Tony Dungy: The Anti-Greed

2007 delivered many emotions to the hearts and minds of sportsfans throughout our competitive world.

Too often, spirited conversation was monopolized with the negativity and  strife of ignominious events and behaviors stabbing the souls of true sports followers.

Why, when we need to "go deep," do we end up going shallow? Be it college football's cream puff scheduling for the BCS' Chosen Few or some college drop-out's holding out for a post draft contract; dollars fuel the illogical.

The NCAA doesn't want college players to be paid for the work they do—to foster the fortunes of a school, because of sports purity?

Ha. Ballplayers don't take steroids so they can become sexually dysfunctional and immunilogically deficient...it's for the cash.

Worse, they do it merely for the prospect of the cash, and at the expense of the more noble reasons.

Nobody enjoys cruelty to animals...except if it was a good way to throw money the way of grubbing hangers-on who needed it.

Why would a Country throw away its cornerstone for its national sport to a girl's rock band? Bingo! The money.

And then there was the unbelievably successful and satisfied college basketball coach who went temporarily insane because of...yep...money.

Tony Dungy graciously went about the task of winning the Super Bowl after The Tampa Bay Buccaneers determined that they weren't making money fast enough. They threw away what will prove out to be the father seed for all that is righteous about sportsmen, laying it all out there in the service of the developement of a player's entirety...not bank accounts.

Tony Dungy overcame personal, professional, and even political adversities without the aid of forbidden performance enhancers.

Lets hope that faith in God, family, and fellow man doesn't come into question on some political hack's desk. Tony Dungy is the story of the year, first anniversary.