Not only is this the first Super Bowl to have two African-Americans walk the sidelines as head coaches, but it is the first to have an African-American as a head coach period.

Not only has this Super Bowl have the first two African-American head coaches walking it's sidelines, but it is also a teacher-student relationship, as Smith is a former protégé of Dungy.

Tony Dungy, 50, has been in the NFL since 1981.  He has been a head coach in the league for the past 11 years, with Tampa Bay and Indianapolis.  Dungy hired Lovie Smith as an assitant coach while in Tampa Bay.  Eight of his previous ten teams have gone to the playoffs.

Smith has been with the Chicago Bears coach since 2004.  He has been in the NFL as a coach since 1996.  He was also the University of Tennessee defensive backs coach during the 1993 and 1994 football seasons.

With so many questions regarding this subject being thrown at Smith, he hopes that one day it wouldn't even come up.

"That day is coming, some day; of course we are talking about it now," said Smith in his press conference on January 22. "We've taken a step in that direction by Tony [Dungy] and I having our teams in the Super Bowl, in years to come it won't be talked about and I look forward to that day."

Dungy is looking for this historic event to send a message to America's youth.

"I've been thinking about my generation of kids who watched Super Bowls and never really saw African-American coaches and didn't think about the fact that you could be a coach," Dungy said, according to a report by the Associated Press. "Hopefully, young kids now will say, 'Hey, I might be the coach some day.' That's special."

When looking at the number of black head coaches in the NFL, It's obvious why this is a first occurrence.

In the 2006 season, seven out of 32 teams had black head coaches, or 21.9 percent.  Two of those coaches, Dennis Green and Art Shell have been let go by their respective teams at the end of those team's season.

Most of the NFL coaches come up through the college ranks, where African-American head coaches are even scarcer.

Last season, five out of the 119 Division I-Bowl Subdivision head coaches were African-American, or 4.2 percent.  With the hiring of Randy Shannon at Miami, that number has gone up to six.

According to the statistics compiled by the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics, of the 616 teams affiliated with the NCAA at any level, excluding historically black colleges and universities, only 16 (2.6 percent) had black head coaches last season.