Now that the Greatest One is gone, we can all step up and become culture warriors in the world of sports.
Kaka. Victor Oladipo. Blake Bortles. LeBron James. Stephen Curry. Tom Brady. Andrew Luck.
Grab a microphone. Raise a voice. We can't waste any more time.
Muhammad Ali used the power of words and influence. He chose courage over cowardice. He was the contradictory, contrarian voice. A man who deplored a fight he considered immoral in Vietnam. A man who refused to be silenced, even as Parkinson's Disease tried to rob him of his soul.
Darkness has come again, right here at home. Orlando is a city with a great heart, but we are now heartbroken.
We welcome the world to our tourist attractions, our brand new performing arts center, a refurbished sports stadium. We embrace the world, but right now we all could use a big group hug.
For a long, long time.
"I think what happens often is that when the immediacy of the tragedy is over, the family is still left, and those affected and the first responders are still dealing with this for a long while, whether this is financially or emotionally or otherwise," Steve Hogan, CEO of Florida Citrus Sports, said Thursday.
That's why Hogan and his staff will be offering bowl tickets to all those groups he mentioned; why he will reach out to a preseason game partner, the Miami Dolphins, to see what they can do; why FCS will participate in sales of T-shirts bearing the "(hashtag)OrlandoUnited" slogan.
Make it rain, in a good way.
Orlando's professional teams _ the Magic, Lions, Pride, Predators and Solar Bears _ are selling the T-shirts, with proceeds going to the City of Orlando's OneOrlando Fund at OneOrlando.org. The fund was established after the mass shooting at Pulse night club to help through various means.
Blake Bortles, who played high school football here at and then starred at UCF, announced Thursday that he has committed $10,000 to the OneOrlando Fund.
This is all fabulous, but everybody can do more.
If you have $21.99 to spare, buy a T-shirt. Just remember hugs are free. And if you are a sports team or sports star, be like Ali.
Try to emulate the greatest.
Stand united with your GLBT brothers and sisters. Be the huddle: A diverse group where everyone is welcome.
Stand up and denounce domestic violence. Shame the enablers: Baylor University. Shame the perpetrators: Brock Turner, Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, and others.
Turner didn't have a 20-minute lapse in decision-making, as his father wrote in a nauseating apologist letter to the judge. His son committed rape, and then tried to run when he was spotted, because that's what cowards do.
"It's about athletic privilege," Carol Wick, who used to run a domestic violence shelter in Central Florida, said of Turner. "It's not about being white and rich. There is an athletic privilege that doesn't look at race. It looks at how well you throw a football, how fast you swim, those things."
Athletes and sports organizations can help stop the nonsense by thinning out the herd. Grow a backbone, instead of coddling and deflecting. Lead 24-7, and not just when innocents die.
It's fair enough to assume that there are more good people than bad people in this universe. Strength in numbers.
We can use all the cultural warriors who crossover from the world of sports.
What can the collective sports universe do here, once CNN and all those other news organizations pack up their stuff and leave to chase the next big story? We will be left in Central Florida, to fend for ourselves. Physical wounds heal. Emotional ones, maybe not.
And that's why we need help. Sports can lead, as much or more than any politician on the planet. Politics usually divide. Sport unites.
We are #OrlandoUnited. It's not coach-speak or a locker room pep talk.
It is our reality. We need healing, long after the last blood stain has been washed away and the cameras stop rolling.
