Like mentor Tony Dungy, Lovie Smith believes in the human touch
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By David Haugh
The Chicago Tribune
Posted on Sun, Jan. 28, 2007
CHICAGO - More than anything, Tank Johnson needed to know he wasn't alone.
Johnson had just lost his best friend, Willie B. Posey, in a nightclub shooting and feared he was close to losing his spot on the Bears' roster after defying team orders following a weapons arrest. That's when Lovie Smith picked up the phone to pick up his defensive tackle's spirits.
Smith and Tony Dungy will become the first African-American head coaches to lead teams into the Super Bowl when the Bears play the Indianapolis Colts next Sunday in Super Bowl XLI at Dolphin Stadium in Miami.
Their roles as NFL pioneers will leave a rich legacy for both franchises, and the coaches' race might even help them relate to players in a league where African-Americans occupy 67 percent of roster spots, according to Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.
But the two men of quiet strength, bonded by five years together on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers staff and similar Christian beliefs, hope the necessary focus on their skin color doesn't overlook a shared coaching style evident in Smith's phone call to a troubled Johnson.
"He called me and said, `Hey, Big Guy, how are you doing? I'm going to call you every day through this process to make sure you're OK,''' Johnson recalled. "That means a lot when you're on pins and needles about a lot of things in your life. But it's that kind of thing that makes Lovie different. He's a coach who listens a lot."
When fullback Jason McKie asked to miss practice to attend his sister's graduation, Smith listened to how important it was to McKie and let him. Would Bill Parcells, McKie's coach in Dallas during the 2002 season, have been as understanding?
"Maybe," McKie said, smiling. "But he would probably give me more heck about it than Lovie did."
When rookie safety Danieal Manning started feeling a little lost in the big city and the bigger world of an NFL starter, Smith related his own small-town Texas upbringing to the Corsicana native and helped pull him through. "Coach Lovie understood me," Manning said. "He understands us."
Whenever Rex Grossman sought reassurance during an occasionally trying season, Smith invited him into an office that doesn't require appointments.
"One of the first things Lovie said to me when I got here last year was he wanted to be involved with the players' lives and wanted to know how they're doing so he has an open-door policy," wide receiver Rashied Davis said. "Some coaches, it's us against the coaches. You just don't feel that here."
In Indianapolis, Colts players who have described similar experiences with Dungy this week feel the same way. And from whom do you think Smith adopted the policy?
Making an impression
Almost immediately, Monte Kiffin knew. Kiffin, longtime defensive coordinator of the Bucs and architect of the Cover-2 defense used by the Bears and the Colts, recalled watching Smith discuss his coaching philosophy in a hotel conference room in Indianapolis during the 1996 NFL combine.
Dungy, then Tampa Bay's head coach, decided to interview Smith after Jerry Angelo, then the Bucs' player personnel director, gave him the names of five college assistants who were applying for the team's vacant linebacker-coach position.
At the time, Smith was the Ohio State secondary coach and had driven over from Columbus for the opportunity he had been waiting for since childhood. His readiness showed.
"We got him on the blackboard and once he started talking football, I said, `Tony, this guy is pretty special,''' Kiffin said. "We hired him to coach linebackers, but since he was a secondary coach I said, `OK, I'll help coach linebackers too.' After a few days of mini-camp I said, `Lovie, I don't have to coach linebackers, you're ready to do it by yourself.' He said, `Yes, sir, coach, I am.' I said to Tony, `We hit a home run with this guy.'''
Dungy already could tell. Veteran NFL players who often tune out newbie college coaches liked the way Smith held them accountable without embarrassing them. Smith's job was to make them better linebackers, but he considered it his calling to make them better men.
"Just the way he communicated: `I know what I'm doing. I know the game,' but not in that know-it-all way, I could tell he was sharp and he was a guy players would gravitate to," Dungy said last week.
Under another head coach, Smith's folksy style with players might have been perceived as soft and enabling. Like Dungy, Smith doesn't cuss or berate players in public. He doesn't wake up at 4 a.m. to watch film or waste any more time expanding his media profile than the league requires.
Smith took copious mental notes for five seasons in Tampa as Dungy practiced what he preached. On Wednesdays during the season Dungy would invite the assistants' families to the team's facility for dinner to provide some balance in a profession lacking it.
The interest Smith takes in the lives of Bears players and coaches comes from the heart. But the courage to show it at the NFL level comes partly from his experience working for Dungy.
"There's so much of Coach Dungy in him, it's unbelievable," said Detroit Lions coach Rod Marinelli, a former Tampa Bay assistant who shared a hotel room with Smith during training camp in `96. "He has this demeanor very close to Coach Dungy - very, very close. You have to understand how strong Lovie is. That quiet, Big Sandy, (Texas) approach. But there is some strength there and he's got a good case of stubbornness to him."
Joe Barry said he believes Smith copied that from Dungy too. Barry, the Detroit Lions' new defensive coordinator, knows both men well. He worked for Dungy and became close friends with Smith, whom he replaced on the Bucs' staff in 2001, during regular visits to Tampa with his wife, Chris - Marinelli's daughter.
"I'd go into the office and Lovie and I would talk football, study tape, everything," Barry said.
He said he believes Smith pushed for his hire when Smith left Tampa for the St. Louis Rams.
"I consider myself Lovie Smith's clone," Barry said. "A lot of my belief in football came from the Tampa scheme but more specifically Lovie."
Barry, 36, will be one of many former members of the Tampa Bay coaching staff under Dungy to watch the Super Bowl with as much conflict as pride.
"You know, as important as what they're doing as the first two African-American coaches, I don't look at it as a black issue," Barry said. "I look at it as two incredibly good coaches and two great men."
Seeing eye to eye
But the role race has played in making both men the coaches they are, particularly a first-time head coach such as Smith, cannot be ignored. Not when several of Smith's players talked openly about the obligation they feel to a man who has never acknowledged in the locker room the history he has made on the field.
"For me, there's more of a sense of responsibility to be an upstanding African-American athlete more so because he is a black coach and you don't want to make him look bad because there is such a disparity of African-American head coaches in the league," Rashied Davis said. "If you put your coach in a bad light, it means more in the black community for a black coach than it does for a Caucasian."
Of the 53 players on the Bears' roster, 42 are black. The irony is being African-American probably hurt Smith's chances of getting a head-coaching job for a time, but now it might help him connect with players.
"A lot of players come from a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of single-parent homes and I'm sure Lovie might be able to relate to some of that better," McKie said. "He and (Dungy) know more of what the African-American players go through more than the Caucasian players. There's some of that, yes. But I'll say this too: Lovie handles everybody the same regardless of color."
Tight end John Gilmore added: "Obviously, he's going to relate to the black players better. Number one, (67) percent of the league is African-American and look at how many black coaches there are (six out of 32 teams). That's embarrassing. It's a business, but we want him to succeed."
John Wooten, a former Dallas Cowboys scout and the chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, has known Dungy since his NFL playing days and Smith since he coached at Arizona State. Wooten recalled Atlanta Falcons President Rich McKay, the former Bucs GM, saying after Dungy's initial job interview in `96 that, "he doesn't seem to have any fire."
"I said, `Wait a minute, Rich, you guys don't understand what fire is,''' Wooten said. "It's a way of life. Same with Lovie."
While praising both men for a Christian foundation that guides their coaching styles, Wooten agreed that being a black man leading black men can have its advantages.
"Yes, I think (black coaches) will look at things a little differently and come from a background where they've seen these young men right there in their neighborhoods all their lives and probably even in their families, maybe in their own homes," Wooten said. "Let's face it, very few blacks in the NFL came from nice homes or backgrounds, and, consequently, sports becomes a very important mechanism for why it's important to take advantage of it. Black coaches understand that (better)."
More to it than color
For every example of Smith and Dungy for which that might be true, there is a tale of Ray Rhodes or Art Shell to warn against generalizations. Dennis Green, the former Arizona and Minnesota coach who also coached college teams at Northwestern and Stanford, maintained that good communicators get their message across no matter what they or their audience looks like.
"Players will respond to good leaders regardless of race or religion if you do it right," Green said. "(Smith and Dungy) have done great jobs."
Green has been a close friend of Dungy's since he was the San Francisco 49ers' receivers coach in 1979 and Dungy was a special-teams standout. Dungy also worked for him in Minnesota.
"When you win, people talk about how well you relate to players, and when you lose you don't," Green said. "I mean, look at me. I coached predominantly white players at Northwestern and Stanford and it wasn't really a factor."
The biggest factor for Smith since coming to Chicago has been letting his personality affect his coaching rather than the other way around.
"There is this stereotype of how all coaches have to behave, what you're supposed to be and that isn't the case," Smith said. "I just think guys should be who they are. One of the things I got from Tony is you can win a lot of different ways and whatever your approach is, just believe in it, get the guys to buy into it and you can accomplish anything."
One of Sunday's head coaches will get their guys to buy into the game plan well enough to become Super Bowl champions. But no matter who wins, neither will feel like a loser given the changes their roles in a Super Bowl could trigger in their sport and in society.
"You're not going to hear Lovie talk about it too much because he's a humble guy, Gilmore said. "But I think when the Super Bowl is over and if we handle our business, there will come a day when Lovie is by himself in a quiet room and it's going to hit him and like, Wow. If it were me, I'd shed a tear."
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