Dungy is in everything for the long haul

MIAMI — Shortcuts never interested Tony Dungy.

Sacrifice, though? Well, that’s another story.

“You’re not going to win every game, every season is not going to end the way you like,” the Colts coach said after one finally did, with a 29-17 win over the Bears in the Super Bowl.

“But that’s the real test of a man and the test of a champion,” Dungy added. “Can you continue to fight when things don’t go your way?”

They didn’t for what seemed like forever, yet Dungy is in everything for the long haul. It didn’t matter whether it was perfecting the defensive scheme he learned two-dozen years ago from Steelers coach Chuck Noll, volunteering in the community or advancing the cause of African Americans on the field and off.

Winning, to him, was always going to be the byproduct of doing things the right way instead of the other way around. If there’s a lesson to glean from Sunday night’s Super Bowl, that’s it. That, and the fact that while becoming a Super Bowl champion changes just about every other coach good enough to win one, it won’t change Dungy a bit.

Not long after it finally happened, after all those tough seasons in Tampa and the handful in Indianapolis when a tough break or his nemesis in New England, Patriots coach Bill Belichick, pulled the rug out from under Dungy, Peyton Manning and the Colts, he pulled one of his three sons, 15-year-old Eric, up onto the podium and asked a few photographers to snap away.

His large brown eyes sparkled.



The smile always dancing at the corner of Dungy’s lips widened just that little bit more. But as far as celebrating, or reminding all those who doubted he’d win the big one without compromising his principles, that was it.

“If you weren’t watching the game and you just saw him afterward,” Eric Dungy said, “you wouldn’t know if he won or lost. He’s always that way. It’s kind of a running joke in the Dungy household. Anytime he asks us, or we ask him, ‘How do you feel?’ the only answer you ever hear is, ‘Great.”’

There were plenty of times when other men would have answered otherwise. Instead, Dungy bit his lip when lesser-qualified assistants jumped over him in line for head coaching jobs, then rolled up his sleeves and went to work when the only team willing to grant him a shot was a sorry Tampa franchise that seemed beyond rescue.

Rather than complain, he assembled a staff of like-minded assistants, guys who, like him, didn’t fit the NFL help-wanted ads, then challenged them to help him break the mold. Already, four members of that staff have followed Dungy into the head coaching ranks, including Lovie Smith, his counterpart on the Bears’ sideline Sunday night.

Together, they made those Bucs better than respectable. More important, Dungy did it by teaching players instead of cursing them out, showing them that cheating him with their effort meant they were cheating themselves. And even when the Bucs turned around and fired him, handing the Super Bowl-ready squad he patiently built to Jon Gruden for the final step, Dungy left town with his head held high.

“Tony was like our Moses,” Bucs linebacker Derrick Brooks recalled last year. “He led us out of the darkness and right up to the promised land.”

Dungy went Moses one step better, though, and found other work soon enough. Nothing about him was different on the sideline in Indianapolis, save the color of his outfit and the caliber of talent that was waiting for him.

He had the Colts in position to take the final step last season, when his 18-year-old son, James, committed suicide in December 2005. Refusing to be broken by the tragedy, he taught his players yet one more lesson, treating the blow more as a test of faith than a testament to bad fortune.

What happened to Dungy on Sunday morning, as he prepared for yet another final exam, was hardly worth mentioning, except to illustrate the way he deals with every other setback that has confronted him in life. He and a friend had set out from their hotel for a walk and lost their way. They planned to do a mile loop and wound up wandering for 2.5 miles or so instead.

Rather than get angry, he used the extra time to reflect.

“I just thought about the journey,” Dungy said, “where we were and how the Lord had kind of set this up with some struggles, some ups and downs, some hills and valleys. And I thought about the way our team had persevered and how it would be a shame if we didn’t win it.

“I thought about how the game was likely to go the same way, how it would have some hills and valleys, and it did. And that gave me the message I wanted to give to the team, the last thing I was going to say. I told them there was going to be some storms out there and we’ve got to get through those and hang together,” Dungy said, “and we’d be OK.”

There were real storms Sunday night, of course — the ballcap and shirt Dungy wore as he spoke in the interview room were still soaked. But he was on the other side now, home safe and dry. Yet Dungy reached back to acknowledge all those men and all those sacrifices that made his journey possible, but couldn’t be there to hoist the trophy alongside him.

“I thought about that as I was up there on the podium: being the first African American to win it, and I really have to dedicate this to the guys who came before me ... Jimmy Raye, Sherman Lewis, Lionel Taylor … great coaches who could have done this,” he said, “if they would have gotten the opportunity.”

(Associated Press)