Tony Dungy so much more than a Hall of Famer

Tony Dungy’s induction into the NFL Hall of Fame is much more than about football.

He was a great football coach highly deserving of the honor, but when he goes into the HOF on Saturday night the people who know him well will think of Dungy as a humanitarian first.

Living in a turbulent world that seems to be ringing with violence, Dungy has always been the voice of reason and he backs up his words with action.

The football world knows him as the man who resurrected the morbid Tampa Bay Bucs and went on to have a remarkable seven-year run with Indianapolis, during which he became the first African-American head coach to win a Super Bowl.

As great as those accomplishments were what he has done off the field is worthy of legacy by itself.

He and his wife, Lauren, have adopted seven children to go along with three biological children (two living). Very religious, they felt it wasn’t enough to speak about their views on abortion knowing children were coming into this world who were most likely not wanted.

Dungy has had personal tragedies. His oldest son, Jamie, committed suicide in 2006. He responded by helping children, particularly boys, who were raised without fathers.

“Did you know that nearly one in three children live apart from their biological dads? Those kids are two to three times more likely to grow up in poverty, to suffer in school, and to have health and behavioral problems,” Dungy said.

Dungy always tried to make every situation better, not by shouting over people, but by listening and in his quiet way trying make a point.

“Things will go wrong at times. You can’t always control your attitude, approach and response,” Dungy said in his book Quiet Strength. “Your options are to complain or look ahead and figure out how to make the situation better.”

It was that quiet way and also his being an African-American that prevented him from getting an NFL head job until the Tampa Bay Bucs hired him in 1996.

Dungy failed in three previous attempts to become a head coach, and he wasn’t the Bucs’ first choice. Tampa Bay offered the job to Steve Spurrier and courted Jimmy Johnson, who rebuffed them for the Dolphins. Through it all, Dungy’s brilliance and calm demeanor kept his name alive and raised questions about why he was not already an NFL head coach.

In ’95, the Bucs had concluded their 13th consecutive losing season and were considered the laughing stock of professional sports. It was a job no NFL coach wanted, but Dungy and the Bucs were a perfect fit. His friends and peers in the coaching profession told him to steer away from the job, but none of it scared him.

“Engage, education, equip, encourage, empower, energize and elevate. Those are the methods for maximizing the potential of any individual, team, for ultimate success and significance. Those are the methods of a mentor leader,” Dungy said in Secrets to Building People & Teams That Win Consistently.

Dungy did just that with Bucs, which he considers his biggest accomplishment despite his success with Indianapolis.

After a 6-10 season, Dungy took the Bucs to the playoffs in four of the next five years and won two playoff games, highlighted by Tampa Bay’s 11-6 loss in the NFC Championship game of the 1999 season to eventual Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams. He was fired in 2001, and Jon Gruden won the Super Bowl the following year with the team Dungy constructed.

His dismissal turned out to be a blessing because Dungy stuck to his beliefs that you take a bad situation and make it better. He was hired by the Colts and in seven years took Indianapolis to the playoffs each season, won double digit games every year and the 2006 Super Bowl. It also made him just the third person in NFL history to win a title as a player and head coach.

Dungy will become the 23rd head coach inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame and the first African-American. In typical fashion, he credited former players, including Derrick Brooks and Warren Sapp with the Bucs and Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison with the Colts.

But those players will tell you it was Dungy who made it possible. Manning pointed out Dungy’s calm demeanor as critical in the Colts rallying from an 18-point deficit to beat New England in their AFC title game before going on to win the Super Bowl.

Those are some of the things people will remember about the 60-year-old Dungy, but his greatest gift is to the human race and showing people they can accomplish almost anything if they put their mind to it. He credits so much to his late parents.

His father, Wilbur Dungy, was the first black professor at the Jackson Community College in Michigan, and his mother, Cleomae, was a teacher who taught Shakespeare. They raised their son the right way, but Tony likes to recall that though she had the ultimate faith in his abilities she probably never thought he would write a book and he had three published.

“My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never,” Dungy said.

This story was originally published August 4, 2016 at 2:33 PM with the headline "Tony Dungy so much more than a Hall of Famer."