COLOR HIM ORANGE

At least they got the name right.

Forty minutes from Tampa Stadium exists a community with a store, a few blueberry farms, some mobile homes, and no recorded population.

Thick trees and endless green fields are the only reliable companions of dusty Florida 674 as it snakes past one of many spots not found in the state’s travel brochures.

In the woods near here, two day laborers living in nearby Lakeland made national news three years ago when they set a man on fire because he was black.

On this late spring afternoon in the Fort Lonesome Grocery, rancher Phillip Parrish is fishing around in the cooler when asked whether his neighbors follow the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Plain as orange and white, he says.

“The Bucs are right up the road, they’re all we got,” he says.

He is asked what they think about the new coach, an African American named Tony Dungy.

Plain as black and white, he says.

“There’s 90% blacks on the team, did you know that?” Parrish asks. “They needed to have more whites.

“With this Dungy, people wonder whether they made a mistake.”

This Dungy will probably read this with a sense of relief.

At least the guy didn’t slight him on an answering machine, just a voice and viciousness.

At least he didn’t send him an unsigned letter, an X-rated rip in third-grade English.

At least it didn’t come from the side of an NFL owner’s mouth--and don’t think that hasn’t happened.

At least this time, the insult has a face, a name, an intent, something Tony Dungy can ponder while working 18-hour days to save the franchise and fulfill a wish.

“That sort of stuff stings you a little,” he says. “But it makes you work harder. It makes you more determined.”

He will need that strength this year as he deals with a strange owner, an unstable franchise, a depleted offense, and a team history that includes double-digit losses in 11 of the last 12 years.

If he loses quick, he will need that strength as the first black coach of an NFL team in the South.

“I’ve gotten no hate mail yet,” he said. “But we’re pretty much still in the honeymoon phase here.”

This Dungy, he’ll read the above dateline and laugh.

Fort Lonesome? Sounds like somewhere he lives.

*

They did not make a mistake.

Tony Dungy tells himself this every day.

While pushing the players through extra-long practices.

While scolding them afterward for not picking up their socks.

While addressing the Buccaneers with the soft eyes and quiet voice of a professor, challenging their characters to have character.

While dropping everything and praying.

Yes, among other things, Tony Dungy prays.

“I prayed for the draft, I pray for Errict Rhett,” he said, referring to the team’s holdout running back. “I pray that things work out.”

In their own way, many in the NFL are praying along with him.

Despite the overcrowding on the Buffalo Bills’ bandwagon, members of football’s working class are in close agreement this fall about two things:

--They want Tony Dungy to succeed.

--They wonder if he has much chance.

His best player, Rhett, is a spoiled brat who refuses to play unless they alter a contract he signed.

His potentially best receiver, Horace Copeland, is out for the season because of a leg injury.

His owner, Malcolm Glazer, is going to move the team to Cleveland or Los Angeles if voters don’t approve a tax increase on Tuesday to provide funds for a new stadium.

And although he’s the fourth black coach in the NFL’s 77 years, he is the first who didn’t work in the metropolises of Los Angeles, Philadelphia or Minneapolis.

The people of Tampa, whose rural outskirts give the place a Georgia accent, say it doesn’t matter.

“He has been very well accepted here, he’s handled himself very well,” said Leonard Levy, a businessman who helped the city gain an expansion team in 1976. “All people here care about is winning.”

Dungy says he has been treated like royalty.

“My wife walks into a Walgreen’s to buy some lipstick and the place just stops,” he said. “That story made the newspaper, and the next day, two or three cosmetic places sent stuff to my office. And my wife was just fine buying at Walgreen’s!”

Players like Courtney Hawkins, a black wide receiver, say the diverse and growing community is a great place for minority athletes.

“Nobody black, white or Chinese has won in this town,” he said. “If you win, they don’t care what you look like.”

And, the black man who was set on fire near Fort Lonesome on New Year’s Day in 1993 was carried to safety by a white Fort Lonesome resident.

But after spending 15 years as a top assistant coach with never a head coaching offer until now, Dungy, 40, understands that things aren’t always as they seem.

Shortly after his January hiring, the morning disc jockey on a Tampa radio station did a spoof in which Dungy was impersonated.

With an exaggerated plantation accent.

“I don’t think it was racist, and I never received one complaint from a listener,” said Kevin Malone, general manager at WMTX. “Tony is a fantastic guy, and if he was offended, I’ll apologize, but . . . we never heard a word about it from anybody but the media.”

Dungy says the incident has already been handled.

“Some guy from the station walked up to me at a gathering and said he had aired these programs and that he was sorry . . . but they didn’t think they were racist,” Dungy said. “I told him, ‘I haven’t heard them but be careful. Be careful.’ ”

Be careful is right, according to former Buccaneer quarterback Doug Williams.

Although he will be remembered as one of the town’s most popular players, Williams, who is black, cannot forget the hate mail and threats.

None of which he received in later years with the Washington Redskins.

“A zebra is always a zebra, no matter how much you try to paint it,” said Williams, now a scout for the Jacksonville Jaguars. “Tampa is what it is. The good outweighed the bad, but Tony will be under a microscope there because he is black.”

Dungy has responded by putting his players under that same sort of microscope. If he must meet his demons, so must they. Whatever critics are looking for, they will not find.

There was the time he took the microphone during an autograph session at Tampa Stadium last spring.

More than 10,000 fans were lined up beneath a hot sun while a couple of dozen players were hiding behind a partition.

“I want those guys to get out here right now and start signing autographs,” Dungy announced before the stunned crowd. “If you don’t get out there, the players who don’t--we’re going to have a problem at practice today.”

The Buccaneers scrambled for position . . . nearly as furiously as they scrambled to make a 12:45 p.m. meeting last week.

The meeting was a special one, at an unusual time, and some players were still in the showers at 12:44

Then Dungy walked into the locker room.

“Hey guys, 12:45 meeting, don’t be late,” Dungy shouted.

It was the first time in team history that players attended a meeting naked, and with shampoo in their hair.

This fair but stern approach won the former defensive back admirers leaguewide as the defensive coach for the Steelers, Kansas City Chiefs and Minnesota Vikings.

Nobody could take a reckless, angry defender and make him a smart professional the way this guy could.

From Rod Woodson and Greg Lloyd in Pittsburgh to John Randle in Minnesota, it seemed there was nothing Dungy couldn’t handle.

Except his color.

For half a decade, he has been considered by many as the league’s top head coaching candidate.

During those years, he had five interviews.

Until the Buccaneers’ offer, he never even finished second.

Only one other black coach was hired during that time--Ray Rhodes of Philadelphia. And the only important color was the red on his San Francisco 49er Super Bowl championship ring.

The quiet criticisms of Dungy were always the same.

A white owner was not going to take a chance on a black coach who didn’t behave like a drill sergeant.

Certainly not one who didn’t curse, or drink, and played piano in the lobby of a team dorm during training camp.

And absolutely not one who, unlike his three predecessors, was not reluctant to discuss the problems of black coaches in a league that includes about 70% black players.

Who knows what would have happened if they had discovered he once briefly quit his high school football team--giving up his captaincy--because he thought a black teammate had been slighted in the voting for co-captain?

“It got to the point where I never thought I would be a head coach,” Dungy said. “The owners have always looked for the same type of coach, a Vince Lombardi- or Paul Brown-type of coach. And those guys were white.”

He still remembers the owner who asked him about the potential makeup of his coaching staff.

“I start mentioning names, and the owner told me that I had mentioned too many blacks,” Dungy said. “He said his community wouldn’t stand for it.”

He returned home to Minneapolis, began the following season with black head coach Denny Green, and picked up messages on his voice mail full of racial epithets.

He describes the messages now as if he is describing an illness. Scientifically, with the hint of a shrug.

“What are you going to do?” he said. “Wherever you go, it’s going to be there.”

Even when he was contacted by the Buccaneers last winter after they had fired Sam Wyche, he was told he was running third . . . behind ultimate good ol’ boys Jimmy Johnson and Steve Spurrier.

Only when they turned it down did the Buccaneers turn to Dungy.

Which will be his first hurdle.

“I would have rather had Jimmy Johnson,” said Nancy Gill, a blueberry farmer in Fort Lonesome and a season-ticket holder since the team’s inception.

“I didn’t even know anything about him,” she said of Dungy. “When I saw him announced on TV, I thought, ‘Oh no! Why couldn’t they get us a better coach?’ ”

Dungy understands those fears. He addressed them in his first team meeting, a 25-minute speech that left the players speechless.

And not only because it was intentionally delivered in the tiny locker room that forced everyone to stand shoulder to shoulder.

“Here’s six reasons everybody thinks we can’t win,” he told his team.

He listed everything from bad management to quarterback Trent Dilfer to, yes, an untested coach.

“All fallacies,” Dungy continued. “Now, here are the facts.”

He paused.

“Nobody is going to outwork us.”

Period. End of speech,

“We’ve got what we needed . . . a guy who shoots straight, you play his way or you don’t play,” Dilfer said. “The biggest thing I hear now is, ‘I’m a season-ticket holder and this is the first year I feel we have a good chance.’ ”

Dungy’s next address was equally atypical. He hollered at the team for ignoring his directive to keep the locker room clean.

“If you don’t buy that, then we’re halfway there!” he told them. “We’re 8-8. And if that’s OK with you, then you’re not good enough for me.”

The air was suddenly filled with so many jocks and socks headed for hampers, it looked like a snowstorm.

“Every winning team I’ve been around, the locker room is clean, they look like champions,” he said. “That’s all part of our attitude.”

That attitude now includes virtually no fighting on the practice field, no loud cursing, no rookie hazing.

He is hoping it is this attitude--and a tailored defense--that helps his outmanned team in today’s opener against the visiting Green Bay Packers.

Although polls show the Community Investment Tax is favored by a slight majority of voters, some feel a good showing by the Buccaneers would seal the $2.7-billion fund-raiser, which includes $318 million for a new stadium.

Not that Dungy will push for the new stadium.

“I came to be the coach, I didn’t come to be a pitchman,” he said.

He also did not come to run a discrimination reverse.

Williams said black coaches in the NFL are disappointed in Dungy for not hiring another black to be his offensive or defensive coordinator, putting that person in a position to become the next black head coach.

Instead, he hired touted youngster Mike Shula to run the offense, and proven veteran Monte Kiffin to run the defense.

“He’s a different kind of

brother, put it that way,” Doug Williams said. “He seems to have forgotten the motto of ‘Reach one, teach one.’ What Denny Green did for him, he is not doing for anyone else.”

Dungy shrugged.

It’s fall in Fort Lonesome, when that delightful whistle is often an angry wind.

“I’m proud of my heritage, very appreciative of what Denny Green has done for me,” Dungy said. “But I want to win, and I will do what that requires.

“Winning is what gets it done. Only winning.”