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Brother Bowl Is a Done Deal

Section: Entertainment

By Ed Wiley III, BET.com Staff Writer

For the first time in history, two Black head coaches will face-off at the Super Bowl.

It took 41 years, but both the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts won their respective divisional championships Sunday.

"It means a lot," Colts coach Tony Dungy said after his Indianapolis Colts beat New England 38-34 in the AFC title game. "I'm very proud to represent African-American coaches, but more than that, it's about the Indianapolis Colts."

Bears Coach Lovie Smith was also among the masses rooting on Indianapolis.

"We have to play someone and, in my perfect world, I would like to see the Colts be that team," Smith said after his Chicago Bears pummeled the New Orleans Saints 39-14.

"Tony Dungy has done an awful lot for our game," Smith said. "He hasn't had a chance to coach in the Super Bowl. I would love to see it."

The 2006 football season kicked off with seven Black coaches – Herman Edwards for the Kansas City Chiefs, Romeo Crennel for the Cleveland Browns, Marv Lewis for the Cincinnati Bengals, Art Shell the Oakland Raiders, Dennis Green for the Arizona Cardinals, plus Smith and Dungy. Three of them made the playoffs: Edwards, Dungy and Smith. Shell and Green both got fired following disappointing seasons.

Smith and Dungy, both low-key commanders who have shocked the football world with their success. make the steel-trap case that Black coaches can be as serious with the clipboard as they've been with the pigskin.

Take Dungy, for example. During his 11 years as a head coach, the 52-year-old Michigan native is only the 35th coach -- Black or White -- to win over a 100 regular season games. In fact, he is the winningest coach between 1999 and 2005. And between 1996 and 2001, when he coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he qualified for the playoffs six times.

Smith, ironically, was tutored by Dungy at Tampa Bay, where he stayed for four years. He was then hired as defensive coordinator by Mike Martz at the St. Louis Rams. Smith took over the helm of the Bears in 2004. In 2005, the Bears posted a dismal 5-11 record, and many prognosticators predicted that the team would be a slouch for the next several years.

They could not have been more incorrect. This season, the Bears posted an amazing 13-3, earning them the top playoff seed in the NFC. It's even more astonishing when you realize that the team's brass traded away the first pick of the draft, which could have been used to land an offensive superstar, and selected five not-so-stellar defensive players. Smith went with what he had, including a much-maligned quarterback, but it didn't stop the Bears from rolling.

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