Al Behrman / AP

Colts coach Tony Dungy holds the Lamar Hunt Trophy after the Colts defeated the Patriots, 38-34, to win the AFC championship Sunday.

The task of balancing out the racial numbers, of course, is far from finished.

With Tomlin’s hire, there are now six black head coaches in the NFL — still one fewer than at the start of the 2006 season after the firings of Art Shell in Oakland and Dennis Green in Arizona. The college numbers are less impressive; of the 119 Division I-A jobs, only seven were held by black men as of late last month.

“It’s important to point out that not as much progress is being made in college coaching,” Gordon said. “And we also need to pay attention to the graduation rate of black football players and black athletes. You have to look at the full picture. Not just who’s coaching, but who’s playing, who’s graduating and who’s going onto bigger things.”

Like Gordon and Smith, Dungy also hopes that someday, the things making news this week won’t really be news at all.

There have been times, though, when he wasn’t sure it was possible. That was well before the NFL instituted the so-called “Rooney Rule,” which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate before making a decision.

Though Dungy got interviews, some turned into farces — such as the one where they recommended Dungy lose the beard, or another where they told the lifetime defensive assistant that they were looking for an offensive expert with head coaching experience.

“I scratched my head at that one,” he said, knowing he’d been brought in as nothing more than the token black candidate. “When you would get questions like that, you could see some people were concerned with things that weren’t really related to football. You could see we had a way to go.”