Winning the Super Bowl as a Player and a Coach

The Super Bowl is a tough game to make it to, much less win. It’s the goal of every player and coach, but not everyone can achieve it. There are only three men who, as of 2007, had won the Super Bowl as both a player and a coach.

The first to accomplish this was Tom Flores as Head Coach of the Raiders in the early 1980’s. Flores had also been Quarterback for the Raiders as a player.

A few years later this feat was accomplished again when the 1985 Chicago Bears won it all. Their victory over the New England Patriots gave Mike Ditka his Super Bowl victory as a coach; he’d already been a Super Bowl winner during his playing days with the Dallas Cowboys.

The NFL had to wait over twenty years for another man to join the ranks of Tom Flores and Mike Ditka; in 2007 Tony Dungy joined this exclusive club. Dungy’s Indianapolis Colts beat the Bears in Super Bowl XLI, and he had been a Super Bowl winner as a player with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The odds of winning the Super Bowl for any player are not very good, all those players and all those teams can make it difficult. Many great players have excelled on their teams and in the regular season, or even the playoffs, only to not be able to win the big game. Now, the odds of one of those Super Bowl winners to go on into a coaching career and then coach his team to a Super Bowl victory have got to be huge. Truly a great accomplishment for Tom Flores, Mike Ditka, and Tony Dungy.

Heisman Trophy – Rookie of the Year Copycats

An interesting look at the early 1980’s copycats George Rogers and Marcus Allen.

George Rogers won the 1980 Heisman Trophy Award as the best collegiate football athlete; the winner of the 1981 Heisman Trophy Award was Marcus Allen. In 1981, while Allen was in the process of winning his Heisman, Rogers went on to win the NFL Rookie-of-the-Year award. In 1982, Marcus Allen followed up his Heisman Award with the winning of the NFL Rookie-of-the-Year. Two running backs, two consecutive years, and both won the same awards; the Heisman Trophy and the NFL Rookie-of-the-Year.

Need another copycat reference in this scenario? Both running backs went to USC… sort of. While Marcus Allen is one of the legendary running backs from the University of Southern California, George Rogers is one of the all-time greats from the University of South Carolina.