Tonight, the coach of the Super Bowl winner - Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts or Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears - will joyfully cradle the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
A gleaming silver football, the NFL's Holy Grail honors the coach whose very name evokes vivid sideline images of steely authoritarianism, ferocious passion and an unforgiving insistence on perfection.
In short, Lombardi stood for just about everything Dungy and Smith are not.
"The head coach of a successful team, to many people, looked like Vince Lombardi," Dungy said mid-week. "It was a white, middle-aged coach who screamed fire-and-brimstone and that's what we saw in NFL Films and everything, and it was a great picture."
Dungy was responding to a question regarding African-Americans as NFL coaches but, as he has done before, he steered his remarks in the direction of coaching styles and, ultimately, applying spiritual ideals in a violent sport.
"With two guys coming to the Super Bowl with maybe different personalities than most people perceive of an NFL head coach, a different value system maybe, a different way of expressing themselves, people say, `You know what? Anything can work if you get the right person.'"
Unlike Lombardi and many others with a similar coaching style, Dungy and Smith are even-tempered, don't use profanity, reject intimidation as a motivational tool and clearly would never, ever utter, "Winning isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing."
For them, what is most important - to the degree that they are consistently demonstrative about it - is their Creator.
"My relationship, first, is with Jesus Christ, and he is the center of my life," said Smith, a former assistant to Dungy in Tampa Bay. "I try to live a Christian life. I would like for [players] to know my faith based on what they see on a day-to-day basis."
Not that other coaches who came before Dungy and Smith weren't religious. Green Bay Packers immortal Lombardi, for instance, was a devout Catholic who studied for a while to become a priest. Mike Ditka, who led the Bears to a Super Bowl win 21 years ago, has been involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Still, their coaching demeanors were fiery, steel-fisted and frequently profane.
"Lombardi was more Old Testament, and that's not the kind of faith where you accept defeat," said Brian W.W. Aitken, a professor of religious studies at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, who has written extensively on sports and religion. "Dungy is not about that. He's more about excellence of play, giving your all and being a warrior for Christ."
