Verification.
That’s what Harold Brown saw Sunday night when Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy became the first African-American coach to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy. He saw change in action. He saw progress taking effect.
“It’s a great thing for the rest of the African-American coaches,” Brown said. “It’s something the whole world looks at.”
Brown, who coaches at Class 4A Wasson, became the first black head coach of a high school team in Colorado Springs when he began five seasons ago. That number grew a season later with the hiring of Archie Malloy at Mitchell.
A Parade All-American running back in his high school days in Ohio, Brown played for coaching legends Woody Hayes at Ohio State and Joe Gibbs with the Washington Redskins. Although a freak neck injury shortened his career, Brown learned to respect his coaches no matter their color or stature.
Of course, even now, that respect still gets lost in some.
“There are still people, because of race, they don’t want to see me succeed,” Brown said. “Those people are still out there. We can’t deny that.”
Many in the past two weeks have weighed in on the significance of the Super Bowl and some have applied it to the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech.
That’s not a stretch for Brown.
“We’ve made some gains and still have a long way to go,” he said. “A dream to be able to be a head football coach in the National Football League is something that probably not a lot of people in the ’60s had.”
Like Dungy and Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith, Brown is fortunate enough to be living his own dream.
“Me myself, I don’t have any dreams to be an NFL head coach, but my dream is always to be a coach and a head coach,” he said.
If anything comes from Sunday’s spectacle, Brown hopes more doors are opened for black coaches.
Like every coach, Brown wants to lead his team to the championship. It would be the first at Wasson since 1971. It would also be the first Colorado state football championship won by a black coach.
And while that’s no Vince Lombardi Trophy, “that feeds and drives me,” Brown said. “It’s not a racial thing, for me it’s a motivational thing.”
