistant coaches, both black, Jim Caldwell and Gene Huey?” More

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