Pride Of Jackson, Mich., Now Coach Of Buccaneers

JACKSON, Mich. - They were playing a game of catch on the lawn. Father and son.

Tony Dungy, age 4 or 5 according to his father, wound up and threw the baseball. His father grabbed for it. The ball slapped off the leather of the glove and hit the ground.

"One summer I was taking an analytical chemisty course at Michigan State and had an exam and felt that I had blown it," said Dr. Wilbur Dungy, more than 35 years later. "He wanted to play catch, and I was a little irritated . . .

"There was no one for me to take my frustration out on, so I thought I'd take it out on him and make him say ouch, so I was throwing harder and harder. He didn't say anything, and I was dropping throws that he was making to me.

"That further irritated me. I found out later, he had seen someone demonstrate how to throw a curveball. And he was throwing the curve. It wasn't breaking enough to notice, but it was hitting on the outside of the pocket."

Now Wilbur Dungy beamed with parental pride.

He was wearing a Tampa Bay Buccaneers jacket and cap in the new colors with the new insignia. Tony Dungy, the old curveball toddler and later football and basketball All-Stater, the pride of Jackson, is the head coach of the Buccaneers. He is not responsible for the new Tampa Bay colors, but he is for the club's new winning attitude. He is the catalyst for the sudden achievements of a franchise that had been an NFL laughingstock for most of its 21 prior seasons. He

is the architect of the club that has been in the forefront this NFL season with an 8-4 record.

"I might have been a little older," son Tony Dungy said over the telephone from Tampa. "I always watched the older guys. I learned something (the curveball) from them. I always played with older guys. I enjoyed the challenge of being the worst player on a good team rather than the best on a bad team."

Bad team to good team, it pinpoints the progress of the once scoffed-at Bucs.

He knows their scheme

Wilbur Dungy is there at every Bucs game - wearing the team colors, with prior private information of Tony's game plan.

Father and son are that close.

"I don't have to sit in the stands wondering what's coming up next, or why did they do this?" Wilbur Dungy said. "Particularly when they run into the middle of the line, and all the people say `that stupid play.' Got to do it to keep the opposition honest. I don't get too involved, but I know generally what they're trying to do on offense and defense. If there's some specific situation . . . I know their general scheme."

They have gone to games since the 1960s - before Tony Dungy was a four-sport athlete at Jackson's Frost Junior High and then the multiple championship winner at Parkside High.

Wilbur Dungy is a soft-spoken, dignified professorial man who commutes twice a week from Jackson to teach surgical anatomy at Delta Community College in the Saginaw-Bay City area.

He commutes fall weekends to wherever the Bucs are scheduled to play.

Tony Dungy is a quiet, efficient football coach who speaks softly despite the big stick his players say he carries. His coaching habits, his demeanor, are the influence of Lofton Greene, the coach of River Rouge's many state champions.

Long ago, father and son went to a high school basketball game in Jackson. It was the mid-'60s, before Tony Dungy reached junior high school.

"Lofton Greene was from Jackson," Tony said. "I'd heard about this guy. I knew River Rouge won. The players were like a buzzsaw."

Dungy was intrigued. Greene never arose from his bench during the entire game. He sat there. His players played.

"I told my father, nothing he did looked like coaching," Tony said.

"My father said, `You missed the point. Coach during the week. The guys perform during the game.' I learned that.

"Coaching during the week gets results, and the players perform on the weekend."

The impression never dimmed.

Where he came from

Jackson is small-town Middle America. It has a main street, shops, gabled homes, lots of churches, parks, shopping malls - and no parking meters.

It has produced few professional sports figures of national note. Dave and Mike Hill, the professional golfers, were the most famous - until Tony Dungy.

"This is where Tony was raised, this little bungalow," Dave Driscoll said. "And this is his playground. This is called the Exchange."

Driscoll is taking his passenger on a tour of Jackson.

He was Tony Dungy's head football coach at Parkside High School a quarter-century ago. Before he played in the Big Ten at Minnesota, and in the NFL for the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers; before the prolonged apprenticeship as a pro coaching assistant; and before he at last was made a head coach in 1995.

The house is at the corner of Merriman and East Robinson, and down the street there is the large, well-kept Exchange Park with its sports facilities.

Driscoll continues driving. He steers into the roadway at Parkside. The school has been converted into a middle school. Once it was a high school sports powerhouse.

"Tony went here in '69, '70 and '71 and graduated here in '72," Driscoll said.

Dungy became quarterback as a sophomore. The senior holdover quarterback went down injured in preseason practice. Driscoll entrusted the position to a 15-year-old. Before Dungy's junior season, he installed the veer offense, adapted from the University of Houston. It was to exploit his ability to run as well as pass. The system worked.

"His vocabulary is unbelievable," Driscoll said. "He could talk with the most intelligent people at Parkside High School and did quite often, teachers . . . then he could talk to the kids on the street, talk at that level, and make everybody feel comfortable. I don't know what his IQ is, but I'll bet you it's close to 200.

"He had a sense of humor, particularly with his peers. When he talked with me and others, he was serious. He had a tremendous desire for knowledge in all areas. He could have been a businessman. He could have been a lawyer, a doctor."

Even tempered

Tony Dungy of the Buccaneers is a mixture, like everyone else, of breeding and environment.

His father Wilbur holds three university degrees.

His mother Cleomae taught English and speech at Jackson High for many years. For a while, she also coached the Jackson High cheerleading squad.

It was a case of torn emotions when the archrivals, Parkside and Jackson, competed with Tony Dungy on the football field or the basketball court.

Tony was the second of four children. His three siblings grew up to become health-care professionals. Sherrilyn is a nurse. Lauren is a doctor, and her twin brother Linden is a dentist.

According to Dr. Dungy, young Tony seldom needed to be disciplined, seldom fought with other youths, seldom was boisterous.

"Yes," he said when asked if he ever spanked Tony. "I didn't do it very often, but I just did it for effect."

The father can hardly remember the son losing his temper.

"Just once. He was about 8 or 9. And there were some kids in the back yard, and he got mad at someone. His voice was elevated. He wasn't screaming. That's as mad as I've ever seen him and only that once."

Dr. Dungy said Tony started football at 6. By age 8, he was playing on a team of 13-year-olds. At 14, as the quarterback at Frost Junior High, Tony got his picture in Sports Illustrated's Faces In The Crowd section.

And by 15, he was the starting quarterback as a Parkside sophomore.

"Tony's so intense, he came in in the summertime between his junior and senior year and he took every film we had and he went over every play we ran and checked out every defense so that his senior year we would be successful," Driscoll said.

"He knew every play on the film from memory. His senior year we were 8 and 1 . . .

"He batted almost .500 in baseball. Three years that Tony and his group went to Parkside, there was a potential for nine (league) championships. They wound up winning eight out of nine. That would be football, basketball and baseball."

Handling situations

The leadership traits that Tony Dungy displays as coach of the Buccaneers were evident quite young. One day, there was noise at the Dungy house in Jackson.

"It wasn't a fight," his father said. "I was in the living room doing some schoolwork. They were upstairs. I guess one of the roughnecks from their neighborhood, but he was part of their group. Tony ushered him down and said he had to leave. He didn't raise his voice, and the fellow said, `Can I come back tomorrow?' Tony said, `Tomorrow's another day, but tonight you have to go.' . . . It was taken care of in good fashion, and I felt I didn't need to get involved.'

"I told that story to a reporter who was wondering how somebody could get cooperation from team members. He didn't raise his voice or create a commotion.

"Tony was always able to handle those situations, even from elementary school age."