You would be hard-pressed to find a sport whose history over the past 100 years has not provided some meaningful juncture in the struggle for the equality and recognition of blacks in the 20th century.
From baseball to football, and more recently golf, diversity in sports is reflected in many of the stunning achievements of pioneering black athletes who graced sports with style and athleticism. Their skill is celebrated and emulated from the basketball and tennis courts of Harlem and Compton, to the improvised sandlots of the Dominican Republic and beyond.
For successive generations of black Americans, sports have been, and continue to be, a way out and a way up through a society that too often celebrated their achievements while denying them respect. As a nation, America has invested millions to secure the rights of black athletes' strongest efforts, but spared the dollars necessary to give their communities equal educational opportunities.
Even corporations eager to sponsor the stadiums in which these athletes play have often been slow to reinvest in the communities from which these athletes came.
As sports such as basketball and baseball grow internationally, today's black athletes are doing more than just showing up. From the generations that followed Althea Gibson, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Jesse Owens, many have been quick to embrace the notion that sports is in fact a business - a big business.
Athletes such as Tiger Woods, Lebron James and the Williams tennis sisters turned stellar careers and sometimes unjustifiably prevalent hype into very serious green, commanding endorsements that very often dwarf the salaries and awards for which they play.
Now as never before, the lure of a multimillion-dollar paycheck, even for big-time busts, provides new inspiration for black athletes to persevere, though this is not without its drawbacks.
As the sports world becomes more and more comfortably saturated with melanin, many black athletes are also representing much of what is wrong with sports in the world today. Far from being representatives of soul, many represent a view of a sports world that lost its soul.
From the persistent allegations of steroid use surrounding Barry Bonds and numerous Olympians, to the selfish statements of Latrell Sprewell (no millionaire athlete has trouble feeding his or her kids ... no smart one anyway), to the entertaining yet self-aggrandizing antics of the always excitable Terrell Owens, many of the actions of today's generation have placed a damper on achievements that might otherwise give many fans much to cheer about.
It's hard to not be disappointed, both as a fan and as a black kid from Brooklyn, when rushing title contender Ricky Williams chooses pot over the Dolphins and when Jamal Lewis spends the off-season in jail. (But don't worry, we're receiving word that Carmelo Anthony will personally handle whoever let the word out about Ricky's little habit).
Even as many athletes struggle to escape the influence of the troubles they work so hard to escape from, they take inspiration from an earlier and emerging class of athletes, many of whose post-career efforts stand in direct contrast to the image of the immature, overpaid and undereducated professional athlete of today.
Hall of Fame Laker Magic Johnson, whose revelation that he contracted HIV undoubtedly increased the awareness of many Americans, adjusted his post-career role by trading his sweat suit for a business suit, opening a chain of Loews Theaters, restaurants, 24-hour fitness facilities, 58 coffee shops (go figure) and numerous real estate and home loan ventures in the inner city, inspiring other athletes to join him in unique ways of giving back to the community.
Even AU's own (former "bad boy") Kermit Washington (now an NBDL coach) leveraged his NBA wealth, most recently through a nongovernment organization of his own creation, Project Contact, which staffs, builds and operates clinics that serve refugees from across Eastern Africa.
And this is to say nothing of the current athletes (and their sponsors) whose commitments to their own communities have equally lasting effects.
In this month of February, I suppose this should be the point from which we can all draw inspiration. Sometimes, it's so easy to get caught up in the hype of sports these days that we can forget that it's all just entertainment. These people are all getting paid to play.
While this does not mean that they owe the pioneering athletes that come before them anything, it may be incumbent upon us to expect more from them. Even as our love of college sports upholds a system rife with corruption, current events show us that today's college athletes will be tomorrow's fathers, coaches and, as new Vikings boss Reggie Fowler shows us, NFL owners.
Even as we ignore the indiscretions of "the season's leading scorer," we must all remember that there is a world beyond sports with very real problems. Who better than the international face of the black experience to help us solve them? After all, Magic Johnson can't be the only one bringing Starbucks to the 'hood.
