Oct. 12 – Oct. 25, 2025
Welcome to issue four hundred and seventy-six of the Sports Doing Good newsletter. This week’s 10 stories include:

1. Savannah Bananas announce 45-state tour, new teams for 2026 (ESPN)
2. A new generation is embracing the WNBA, including young boys (New York Times)
3. How Woj helped a Bill Walton lookalike go from homeless to hooping for NBA scouts (NJ.com)
4. Cleveland Cavaliers Launch Social Impact Academy at Historic Cleveland Landmark (NBA.com)
5. Shohei Ohtani and the most dominant MLB playoff game ever (ESPN)
6. How blending the digital and real worlds is redefining fan engagement (SportsPro)
7. Injuries ended a star QB’s career. Back home, he found a protege — and a purpose (The Athletic)
8. Florida A&M coach Charlie Ward is guided by NBA and collegiate history, family roots (Andscape)
9. How Indiana upended decades of futility to become college football’s most unlikely rising power (CNN)
10. Eight ways the world’s most marketable athletes are showing up for brands (SporsPro)


10+
Meet the Tech365 Incubate & Grassroots365 Innovation Incubation Cohorts (Beyond Sport)
https://beyondsport.org/2025/10/10/meet-the-21-members-of-the-latest-olympism365-innovation-hub-cohorts/
Environmental Justice and Human Rights: Putting People at the Heart of Sports and Sustainability (CSHR)
https://www.sporthumanrights.org/library/environmental-justice-and-human-rights-putting-people-at-the-heart-of-sports-and-sustainability
Hoops + Health Reaches 48K+ People Across Asia (Beyond Sport)
https://beyondsport.org/2025/10/10/hoops-health-reaches-48k-people-across-asia/
Stop Treating Sport as “Extra.” It’s One of Our Best Mental Health Tools. (Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stop-treating-sport-extra-its-one-our-best-mental-health-bartlett-zlyse/
Equal play effect: Five year report (Sport and Dev)
https://www.sportanddev.org/latest/news/equal-play-effect-five-year-report


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. And now we add podcasts!

Future of Sports Policy (The Aspen Institute)
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/future-of-sports-policy/
Never Played Organized Basketball to D1 Basketball Commit — Meet Joe Grahovac (BallerTV)
https://youtu.be/PU0nHoZ2ijU?si=oyPy8o18fFhiITfA

Introduction
I recently became aware of the term “doomscrolling.” I certainly understand what it is and recognize that I occasionally find myself scrolling for a few minutes. What I am not doing, though, is looking for negative news. As you can imagine, I get caught up in great sports highlights, funny comedians, and videos of dogs.

One of the sports highlights I came across involved Joe Grahovac, a 20-something student- athlete from California whose journey took him from the West Coast to Western New York State. One of the things that caught my eye with Joe is his “Bill Walton-esque” look and his ability to ball. No joke. The guys is GOOD.

Joe’s story is one that is perfect for the Internet, the “good” Internet. He has overcome some tough personal situations, e.g., being homeless for a while, and was fortunately identified by some basketball heads as a legitimate player. (Shout out to BallerTV) His story takes another turn when one of those basketball heads, former NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski, known throughout the basketball world as “Woj,” caught wind of Joe and flew out to California to see him player. No doubt, Woj knows hoops, and he saw an opportunity for this young man to play Division 1 ball, ideally at St. Bonaventure.

Does this sound like a movie? It sure does. But the great thing is that all parties involved are real. This is one of my favorite stories ever and I am excited to follow Joe and the Bonnies in the upcoming season. For a video on Joe, check the link in our “Videos” section above.

Please continue to send along your stories. You are 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.

If you think others would like to receive the newsletter, please feel free to forward it on 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.

Savannah Bananas announce 45-state tour, new teams for 2026 (ESPN)
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46545115/merrill-lynch-pay-ex-pro-bowler-reshad-jones-95m-settle-fraud-suit

A new generation is embracing the WNBA, including young boys (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6702391/2025/10/10/wnba-fans-young-boys/

How Woj helped a Bill Walton lookalike go from homeless to hooping for NBA scouts (NJ.com)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/how-woj-helped-a-bill-walton-lookalike-go-from-homeless-to-hooping-for-nba-scouts/ar-AA1Oi6KL

Cleveland Cavaliers Launch Social Impact Academy at Historic Cleveland Landmark (NBA.com)
https://www.nba.com/cavaliers/news/releases-social-impact-academy-250926

Shohei Ohtani and the most dominant MLB playoff game ever (ESPN)
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/46632002/2025-mlb-playoffs-nlcs-los-angeles-dodgers-shohei-ohtani-two-way-dominance

How blending the digital and real worlds is redefining fan engagement (SportsPro)
https://www.sportspro.com/insights/opinions/digital-real-world-sports-fan-engagement-brightspot-tgl-nbc/

Injuries ended a star QB’s career. Back home, he found a protege — and a purpose (The Athletic)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6721629/2025/10/17/brady-smigiel-injury-cam-rising-nfl-hopes/

Florida A&M coach Charlie Ward is guided by NBA and collegiate history, family roots (Andscape)
https://andscape.com/features/florida-am-coach-charlie-ward-is-guided-by-nba-and-collegiate-history-family-roots/

How Indiana upended decades of futility to become college football’s most unlikely rising power (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/sport/football-ncaa-indiana-resurgence

Eight ways the world’s most marketable athletes are showing up for brands (SporsPro)
https://www.sportspro.com/insights/analysis/most-marketable-athletes-sponsor-campaigns-personal-endorsements/

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Our goal is to have Sports Doing Good be a portal housing original content and excerpts from and links to the increasing number of articles, websites, video, and other media that showcase the good in sports and society. We aim to celebrate those concepts, activities, events, and individuals by highlighting them for a wider audience. Much of the news today, whether sports- related or not, is incredibly negative and increasingly polarizing, biased, and quite annoying. We are trying to refocus some of the discussion on the good, with a focus on sports.

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
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Sarbjit “Sab” Singh
sab@sportsdoinggood.com
516-287-7141
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