Crowning

Before I totally got caught up the wave that is the Olympics, I had planned to do a blog about head coach Dennis Green, who recently passed at the age of 67. Part of the reason wanted to do it was that I didn't want him to be mainly remembered for a post game rant.

While I don't think he wanted to be remembered as a trailblazer, he left his mark on the game of football on various leagues in various countries. After playing in the CFL for a year, he started his coaching career at the University of Iowa as a graduate assistant. By 1981 he was the head coach at Northwestern University, the second Black coach at the Division I-AA level. While there he won Big Ten Coach of the Year honors.

He then joined the coaching tree of Bill Walsh at Stanford University. After taking over for Walsh when he left for San Francisco, he ended his career there with the school's best record since 1986, including an upset of #1 ranked Notre Dame.

While on Walsh's coaching staff in San Francisco as a wide receivers coach, he was on the staff that won Super Bowl XXIII.

In 1992, he became the second Black head coach in the NFL when he was selected to coach the Minnesota Vikings. While there he won three out of every five games, won four division titles and made the playoffs eight times in his ten year career at Minnesota.

I believe he has also earned the right to have his own coaching tree. Assistant coaches under him included Brian Billick and Tony Dungy, coaches who won Super Bowls of their own as head coaches.

In researching him, he wasn't who I thought he was. He was much more.