Dungy’s retirement moves up Tyndale book Print
Written by Eric Tiansay   
Thursday, 15 January 2009 04:43 PM America/New_York
Tyndale House Publishers has moved up the street date of the latest book by Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy after he announced his retirement from the Indianapolis Colts earlier this week.

Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance-the follow-up to The New York Times best-seller Quiet Strength, published by Tyndale in 2007-was scheduled to come out Feb. 17. Instead, Tyndale will roll out 250,000 copies of Uncommon-to feature Dungy's "legacy" message-Jan. 27.

"Since (Dungy) has been very open about the fact that he would be re-evaluating his status at the end of the Colts' season-as he's done the past few years-we were prepared for the possibility that he would retire," Tyndale Associate Publisher Janis Long Harris told Christian Retailing.

Dungy, 53, retired Monday after a 31-year NFL career, becoming the first black coach to win a Super Bowl after guiding Indianapolis to victory against the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI to close the 2006 season.

"Coach will start doing interviews a little sooner than originally planned, so he can be responsive to media that are calling in the wake of his retirement announcement," said Harris, noting that Dungy will begin promoting the book Jan. 27. "Coach Dungy's decision to retire from a successful career in football at a relatively young age just reinforces the message of his book-that a life of true significance sometimes requires uncommon decisions and actions."

As with Dungy's memoir, Tyndale will support Uncommon with a $500,000 marketing campaign. With more than a million copies sold, Quiet Strength is one of the best-selling, sports-related titles in history, Tyndale officials said.