Sports Doing Good Newsletter #343

Welcome to week three hundred and forty-three of the Sports Doing Good newsletter. This week’s 10 stories include:  

  1. Hollywood stars and ex-USWNT players unite to bring NWSL team to Los Angeles (ESPN)
  2. Thorpe’s scandal-tainted 1912 golds still resonate, amaze (Yahoo! Sports)
  3. Fauci baseball card shatters Topps 24-hour record with 51,512 sold (The Hill)
  4. How Patrick Mahomes Became the Superstar the NFL Needs Right Now (GQ)
  5. Basketball’s ongoing fight for social justice (ESPN)
  6. Black Lives Matter Protests Spawn Push for Athletes to Attend Historically Black Colleges (NY Times)
  7. Direct Connection: A Retired Tennis Star Focuses on Early Cancer Detection (Inside Philanthropy)
  8. India’s Harsimran Kaur Sees San Diego As Opportunity To Finally Unleash Natural Game (Republic World)
  9. Developers confident health passport system can create bio-secure sports venues (SportsPro)
  10. NWSL Finds Money, Momentum in Record-Setting 2020 Bubble Season (Sportico)

10+

Sport fans and COVID-19 (Sport and Dev) https://www.sportanddev.org/en/article/news/sport-fans-and-covid-19 

Arab and Jewish Young Leaders Protest Together Against Gender-Based Violence (PeacePlayers)
https://www.peaceplayers.org/palestinian-and-israeli-young-leaders-protest-together-against-gender-based-violence/
 

The power of mentoring (Sport and Dev/Ali Forum)https://www.sportanddev.org/en/article/news/power-mentoring

We present again our “Featured Video” offering(s). With the explosion of video content out there highlighting the good in sport, we want to showcase such content for your enjoyment and learning. This will be an ongoing effort. 
Former college basketball player turned himself into a quilting star (MSN.com)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/g-thing-former-college-basketball-player-turned-himself-into-a-quilting-star/vi-BB17a4UE

University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace, & Society Global Disability Rights Advocacy Project (YouTube)
https://youtu.be/0KTH92eC3Ik

You Can’t Stop Us (Nike/YouTube)
https://youtu.be/WA4dDs0T7sM

Introduction

I want to start off with a reminder about Sports Doing Good platforms in addition to the newsletter. The Sports Doing Good website is under construction but will be up soon at www.sportsdoinggood.com.  Social media is: Twitter at @sportsdoinggood, Facebook at www.facebook.com/sportsdoinggood.com and Instagram at @sportsdoinggood. And to remind you, I have a partner effort called Love Equals, an apparel company. The Love Equals site is up and running and open for business at www.loveequals.net. We are also on Instagram at @loveequalsofficial, Facebook at www.facebook.com/loveequals and Twitter at @loveequals­­_. Please note that in addition to individual shirts, we do sell larger orders to teams, leagues, events, schools, companies, organizations, etc., many times at a discount. We certainly do customized designs as well. So for the first time in a while, we now have a full slate of sports on the calendar actually being played and not existing solely to be inevitably canceled. Yes, we now are using the word bubble way more than we want to when it comes to sports (in addition to social distancing, testing, and opt-out). And many will say that much of this is being done only to salvage some revenue from interrupted seasons. However, I ask the cynics in the audience to allow more wholesome reasons to be considered when it comes to sports being back. The pandemic has changed us as individuals and as a society. Change can be hard…very hard, especially if it is not voluntary change. Seeing LeBron hitting a game-winner again does not take me back to pre-Covid days, but it really doesn’t need to do that. It is there for me to smile and wonder how he continues to dominate 17 years into an amazing career. Sports is there for me to wonder why the Mets continually blow big leads. It is there for me to get excited by the play of one of the best young soccer players in the world, U.S. star Christian Pulisic. And it is there to be must-see TV as Sabrina Ionescu plays her first WNBA game. Sports are there for us to smile, wonder, agonize, hope, and escape. And while we don’t have a “normal” sports world in front of us right now, we do have something, and we should be grateful for that. And the sports world has, again, given us a bevy of good stories to choose from in putting together the Sports Doing Good newsletter. This week we are happy to feature stories involving: the high-powered ownership group behind the new NWSL LA franchise; arguably the greatest athlete ever, Jim Thorpe; Dr. Fauci’s incredibly popular baseball card; NFL superstar and Super Bowl champion Pat Mahomes; the WNBA and NBA’s longstanding fights for social justice; a possible trend in elite high school athletes choosing to attend historically black colleges; former tennis star James Blake and his efforts to help with early cancer detection; a young basketball player from India, Harsimran Kaur, getting her chance to play Division 1 basketball in the U.S.; progress towards making our sports venues safe for fans in a “new normal;” and the NWSL’s great success with its month-long Challenge Cup.          

Please continue to send along your stories. You’re both our audience and the best source of stories. Our Twitter handle is @sportsdoinggood, and you can find us at www.facebook.com/sportsdoinggood and on Instagram. Finally, if you think others would like to receive the newsletter, please feel FREE TO forward it to or have them contact us directly at sab@sportsdoinggood.com. (If you do not want to receive the newsletter anymore you can use the Unsubscribe button at the end of the email)   So enjoy. And have a good week.

Top Stories of the Week

Hollywood stars and ex-USWNT players unite to bring NWSL team to Los Angeles (ESPN)   For full story, please click here.

Thorpe’s scandal-tainted 1912 golds still resonate, amaze (Yahoo! Sports)    For full story, please click here.

Fauci baseball card shatters Topps 24-hour record with 51,512 sold (The Hill)  For full story, please click here.

How Patrick Mahomes Became the Superstar the NFL Needs Right Now (GQ) For full story, please click here.

Basketball’s ongoing fight for social justice (ESPN)       For full story, please click here.

Black Lives Matter Protests Spawn Push for Athletes to Attend Historically Black Colleges (NY Times)   For full story, please click here.

Direct Connection: A Retired Tennis Star Focuses on Early Cancer Detection (Inside Philanthropy)  For full story, please click here.

India’s Harsimran Kaur Sees San Diego As Opportunity To Finally Unleash Natural Game (Republic World)   For full story, please click here.

Developers confident health passport system can create bio-secure sports venues (SportsPro)  For full story, please click here.

NWSL Finds Money, Momentum in Record-Setting 2020 Bubble Season (Sportico)  For full story, please click here.

Our mission is to have Sport Doing Good be a consistent, and significant, contributor to the areas of sports, social responsibility and development. We look forward to partnering with other stakeholders in producing content, in creating and/or sponsoring athletic and service events, knowledge sharing, and conferences/seminars, and even having a commercial arm that could be the source of innovative social businesses. We invite you to send in news, press releases, and guest pieces for possible publication and email us with suggestions about the content and format of the newsletter and Sports Doing Good website. 
Contact Information
Sarbjit “Sab” Singh
sab@sportsdoinggood.com
516-287-7141
Assistant Professor
Sport Management
Farmingdale State College