Super news is Tomlin, not historic matchup

The presence of two black head coaches at the Super Bowl isn’t a time for African Americans to be excited, it’s a time for all Americans to be ashamed.

This would have been a great story back when the Roman numerals consisted of I’s and Vs and Xs. But now there’s an L, as in XLI, as in 41. It shouldn’t have taken so long.

It’s a reminder of just how slowly the wheels of racial equality move. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law three years before the first Super Bowl and here we are, more than four decades later, finally seeing its impact in this little sector of our society.

I’m happy for Chicago’s Lovie Smith and Indianapolis’ Tony Dungy, but I can’t help but wonder how many great African American football minds that came before them could have done the same thing, had they not been explicitly or implicitly denied the chance to be head coaches because of the color of their skin.

That’s why the real positive sign in the NFL was posted Monday, when the Pittsburgh Steelers named Mike Tomlin head coach.

For a franchise that has had only two head coaches since 1969 to put a roster still stocked with last season’s championship players into the hands of a 34-year-old African American with one year’s experience as an NFL defensive coordinator -- now that’s a breakthrough.

A black coach reaching the Super Bowl was inevitable. A young black coach getting one of the best jobs in the league is evidence of equal opportunity.

For years, one of the explanations given for the paucity of black coaching hires was that African Americans lacked long-term experience as coordinators. But Tomlin’s predecessor, Bill Cowher, was only 34 when the Steelers hired him in 1992. And Eric Mangini was a 35-year-old who’d spent one year as Bill Belichick’s defensive coordinator in New England before the New York Jets made him their head coach last year.

Just as I viewed the 1997 hiring of Tubby Smith to occupy the Kentucky basketball head-coaching job once held by the racist Adolph Rupp as a more important occasion than Georgetown’s John Thompson’s becoming the first black NCAA championship basketball coach in 1984, Tomlin’s hire means more to me than Dungy’s or Lovie Smith’s becoming the first black Super Bowl coaching victor.

Tomlin is a living, breathing representation of Dungy’s legacy, of much greater value than a silver Lombardi Trophy. Tomlin was an assistant coach under Dungy at Tampa Bay and now is the latest member of the Dungy coaching tree -- which includes Lovie Smith and Kansas City Coach Herm Edwards -- to get his own head-coaching job.

And just as Bill Walsh’s former underlings spread the West Coast offense around the NFL, Dungy’s disciples have brought the gospel of the Cover 2 defense to their new coaching stops.

It’s also nice to see the Rooney family invoke -- and potentially benefit from -- the Rooney Rule. The rule is named after its creator, Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney. It stipulates that every NFL team must interview at least one minority candidate before hiring a head coach.

Yes, it’s cumbersome and overly intrusive, and I wish it didn’t have to exist. But it’s sadly necessary for as long as NFL ownership remains such a closed-minded circle of barons.

“I think it’s the fairest thing to do,” Rooney said. “If you’re looking for good coaches, the old story is don’t leave any stone unturned.

“Someday I hope there doesn’t need to be a Rooney Rule. I think we need it for a few more years and take it for an evaluation. It’s been a big help so far.”

Rooney said that as the Steelers looked around for Cowher’s replacement they kept hearing good things about Tomlin. When they interviewed him he quickly became a prime candidate.

“You could tell that he’s a bright guy,” Rooney said. “His enthusiasm for the game, how he was going to do things, how he was going to treat the players, deal with players, his assistant coaches. He just gave us the impression that he had it all in order and in control.”

In one season, Tomlin had shaped the Minnesota Vikings’ defense into the NFL’s eighth-ranked unit. Jeff Robinson, the Minnesota coordinator of pro personnel, called Tomlin “very sharp.”

“He’s polished, as far as the game and his people skills” are concerned, Robinson said. “That’s the thing that wins people over. He is so polished. He’s been around some good football minds.

“I think it’s a tremendous opportunity for him. It’s a tribute to the [Rooney] Rule itself, but I also think it’s a tremendous opportunity for him. And well-deserved.”

He could have added “long-awaited.” It’s about time we got some fresh faces. Of the seven African American head coaches in the NFL this season, Smith and Marvin Lewis were the youngest, at 48. All the others -- including the since-fired Art Shell and Dennis Green -- were past 50.

And Shell, Green, Dungy and Edwards had all been head coaches before, meaning they were only propping up the small number of black coaches, not adding to it.

By this time next week, we’ll probably be sick of questions to Dungy and Smith about being the first African American Super Bowl coaches. I’m looking forward to the commissioner’s annual state-of-the-league news conference, when, for a change, there won’t be questions about African Americans being shut out of another round of coaching hires. It’s a small victory, but it’s something worth celebrating.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more by Adande, go to latimes.com/adandeblog.