The football gods were forgiven by African-American Pittsburghers when their great black hope, Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy, was denied the 2006 trip to Super Bowl XL. The universally loved Pittsburgh Steelers winning at the big dance were the pride of Western Pennsylvanians of all races and enabled black fans to rejoice with conquering Detroit hero Jerome Bettis and MVP Hines Ward as sufficient compensation for not seeing the first black coach reach the Super Bowl.

Robert Hill is vice chancellor for public affairs at the University of Pittsburgh (hillr@pitt.edu).

But a year later, the decades-long delayed gratification has been richly rewarded beyond imagination as Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith became the first black coach to get to the ultimate game and will meet there his pal Mr. Dungy, the second (by hours), giving modern American meaning to the biblical promise that the last shall be first. When the Steelers announced the signing of Mike Tomlin as head coach, black Pittsburghers knew that February -- Black History Month -- had not yet arrived, but it may as well have.

Since the triumph of Jesse Owens, Pitt's Johnny Woodruff and other black gold medalists of 1936, and the reintegration of baseball in 1947 when Jackie Robinson was signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, the inexorable march of justice in American sports was headed to this moment. Few, however, could have predicted it would come blasting in so magnificently.

Yes, there would come Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, home run king Hank Aaron and countless other black baseball greats of the past six decades. The dominance of black Latinos in major league ball has become commonplace. NBA basketball greatness is defined by African-American talent. And some two-thirds of NFL players today are black, creating a mighty presence at the skill positions.

Even the country club sports of golf, tennis, speed skating and fencing have, at one time or another, been dominated by blacks. Tiger Woods has maintained his No. 1 ranking in golf; Venus and Serena Williams have won numerous grand slam tennis titles; speed skater Shani Davis won gold in the 2006 Winter Olympics 1000 meters, and siblings Keeth and Erinn Smart in 2004 became the American king of sabers and queen of foils, respectively. The way for these greats was paved in the 1950s, '60s and '70s by Lee Elder in golf, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe in tennis and Peter Westbrooke in fencing.

Although to this day only a handful of black head coaches appear on the nation's Division I college rosters in the revenue sports, John Thompson of Georgetown and Nolan Richardson of Arkansas did coach teams to NCAA college basketball championships.

Coaching in professional sports was among the last frontiers for African-Americans to conquer. But when the door opened an inch in basketball, Bill Russell coached the Celtics to NBA basketball championships in 1968 and '69, and Lenny Wilkens triumphed with the SuperSonics in 1979. Yet, when Latino Ozzie Guillen managed the Chicago White Sox to the 2005 World Series championship, the NFL championship seemed the one remaining bull's-eye for black coaches to target.

Dozens of great black football coaches have held forth successfully in most of America's 116 historically black colleges for nearly a century. Grambling State's Eddie Robinson in Louisiana and W. C. Gordon of Jackson State in Mississippi, who at one point in the 1970s and '80s reportedly saw more of his former student athletes in the NFL than any other college coach in America, are powerful exemplars. Mr. Robinson even produced Doug Williams, the only black quarterback to lead a team to win the big game: Super Bowl XXII in 1988. But blacks coaching in professional football is a horse of a different color, so to speak.

Baseball may still be America's pastime, but football is king. And the big bowl is not called super for nothing. Thus, with only five black head coaches in the 2006 NFL season, it seems a stunning vindication of the patience of black football fans, civil rights advocates and believers in the American dream that two of them should compete on Feb. 4 to kick off Black History Month. The bonus for all Americans is that a milestone already has been reached because, despite his forefathers having been denied opportunities through prejudice, the winner of the 2007 Super Bowl, through sheer merit, is guaranteed to be African American.