Super Bowl XLI has made history before it has even begun. No NFL team with a black head coach has ever squared off in the biggest sporting event of the year. But this year, both Super Bowl teams are led by black head coaches.

   Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears have risen to the top of their game in spite of persistent notions that blacks lack the intellectual capacity needed to be successful coaches or managers of pro football teams.

   "When I came into the league in 1968, they thought a black guy couldn't be the quarterback," Art Shell, the first black coach hired by the NFL in 1989, told the Boston Globe, "You could play tackle but a black guy couldn't play center or guard. Those positions weren't for blacks. They were thinking-man's positions. Same was true of coaches."

   Today, 70 percent of NFL players are black, but only three of the league's 32 NFL teams have a black general manager and only six have a black head coach.

   Shell and quarterback Doug Williams, a former Super Bowl MVP, broke color barriers back in the late 1980s, but further advances for NFL coaches and managers of color have been slow in coming.

   Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney helped to force the issue when he developed what is now called the Rooney rule. Adopted by the league in 2002, the rule says that an NFL team searching for a new head coach or coordinator is required to interview at least one minority candidate.

   That has compelled owners to go outside of the comfort zone of the good-old-boy network and into unexpected places where talents like Dungy, Smith, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Herm Edwards and others have been found.

   The Rooney rule has made a difference, but the success of Dungy and Smith this year will likely send an even more powerful statement to the culture at large, and to young coaches and players of color.

   When I was growing up in the 1960s and '70s, our family always pulled for the teams and organizations that supported black players and coaches. We knew that sports weren't isolated from society. And we understood that important civil rights struggles took place on the playing fields.

   Trailblazers like Jackie Robinson and Althea Gibson were symbols of what we all could accomplish, if given a fair chance.

   Sports were also an integral part of our culture and experience. Our family basement was full of trophies and photos of smiling black faces,  including my parents, aunts, uncles and family friends, who were members of all-black bowling leagues, golf clubs and even square-dancing groups.

   Sports were both athletic and social, fun and political.

   I'm already feeling celebratory about this year's Super Bowl. On Sunday, I can just sit back and enjoy the double pleasure of two sports leaders breaking through the NFL's color barrier.