Obama election follows the lead set by pro sports

The inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama could not help but be about race. As President Obama said during his sweeping and inspirational speech Tuesday, a man whose father was denied service at a restaurant because of the color of his skin is now president of the United States.

Thus, Jan. 20 became a grand day for America, a day when the son of an African immigrant received the cheers of about a million spectators, many standing so far away they might as well have watched at home on television. Like sports fans, they felt the need to be there, to feel the thrill of the crowd, to stand witness to history.

Sports are said to reflect society, but as President Obama took the oath of office, one could argue that sports sometimes can be more accelerant than mirror.

Baseball broke its color barrier long before Jim Crow laws were repealed. Ballplayers shared dugouts and huddles long before Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream.

Ballplayers learned to accept, or at least tolerate, those of different skin color and nationality long before many average Americans did, because sport cannot help but reward talent and accomplishment.

On this great day for America, a 36-year-old black man worked to prepare his team for the Super Bowl. Mike Tomlin, who left the Vikings two years ago to become the head coach of the storied Pittsburgh Steelers, has seized one of the most scrutinized positions in sports and proved himself a dynamic leader.

Two years after the prevalent storyline at the Super Bowl was the first meeting of black head coaches in the title game, you hardly hear race mentioned in regard to Tomlin. He is, simply and thankfully, a talented young football coach.

On this great day for America, Leslie Frazier, who replaced Tomlin as Vikings defensive coordinator, worked in Mobile, Ala., at the Senior Bowl. Frazier contended for head coaching jobs this month before the Broncos and Rams hired white candidates. Unlike when Tony Dungy frequently finished "second" every winter in NFL job searches as he became the league's favorite check-list candidate, there was no sense this winter that Frazier was a token interview. He may or may not become a head coach, but race probably will have little to do with it.

After all, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who once fired Dungy in favor of Jon Gruden, just fired Gruden and promoted a 32-year-old black man, Bucs assistant Raheem Morris. He was chosen, as were Dungy and Tomlin, because he is considered an inspirational leader.

In the modern NFL, hirings are rarely about race. Two former Vikings assistant coaches -- Dungy and Tomlin -- helped bring that change about.

Much of the sports world lags. College football, the foremost promoter of academic institutions, is also, strangely, the most backward of sports, featuring the most archaic and nonsensical apparatus for establishing a national champion.

Worse, the hiring practices of these supposedly enlightened institutions evoke memories of fire hoses and whites-only water fountains. Even as Dungy, Lovie Smith and Tomlin have taken NFL teams to the Super Bowl the past few years, NCAA Division I schools have employed only a handful of black head coaches.

We now have almost as many black American presidents as we do high-profile black college coaches. That is disgraceful.

What is remarkable is that the National Football League, the league Dungy used to say preferred to hire coaches who looked like Vince Lombardi, has outpaced the colleges in terms of enlightened hiring practices.

In most American sports and now in American politics, race no longer seems to matter so much. In Barack Obama, we finally have our political Jackie Robinson.

Jim Souhan can be heard Sundays from 10 a.m.-noon on AM-1500 KSTP. • jsouhan@startribune.com