"I coach football. But the good I can do to glorify god along the way is my real purpose" (Dungy 301).
This quote makes very clear Tony's outlook on his life and purpose. Even though football had given him everything he ever had, he still credits the lord and dedicates his life to glorifying him. Tony always believing that the lord had a plan for him through thick and thin was a huge factor is his success. When times were tough, or Tony was in between jobs, and salaries, he never strayed from his beliefs. He always stayed calm, even though his wife did not, because he knew that it would all work out according to gods plan. This is the mindset he lived, and coached by, and it rubbed off on his teams. When he was the coach of the Buccaneers, he turned a group of rough, wild, "unteachable players" into a group of playoff winners. This took incredible faith in his plan, along with great coaches and a manager who saw the value in the process. He turned this team into a unit by taking them to team dinners, having mandatory team bonding events, and trying to get the players to pray and read devotionals. When he was signed to be the head coach in Indianapolis, he had much greater success instilling faith into his players. While this group was not nearly as rough and rowdy as the Tampa team, Dungy had a hard time walking in and connecting to the players. Their last head coach was a very good coach, and an even better man. The team didn't want to see him go, and it was tough for them to open up to a new coach. Dungy used the same team dinner and events tactics as he used in Tampa, but this time had much more success. The team ended up praying together before and after every game, and it brought them together as a whole. To this day Dungy says that god himself was at work when he was the coach of the colts, and that was his destiny. Not only to coach that Indy team to the Superbowl and win, but to instill the faith of god into each member of that team, and making them walk out better men than they came in as. Overall the faith that Dungy had in god is the reason he had such great success as an NFL coach, but he will always say that being a coach came second to being a man of god.
It's interesting because I feel like there is a lot of religion in football. Maybe because a lot of great players come from areas of the country that are more religious, like the south or the mid-west.
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