Consider these three quotes from current African-American NFL and Division I college head coaches:
“I played for him for one year, and I learned a lot. But more important was that he was so supportive of me and my career and African-American coaches. It’s one of those things that really touches you.” — Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy.
“He had great vision on what the league was going to become and how to forge opportunities for players. What he did for that organization, the Super Bowls he won, is a testament to what kind of coach he was. But he was also a good man who gave guys an opportunity.” — Kansas City Chief coach Herm Edwards.
“The world lost a great man in Bill Walsh. He had a tremendous impact on me, both personally and professionally. … Bill’s development of the minority coaching program at the collegiate and professional levels literally changed the face of football. His sphere of influence was significantly greater than any coach of his time. He will truly be missed.” — [University of] Washington coach Tyrone Willingham. (Associated Press via Sporting News)
Lovie Smith and Marvin Lewis
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Another contribution was the Minority Coaching Fellowship, a program he created in 1987 [when there were no black head coaches in the NFL] to help African American coaches improve their job prospects in the NFL and Division I colleges by inviting them to an up-close look at the 49ers’ training camps. Among those who took advantage of the program were Tyrone Willingham, former Stanford head coach and current head coach at the University of Washington; Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis and several NFL assistants. The NFL later turned the fellowship into a league-wide program.
Bill Walsh’s vision of the future of football included diversity in the coaching ranks, and, unwilling to sit back and wait for it, he saw an opportunity to take — yes, affirmative action — to help it along.
Tony Dungy
Dungy played for Walsh in 1979, coming to the 49ers in a trade that sent Ray Rhodes to Pittsburgh.
“It was really tough for me,” Dungy said. “I played for him for one year and then certainly learned a lot. But even more than that, he was so supportive all throughout my career. He did a lot for African-American coaches, I think coaches in general. Bill was very innovative and very much a winner and somebody I learned a lot from and a very good friend.” […]
In an ironic twist of fate, it was Walsh’s hiring of Dennis Green as an assistant that helped Dungy during his own rise in the profession.
Dennis Green
“At a time when most teams didn’t have any black coaches, that’s where I met Denny Green,” Dungy said. “He’d hired Denny and Billy Matthews. Billy started the minority internship program. [Walsh] hired Ray Rhodes [as an assistant]. Shortly after that, [Rhodes] got his [coaching] career going. And so [Walsh] was very socially conscious. He wanted football to be good and he wanted the game to be good on the field. But he thought about things off the field as well. That’s what was special about him.”
Martin McNeal, Sacramento Bee:
What always will remain fresh in my mind was Walsh’s understanding of the impact of retired Cal professor and African American leader Harry Edwards on his staff [Edwards has been associated with the 49ers for over twenty years]. Many white reporters thought Edwards was more bluster than substance. However, anyone who had been with track athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith, like Edwards and the late Sam Skinner, during the controversial 1968 Mexico City Olympics garnered much respect.
Walsh understood that and recognized that learning as much about the African American athlete as he could would make him a better coach and person.
[cross-posted at If I Ran The Zoo]
i don’t follow sports, so i had no idea how important walsh was in breaking the nfl color barrier. that’s impressive.
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that said, it’s too bad that those who finally have barriers removed from their path sometimes go right ahead and throw those barriers down in others’ paths. i’m thinking dungy. but still, although dungy is himself a bigot, it’s nice to see that the bigot getting a shot at the big time is not white for a change!
I do follow sports, but I had no idea about this. I guess it testifies how integral this was with the rest of his vision, that it didn’t get called out during his lifetime.
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I can’t follow your link until I leave work (blocked), but I have an idea about what you are referring to regarding Dungy. I guess in each different fight against bigotry, the cast of heroes and villains gets reshuffled. Thanks for the “heads-up”.
and accepted an award from his local Focus on the Family affiliate. Said Dungy
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Can you imagine the uproar if a white NFL coach accepted an award for saying “I appreciate the stance they’re taking, and I embrace that stance of defining a marriage as being between a man and a woman of the same race.”?
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As you say, the bigot deck gets reshuffled…
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Still, I honestly don’t mean to hijack this thread. The news about Walsh is very good indeed. May there be many more like him!
While this is unfortunate the best way to deal with people like Dungy is to expose them to gay families so they realize they are not the evil they are. While I am a devout evangelical Methodist with a more moderate theological outlook my brother is part of a more conservative evangelical denomination and actually signed that awful petition. Yet when it was put up for the vote with the Legislature he was glad that it failed because he realized such a vote would be divisive and wrong. I convinced him when I explained that gay marriage in the state would not interfere with Churches which could still choose not to marry gays.
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I think most Christian opponents of gay marriage would simplu fall into the “I dont care camp” like my brother after hearing that. This is why they view gay marriage as some kind of “threat” due to misinformation. As soon as they find out what it really means, sure they arent marching in any parades and sure they still hold homopboic attitudes, but once they are in the “i dont care” camp equality wins.
Also about Walsh the great thing about him was that he was not an “affirmitive action” coach promoting African Americans for the sake of diversity alone, every African American coach he mentored would go on to be incredibly talented, look no further than this past superbowl. So give him credit for doing this at a time when a lot of owners such as the LA Dodgers owner in the 1980s thought that black atheletes were too dumb to coach or manage teams. Had they been affirmitive action promotions this would only have confirmed that sterotype instead he promoted on this basis of talent and helped shatter them.
I was using the term “affirmitive action” in its classic context, not in the stereotyped, perjorative context it’s taken on, in which there’s some kind of unfair advantage in play. You can’t confirm the stereotype unless you buy into it in the first place.
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“For the sake of diversity alone” is kind of a loaded concept; there’s the subtle suggestion of moving from normal to abnormal, instead of the other way around. In this case we’re talking about the NFL at a time when some high percentage of the players were minority, and none of the coaching staff were (never mind the front office). In this context, Walsh felt that increasing the diversity of the coaching ranks is a legitimate goal, in that the makeup of those ranks should be a reflection of the overall pool of experienced individuals at all levels, including players.
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When Walsh created the Minority Coaching Fellowship, he was merely providing assistance to minority coaching candiates that white guys didn’t need — some would say because of the “Old Boy” network, institutional racism; call it what you will. This is classic affirmative action in the sense that it recognizes there are barriers, and tries to either remove them or compensate in some other way (e.g., providing access to 49ers training camp and opporunities to view the internals of running the team and the organization).
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No qualified white candidate was ever passed over for an NFL job in favor of a less-qualified minority candidate that I know of, certainly not as a result of anything Bill Walsh did. Encouraging talent and promoting excellence regardless of race, and giving progress a nudge by doing something intentional to increase minority participation, are not mutually exclusive. Walsh understood that and acted on it.
I was only vaguely aware of the impact that he had on minority hiring. After reading more about his background and accomplishments I was struck by the fact that so many people remembered him as a both a great teacher(in the NFL & in the Stanford classroom), and as a man of great compassion.
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Here’s a nice tribute to Walsh from quarterback Steve Young:
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Thanks for posting this shiltone.
Regarding his more well-known acheivements, I saw Bill Bellichek quoted as ststing that the greatest challenge he has ever had was trying to design a defense against Walsh’s offense. High praise indeeed.