Dennis Earl Green (February 17, 1949 – July 22, 2016) was an American professional football coach. During his National Football League (NFL) career, Green coached the Minnesota Vikings from 1992 to 2001 and the Arizona Cardinals from 2004 to 2006. He coached the Vikings to eight playoff appearances in nine years, despite having seven different starting quarterbacks in those postseasons. He was posthumously inducted into the Minnesota Vikings Ring of Honor in 2018.
Green was the second African American head coach in modern NFL history, after Art Shell. He was the Minnesota Vikings head coach from 1992 to 2001. He was one of the winningest coaches of the 1990s, posting a 97–62 record as Vikings head coach. Green's best season in Minnesota was in 1998, when the Vikings finished 15–1 and set the NFL record for most points in a season at the time; however, the Vikings were upset by the Atlanta Falcons in that year's NFC Championship Game, and Green was unable to reach the Super Bowl throughout his otherwise successful tenure with Minnesota. Following his first losing record in 2001, he was fired just before the final game of the season.
Green was hired by the Cardinals to serve as the head coach for the 2004 season, a franchise then noted for its futility, which had posted only one winning season in a quarter-century. In Arizona, Green was unable to match his success in Minnesota, and his poor win–loss record (16–32) with the Cardinals was similar to that of his predecessors in Arizona. However, many describe Green's tenure with Arizona as an inflection point in the history of the Cardinals, arguing that the culture of the team changed under Green, and that the core of the personnel in the Cardinals' 2008 Super Bowl run was acquired by Green.
Green grew up in a working class household in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at the corner of Walnut and N 12th Street. In 2019, the 1100 to 1300 block of Walnut Street was renamed "Dennis Green Way" to honor the late native. Green's father, Penrose "Bus" Green, was the grandson of a Cuban slave who fled to Baltimore, Maryland and married a woman from the Seneca tribe. After serving in World War II, Bus Green briefly played semi-professional football for the Harrisburg Lions and supported his family by working for the U.S. Postal Service. Green’s mother, Anna Green, was a beautician born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and raised in Harrisburg. In his Autobiography, No Room for Crybabies Green recalls a traumatic beginning to his teenage years. His father died from a ruptured appendix at the age of 39 when Green was just 11. Two years later, his mother died from undiagnosed breast cancer. The youngest of five brothers, Green was then raised by his older siblings: Penrose Green II, Robert, Stanley, and Gregory.
Green attended John Harris High School (now Harrisburg High School) in Harrisburg, and graduated cum laude from the University of Iowa with a BS in Recreational Studies. According to Green, he was planning to be a high school teacher if his football career did not pan out. In college, he started as halfback in each of his three seasons with the Iowa Hawkeyes, playing under coach Ray Nagel.
In his collegiate career, Green had 139 carries for 699 yards and nine touchdowns. His best individual game was in a 1968 loss to Texas Christian University, when he rushed 18 times for 175 yards and two touchdowns.
Green has four children from two marriages: Patti Green (born April, 1967), Jeremy Green (born July, 1971), Vanessa Green (born February, 1997), and Zachary Dennis Green (born November, 1998).
Green received a full ride athletic scholarship to attend the University of Iowa in the fall of 1967. During this time, many black athletes spoke out about racial issues in Iowa City that affected their social life outside of athletics, and, most importantly, in the classroom. In 1968, eighteen black student-athletes from the university's football and basketball teams were interviewed for an article in a local newspaper, The Daily Iowan. Green, pictured on the second page of the article, stated, "The middle class whites believe in this black stereotype, and they believe all blacks fit into that black stereotype." Football player Louis Age, who was born and raised in New Orleans, said, "It is better in the south than it is here. You look at the white man down there and you know he doesn't like you; up here you don't know what to think. This place definitely has a phony atmosphere." After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that racial segregation in education was unconstitutional, many of these issues arose for black students as they began to attend universities around the country.
In 1969, led by running back Green, sixteen black players of Iowa's Football team boycotted spring practice. The players were protesting a decision by coach Ray Nagel to suspend two black players — both starters from the previous season — for undisclosed reasons. The sixteen players were subsequently dismissed from the team. That did not stop them from continuing to advocate for changes within the athletic department to better support black athletes. Green was quoted by Sports Illustrated as saying in 1992, "the school wasn't ready for us, but it was also the times. Black guys wanted to prove their manhood, their boldness, to stand up and be counted."
Coleman Lane, one of the dismissed athletes, said, "The main crux of our demands is academic, and white and black will both benefit from it, only the black will benefit more." The demands listed by the football players and the Black Athletes Union were an attempt to improve the plight of black student athletes not only at the University of Iowa, but also at universities throughout the United States.
Because of their stance, most of the items the black players demanded were implemented at Iowa, and throughout the Big Ten, within a few years, and a couple of them within a few months.
As the '69 season grew near, the players, including Green, asked to be reinstated. Nagel had the majority white squad vote on the players individually at a team meeting. Seven were reinstated, including Green, but five were rejected.
The boycott cost some of the players their football careers. While some of the black players were allowed back on the team, a handful saw their college careers end prematurely because of their participation in the boycott against the university's unjust academic and athletic prejudices.
Because of his leadership in the boycott, NFL teams with Green on their draft radar decided to pass on him in the 1971 NFL draft, thus cutting his playing career short. Specifically, the Dallas Cowboys had planned to draft Green, but instead picked running back Sam Scarber, who was subsequently waived before the season started.
After graduating from Iowa, Green briefly played professionally for the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League in 1971 before beginning his successful coaching career. At the time of his death in 2016, he was the third most successful black head coach in NFL history, behind his protégé Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin.
Green began his football coaching career, returning to the University of Iowa in 1972 as a graduate assistant. He then served as an assistant coach at the University of Dayton (1973), University of Iowa (1974 to 1976) and Stanford University, where he coached under Bill Walsh in 1977 and 1978. In 1979, Green joined Walsh's staff on the San Francisco 49ers, where he coached special teams. Green returned to Stanford in 1980 as offensive coordinator, coaching with Jim Fassel and Jack Harbaugh.
In 1981, Green was named the head coach of Northwestern University, a school that had gone 1–31–1 in its last 33 games. In 1981, he was only the second African American head coach in Division I-A history (the previous coach, Willie Jeffries, coached at Wichita State, which no longer has a football team). Green was named the Big Ten Conference Coach of the Year, as chosen by writers and broadcasters, in 1982 at Northwestern. He left Northwestern in 1985, doing a stint as the wide receivers coach for the San Francisco 49ers under his former boss at Stanford, Bill Walsh. In his last season with the San Francisco 49ers, they reached the 1989 NFL Super Bowl Championship Game, in which Green made the play call that led to John Taylor's 10-yard TD reception from Joe Montana that secured the win with 39 seconds left.