Let Super Bowl XL countdown begin!

By: Larry Fitzgerald
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 01/26/2006

 When I moved to the Twin Cities from Chicago , Illinois , back in 1978, a single man on a mission to become a big fish in a small pond, I started my career path by hitching my wagon to the National Football League. For 40 years straight, the NFL is far and away the most popular sport by the choice of fans everywhere since 1965.

 

The latest Harris Poll still has the NFL number one by more than double the number-two sport, major league baseball. Thirty-three percent of those polled by Harris last month chose the NFL as their favorite sport, a 19-percent margin over those who chose baseball (14 percent) as their favorite.

 

That difference is the largest the NFL has ever had over baseball. School’s still out on whether I’m a big fish in the Land of 100,000 Lakes, but there is no denying the NFL’s strength of popularity. The NFL is the most popular sport among African Americans, those with a household income of $50,000-$75,000, and generation Xers (ages 28-39). Finishing third to fifth in popularity were college football (13 percent), auto racing (11 percent), and men’s college basketball and the NHL, both with five percent.

 

This just happens to be the XL (40th) year celebration of the biggest single-day sporting event of them all, the Super Bowl. Sunday, February 5, it’s Pittsburgh vs. Seattle in Detroit , Michigan , at Ford Field for the World Championship of Professional Football.

 

The NFL today is 78 percent African American among its players on the field and 100 percent White among the 32 league owners. That is the only reason that, of the 32 NFL head coaches, just six are Black. Ten head coaching positions were wide open as of January 1 — Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, Minnesota, Green Bay, St. Louis, Kansas City, Buffalo, New York and Oakland. Every job has been filled by a White head coach except Oakland , which is still open.

 

Herman Edwards is Black and moved from the New York Jets to Kansas City ; however, that does not count in my view. Why? Because he was already a head coach with a proven track record. Yes! Do you believe that race plays a role in the way we view athletes? Do you believe race plays a role in the way NFL owners view hiring African American head coaches?

 

We should know in that Minnesota ; after all, Bud Grant, the legendary Hall of Fame head coach of four Super Bowl teams, never hired a single African American as an assistant on his staff. Never! Honestly, what does that say?

 

It says that Blacks are viewed as players only. Former Vikings Head Coach Mike Tice had never been a head coach on any level, never a coordinator on any level, and yet the Vikings still hired him as head coach.

 

One playoff appearance in four years, a losing record (33-34), fined $100,000 by the NFL for scalping Super Bowl tickets — yet Tice was far more popular among media and fans in Minnesota (not nationally) than Dennis Green, who won 101 games, lost 70, made the playoffs eight times in 10 years and won the division four times.

 

It’s just not right; it’s that’s simple. Seventy-eight percent of all NFL players in America ’s most popular game/sport are Black, and only six Black head coaches? The Rooney Rule, named after Pittsburgh Steelers current owner Dan Rooney, “has no teeth,” said former Vikings defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell.

 

In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to broader concerns of all humanity.”