In honor of Tony Dungy going onto his life's work

   Let's pause to remember and celebrate a father, a father figure, a role model, a man of faith, a man who has been so much more than a football coach in a headset and ballcap. Preaching, molding, guiding have been part of his duties from the time Chuck Noll made him the NFL's youngest defensive coordinator until his resignation this week as the Indianapolis Colts coach. Only now he will make this life's work more of a full-time, heaven-and-turf effort.

     He played with the Steelers, coached the Steelers, married a Pittsburgh woman, so the roots of a Michigan native and University of Minnesota graduate set here. From his experiences under Chuck Noll and Tom Moore, later his longtime Colts offensive coordinator (both below, middle), and Bud Carson, he went to Kansas City and Minnesota before, at long last, he landed head-coaching jobs of his own at Tampa Bay and Indianapolis. Because of him, there is a Dungy Tree of successful coaches in the NFL: Chicago's Lovie Smith, new Indianapolis coach Jim Caldwell (a former Penn State assistant), Kansas City's Herm Edwards and, of course, the Steelers' Mike Tomlin. But you ask players past and present, such as ones quoted this time three years ago when the Colts were about to play the Steelers so soon after the death of Dungy's son James, the man's reach branches out far beyond a 120-yard rectangle. 

    Tomlin, for the record, declined to comment tonight until he first telephoned Dungy -- which he then headed to his office to do.