It’s Not About the Game

Tony Dungy redefines the meaning of success.

by Tonya Stoneman

(Photo credit: AP)

I’m buying football gear this fall—for a kindergartener. (They start ‘em early here in Georgia, where the words “touch” and “football” don’t co-exist.) I’m excited and a little nervous about sending my baby out to get clobbered by other hyper boys, but it’s what he wants.

Earlier this year, we took in Super Bowl XLI together. Despite my relative indifference to the sport, I watched anxiously as the Indianapolis Colts defeated the Chicago Bears 29-17. This was the first game in NFL history where two African-American coaches battled each other for the championship. Both insisted that, more than anything else, they wanted to demonstrate the sport could be played with grace, humility, and true sportsmanship.

Lovie Smith (Chicago) and Tony Dungy (Indianapolis) are Christians who used their 3 hours and 31 minutes in the spotlight to demonstrate Christ-like character in one of America’s most notorious sporting events. “I’m very proud to be the first African-American head coach in the Super bowl along with my friend Lovie Smith,” Dungy said, the day before the big game. “But more than that, the fact you have two Christian coaches who show you can do things a different way . . . who have firm Christian values—the world needs to see that this week. I’m more proud of that than anything else." ¹

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It was a rainy February night and we tuned in, along with 93 million other viewers, as the wet and wild contest began. Coach Dungy had traveled a long way to be there, but this wasn’t his first appearance in a Super Bowl.  He took home a championship ring when he played for the Pittsburgh Steelers back in 1978, long before he dreamed of coaching. And then there were the Buccaneers—the part of his story where he paid the price for victory, but didn’t get the prize.

Dungy was hired as head coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1995. The team, known mostly for its lack of success, lost a handful of games in ’96, but finished the season strong. They fought hard and began to pull out of a prolonged slump. Under Dungy, The Bucs went to the playoffs four times and won their division in ‘99. People started to notice.

But the road was bumpy, and their upward ascent plateaued as they struggled to reach the playoffs four seasons in a row. Constant changes to the offensive coordinator position made matters worse, and, predictably, praise for the new guy waned. Dungy was “too nice,” people said. He was the coach that just couldn’t bring it home.

Coach Dungy didn’t listen to fickle criticism. Instead, he put his hand to the plow and installed his version of the “Cover 2 Defense” with a few new wrinkles that would eventually pay off. In the meantime, though, the Buccaneers’ management grew impatient and fired him. The very next season, the team he’d diligently tutored for six years played the way he’d trained them to and won the Super Bowl. All the accolades of that victory went to their new coach.

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As for Coach Dungy, I’m not sure how he spent that Sunday afternoon, but he told me recently he seriously considered giving up football altogether at the time—a proposition that really didn’t bother him. He’d gained an eternal perspective years earlier when he committed his life to Jesus Christ.

“I went to the Steelers in ‘77. There were about 15 to 18 guys who were committed Christians. And the way they lived, it was just like a lamp for me,” he said. “And all of a sudden, the light went on. I saw these guys. Everything they did revolved around Christ and honoring Him—having a lifestyle that was not only being saved, but also having Christ as the Lord of your life.  As I got into that with them—Bible studies and chapels and just talking back and forth—that’s when I really started growing as a Christian.”

After just two years with the team he loved, Dungy was traded to what was at that time the worst team in football. “I began to understand that everything isn’t just for your comfort and happiness,” he said. “I learned a lot leaving Pittsburgh and going to different teams—things that benefited me in the future.” So when he was faced with the painful transition of leaving the Buccaneers, the terrain wasn’t unfamiliar. “I just looked at it in ’01 as God moving me out of where I’d been in Tampa. He had some place else for me. I really thought at that time I might move out of football. But I got a call from Jim Irsay (Indianapolis Colts’ owner) and he talked about his vision for this football team in this community. After talking to him, I realized that this is where the Lord was directing me.”

Coach Dungy packed his bags, moved to Indianapolis, and started all over again. “The great thing to me about football is that you don’t win every week,” he says. “Everything isn’t just smooth sailing; and you have to come back from losses. You have to come back from adversity. You have seasons where everything doesn’t go your way, and you have to rebuild and retool and start over again. I think it’s the same way in the Christian life. You feel like everything’s gonna be perfect because you’ve accepted Christ and God’s protecting you, but He doesn’t do it that way.” 

He speaks with quiet authority. Just two days before Christmas in 2005, his son James committed suicide and the press dogged him mercilessly. “Everything isn’t perfect,” he says. “When things don’t go right, you have a couple of choices. You can persevere and move forward, or you can look back. I think the Lord wants us to move forward, and I think that’s what football teaches you.” He points to the apostle Paul, who pressed on and did not look back (Philippians 3:14).

It is this eternal perspective he tries to instill in his players. To do this, he uses lots of illustrations from Scripture. He once told them about the rich young ruler who wanted eternal life. The man tells Christ he has kept all the commandments. “You still lack one thing,” says Jesus. “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Luke 18:22) Dungy compared his men to the ruler: “We’ve won, we’ve gotten to the playoffs,” he said. “But there’s probably one thing that we haven’t really sold out to as a team. It’s not necessarily selling all your possessions—for everybody, it’s different. Being a better blocker, being a better teammate, studying more—what is it? There’s probably one thing that we need to do to get us to a championship. Are we willing to do that, or are we gonna walk away sad?’”

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As the leader of 53 players and 16 coaches, Dungy prays a lot. All the time. As a matter of fact, he prays on the field. “I pray about decisions that we have to make and everything that goes on in my job,” he says. “It gives me peace of mind that I’m making the right decisions. I’m trying to get some confirmation that it’s more than just me making an intellectual decision.”

A major confirmation came on February 4, 2007, when Dungy, sporting an NFL Champions cap, waded through a mob of clamoring fans onto the soggy field at the Miami Dolphins’ Stadium. I watched from the warmth of my living room as the Colts lifted their coach onto their shoulders and paraded him through the driving rain. He looked serene sitting there, beaming with pride and savoring a moment that was a long time coming. I couldn’t see through the downpour, but I’m almost certain tears were shed that night.

So what is football, really? A game? A national pastime? Yes. And no. That night as my son and I watched, Super Bowl Sunday was about more than tackles and touchdowns and clever commercials. It was about a man, a weary pilgrim not so different from all of us, who had worked hard, come right to the edge of his dreams, and lost it all. And started again.

Rudyard Kipling wrote:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

 . . . If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son! ²

So many of us would trade places with Tony Dungy if given the chance. We’d give anything to walk in the NFL limelight for a day, let a lone a lifetime. He really does have all that this earth has to offer. But that’s not what makes him great. A few months after that incredible game, I went to the Colts headquarters to interview Coach Dungy. We talked about faith and football and fame—how he handles it all. 

He told me that as he stood on the podium to accept his Super Bowl XLI trophy, he thought of his favorite Bible verse: Matthew 16:26, where Jesus asks, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?’”

He told me, his goal now is to use his platform to share Christ with others. With a role model like that, why wouldn’t a mom want her son to play football? What makes Tony Dungy so great is not the incredible things he’s accomplished, but the fact that he would gladly give it all back if asked to. The things of this earth seem to have no hold on him, and with no strings attached, he soars.

1. Strickland, Art, Annual Super Bowl Breakfast, Baptist Press, February 3, 2007.
2. Kippling, Rudyard, “If,” 1910.