For many years, the window of opportunity for people of color in professional sports may have seemed to be only narrowly open. As the last few Racial and Gender Report Cards have shown, the window has been opened more widely in the past few years. Seizing on that momentum with the goal of opening it all the way, a group of professionals in sport has been formed.

The National Association of Black Sports Professionals may become a voice and a conscience like the BCA, now known as the Black Coaches and Administrators. NABSP has come along at the right time as diversity on the business side of sports is building while the need to create more welcoming, open and professional atmospheres in the workplace still exists and may be lagging behind in some areas of the industry.

Bruce Wimbish, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ corporate communications manager,is the national chapter development chairman and Cleveland chapter president. He shared that “NABSP wants to be the go-to organization when sports teams are seeking black professionals. We want to expedite the pipeline of diverse candidates in sports, especially on the business side.”

Kristi Stepteau, the founder and chairwoman of NABSP says its mission “is connecting, educating and empowering black sports professionals by enhancing their presence, awareness, and industry exposure. We want to promote the continuous elevation of our members to positions of influence in order to increase diversity at all levels within the sports industry. Our goal is to provide our members with the tools and resources needed to increase their career opportunities in the sports industry, and we will strive to offer sports industry organizations the support needed to enhance their diversity recruitment efforts.”

The organizers started out smartly by surveying sports professionals to assess if there was interest in a professional association. The positive response led Stepteau and co-founder and chief legal officer Rosetta Ellis to move ahead. They wanted to be a two-way bridge between an industry seeking diversity and professionals seeking opportunities.

The time is right. Diversity is seen by most business leaders, including those in sport, as a business imperative. Done right, NABSP can provide a network tree and career development opportunities for members while serving as a great place for job postings for the industry as well as a resource the industry can go to for help in getting diverse candidates.

Cleveland, whose teams have had a history of African-American pioneers with Larry Doby, Frank Robinson and Wayne Embry, was the first city to start a chapter in January 2006. From an initial meeting of 15 executives, their chapter has grown to more than 150 contacts. NABSP officially opened membership in late 2006 and already has close to 250 members nationally.

The chapters look to carry out the mission of NABSP to connect black sports professionals in each city, host programs and events that foster relationship-building and assist its professional and student members to advance or start their sports careers, respectively.

NABSP has also created huge inroads with career advancement. Every week, the national office e-mails its membership with sports opportunities that it has gathered from across the country. In Cleveland, the chapter has positioned itself as a resource to sports teams and organizations. As a result, it is responsible for 24 career assists for its members, including nine full-time positions, eight seasonal positions, four part-time positions and three internships.

Headquartered in New York, NABSP has established six additional chapters in Columbus, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, Charlotte and Miami. Each chapter strives to have monthly or bimonthly meetings and events designed to bring members together and into key contact with local sports industry leaders. Organizing efforts for chapter development are under way in 11 other cities around the country.

NABSP has also held several national events, including a most relevant Diversity In Sports panel discussion hosted by The New York Times in June 2006. The panelists included Len Elmore, president/interim executive director, National Basketball Retired Players Association; Wendy Lewis, vice president for strategic planning for recruitment and diversity, MLB; Kenneth Gordon Jr., legal counsel, ESPN; and Charles White, vice president of international media, NFL. The event welcomed more than 80 sports professionals to discuss important issues affecting diversity in sports.

NABSP chapters have also held executive luncheons with such industry leaders as Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith, University of Georgia Athletic Director Damon Evans, NCAA Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Charlotte Westerhaus, NFL commissioner finalist Fred Nance and New York Times columnist Bill Rhoden.

What is its future? NABSP needs the support of the power brokers in the major sports. Over the past year, the organization has held positive exploratory conversations with several of the leagues regarding potential partnership opportunities and hopes that in the near future these opportunities will become more defined.

The NABSP has an informative Web site at www.NABSP.com. As someone who has actively worked to increase the opportunities for people of color and women in the sports industry for more than 25 years, the group’s development is very welcome. If it is successful, and I believe it has started off in a way that will help assure that, then the future of diversity in the business of sport will be much brighter and our workplaces will be even more welcoming and, most importantly, more effective and productive.

Mychal Bell might not know the lessons of Darryl Williams and Marcus Dixon, but the latest turn in Bell's case makes his story the next chapter in a series that includes the tales of those other two African-American high school football players from earlier generations. Together, they inform us that racism is still too virulent in our society.

In fact, the lessons of Williams and Dixon are even more vital for Bell at the moment. In the end, they are lessons of hope; and hope is something Bell and the rest of the "Jena Six" desperately need right now.

Because Mychal Bell went back to jail late last week.

Twenty-eight years ago, Williams, a 15-year-old sophomore who dreamed of someday playing for the New England Patriots, scored a touchdown in the opening half of his Jamaica Plain High School team's game against Charlestown High School in Boston. Standing on the field waiting for play to resume in the third quarter, his dream was shattered -- literally -- when three white teenagers opened fire on him from the top of an apartment building. Williams became a different human being that day as a quadriplegic, and not as a hopeful NFL player. While the assailants went to prison, Williams felt the local and state governments abandoned him and forced him create his new life largely on his own.

Equally compelling is the story of Dixon, an African-American high school student at Pepperell High School in Rome, Ga., who excelled in the classroom and on the football field. He had a 3.9 grade-point average and a scholarship offer from Vanderbilt. The world looked sweet. But on Feb. 10, 2003, Marcus and a 15-year-old white classmate had sex in an empty classroom. When the girl's father found out, she accused 18-year-old Dixon of rape. Dixon maintained the sex was consensual, and a jury agreed. After only 20 minutes, the jury acquitted Dixon of rape, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and sexual battery. However, it found him guilty of statutory rape and a much more serious charge of child molestation that carried a mandatory 10-year prison sentence.

Dixon was sentenced to 10 years in prison, an indication of how far we still have to go in dealing with sex across the color line. In May 2004, after Oprah Winfrey and others led a nation-wide protest, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Dixon should have been prosecuted solely on the statutory rape charge, which has a maximum punishment of one year in prison. Dixon was released, as he already had served more than the year in prison.

The Town Talk newspaper in Alexandria, La

Mychal Bell, a star running back for the Jena Giants, went back to jail late last week.

Now comes Bell, who is back in jail in Jena, La.

Little noticed in the story of the so-called Jena Six is that Bell, one of the six, was a star football player. One of the few media stories that connected any of the Jena Six to football, in fact, was a recent "Outsides the Lines" segment on ESPN.

Here is a quick summary of the case.

When the high school year began in Jena in 2006, a long-standing tradition that only white students would sit under a large old oak tree was challenged by another football player, Kenneth Purvis. When Purvis questioned the school's principal about that tradition, the principal responded by saying it was OK for black people to sit there, too. Several African-American students sat under the tree that same day. But when school started the next day, three nooses hung from the tree. A noose is a symbol of the approximately 4,000 lynchings that are a part of the segregated South's history.

The nooses inflamed African-American residents of Jena, as well as African-American students at Jena High. The three students responsible for them were expelled, but then readmitted when the school board overruled the expulsion. Tensions remained high.

Several months after the initial incident, Robert Bailey, another member of the football team, reported that he had been assaulted and hit with a beer bottle at a party attended predominantly by whites. Several other incidents took place in this atmosphere as well, as reported on "Outside the Lines."

The Jena football coach warned Bell, his star player -- who had several previous juvenile offenses -- not to let the controversy swallow him up. But on Dec. 4, 2006, everything changed. Bell, along with five other African-American students, was charged with beating junior Justin Barker, a white student. Barker was hospitalized, but was released after three hours and was well enough to attend a school event that night.

The Jena Six, including Bell and Bailey, were told they would be charged with aggravated battery, but those charges were upgraded to attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit the same.

In June, the charges against Bell were reduced; and Bell, who had been in jail since his arrest in December, was tried as an adult and convicted by an all-white jury of aggravated battery. His court-appointed attorney did not call a single witness on his behalf.

Finally, in late September, Bell was released on bond after nine months in jail when an appellate court overturned his conviction and ruled that he should have been tried as a juvenile.

But last week, when he showed up in juvenile court for a routine hearing, he was unexpectedly sentenced to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property. The district attorney said the matter had nothing to do with the December 2006 incident at the high school.

So Bell very likely might need the help of knowing the stories of Williams and Dixon, who both experienced something of a resurrection in the years since their troubles.

Williams has spoken to thousands of teenage students nationwide, denouncing racism and dispelling stereotypes as he delivers a message about violence prevention, school success, personal empowerment and conflict resolution. His years of selfless public service led The Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University to name an award for him (the Darryl Williams Award), and he received a Presidential Scholarship to get a degree at Northeastern.

At a fund-raiser for Williams in Boston in 1992, Muhammad Ali told him: "Darryl, you're the second Greatest!" And in a personal letter after he viewed a television interview with Williams on the 25th anniversary of the shooting, former President Bill Clinton wrote to Williams: "You are an inspiration. Let your voice be heard."

And it has been.

In some ways, Williams, now 43, reminds me of Nelson Mandela. He teaches people to love, and not hate. He could have developed a hatred for white people in general, but he tells his audiences that the shooters were "three white people," not all white people. Williams never got the chance he dreamed about to play in the NFL, but he has inspired people to fight racism and people with disabilities to strike out boldly in new directions. In doing so, he has made friends with blue-collar workers and presidents alike.

Dixon received a full athletic scholarship to the historically black Hampton University, where he has played for head coach Joe Taylor, a leader of the Black Coaches Association. Taylor, known for his compassion and discipline, was just what Dixon needed. And Dixon has shown the world that Taylor's faith in him was merited. According to Taylor, Dixon has been a dean's list student at Hampton and has starred on the team. Taylor thinks Dixon has a legitimate shot to play in the NFL.

Hopefully, Bell will be able to draw on their examples, and build a positive future. Perhaps he can learn from their battles with racism and their abilities to overcome the past. And in doing so, he might also help the other five members of the Jena Six to their own second chances when -- if -- the justice system finally clears their paths.

With all the attention being paid to the racial issues being raised in Jena, La., it is easy to see how far we are from the assurance of racial justice in America. In my opinion, the racial issues raised by the case of Ronny Thompson and his departure from Ball State University as basketball coach after a single season have been largely ignored.

Thompson went through his first season as a head coach at Ball State, where he had inherited a weak team located in a community where it might be challenging to attract great players to improve the program.

He drew a strong recruiting class, stocking his team with student athletes for the future. Yet on July 12, Thompson announced his resignation. Six weeks earlier in an e-mail to BSU's president, Jo Ann Gora, he suggested that he might resign and told her that the racial climate at BSU made it untenable for him and his family to remain and feel safe. He put Gora on notice that an assistant athletic director had made racial slurs about him and his coaches.

It is difficult to sort out what happened, but much of it appears to stem from BSU's attempt to protect itself from sanctions for what the NCAA considers a major violation that preceded Thompson's hire. In order to prove to the NCAA that there was not a loss of institutional control, a strategy appears to have developed to show that BSU would find a series of minor violations and self-report them before the final determination by the NCAA of the previous violations. This came out in numerous conversations that Thompson recorded between himself, his assistant coaches, and Kyle Brennan, BSU's director of compliance. I was able to hear that taped conversation.

In mid-May, an anonymous source reported that Thompson was at the gym at an inappropriate time with his basketball players present. The source noted that he saw Thompson from behind and believed that it was him because it was a tall, black male with a bald head. Another reported alleged violation was that assistant Steve Flint was in the weight room with his basketball players when he should not have been there.

If either of these were true, they would be secondary violations of NCAA rules. Thompson and his assistants steadfastly denied they were true. However, Brennan tried to get Thompson and his assistants to admit to the minor violations.

In late May, Brennan told coaches Troy Collier, Flint and Thompson in separate conversations that he heard an assistant AD use the "N" word several times to refer to black people in general and "those people downstairs" referring to the basketball staff. These conversations were documented in memos to Thompson from Collier and Flint. Also, on tape, Brennan referred to the assistant AD's use of the "N" word.

When Thompson asked Brennan to report this, Brennan replied that it might be difficult because he might lose his job.

Ronny Thompson has called for an independent review of Ball State University.

On June 24, Thompson and his assistants found notes in their offices and under the secretary's desk that read, "Niggers, cheaters, liars." It was later insinuated by Thompson detractors that Thompson might have placed the notes in the basketball suite himself to make the case of a hostile racial climate. Thompson's attorney Matthew Keiser contacted the FBI to ask them to conduct an investigation.

I called Brennan last month and we spoke briefly but he has informed me that all communications are going through Tony Proudfoot, BSU's associate vice president for marketing and communications. Proudfoot and I spoke briefly and he sent me a statement via e-mail.

Proudfoot wrote, "We have also commissioned a climate assessment of the environment in and around athletics. This assessment, initiated June 28 … came in response to the reprehensible and disturbing incident involving racially-charged notes this summer … If workplace issues are identified, they will be resolved. If individuals are found to have contributed to a hostile work environment, they will be held accountable." Myra Selby, a former Indiana Supreme Court justice, is conducting the investigation for the university. For the Thompson family, a long and thorough investigation was of little comfort when the family felt it was not safe.

Thompson's wife took the family to Chicago for their safety. Thompson knew his days at Ball State were numbered. His resignation made it official.

Thompson's father is hall of famer John Thompson, whose boldness and success as a coach and as an outspoken critic of racism in sport helped make college basketball the only college sport where African-Americans are regularly hired. He told me, "If there is anything that I have seen here, it is that you have the same people reporting to the NCAA violations they knew to be untrue and then covering it up. … It is quite obvious that Kyle Brennan is covering it up because we have a tape of that man."

Ronny Thompson has asked for an independent external review of BSU's filing of the secondary violations as well as its handling of his claims of racial harassment. The results of the BSU investigation by Selby had not been made public as of this writing.

While the investigation may be a good response about "process" and the intentions of the president and AD are likely honorable, the fact is that with the explosiveness of racial issues, the president and AD needed to step in and take action with people who work for the university in order to keep a valued employee and make him and his family feel safe.

I hope that Ronny Thompson lands somewhere soon where he can create his own program without having to keep looking over his shoulder.

When we talk about diversity in America, too often the conversation is limited to African-Americans and whites. The dimensions of diversity have expanded to include different racial and ethnic groups, disabilities, sexual orientations and other distinctions, but too often, when we think about diversity, it is only in that two-dimensional field. The celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month is important because it gives us the opportunity to reflect on how much we can learn about Hispanic or Latino athletes.

At the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida, we have 60 of the brightest sports management students in the country. I recently asked them to name 20 current athletes in America who are white, 20 who are African-American and 20 who are Latino. Most could name 20 white and African-American athletes, but the average number of Latinos was five. The one Latino student among the group was able to name 20 Latino athletes. Virtually all of the Latinos named were in Major League Baseball. If we know little about Latino athletes in the United States outside of baseball, we know even less about Latina athletes.

Of the non-Latino students surveyed, only one named a female athlete: Lisa Fernandez, considered one of the greatest softball players in history. She led Team USA to three consecutive Olympic gold medals with an average pitch speed of 68 to 69 mph. In 1999, Fernandez was named the Amateur Softball Association/USA Softball Female Athlete of the Year. She also played third base and wielded a hefty bat. Fernandez played softball and basketball at UCLA, where she earned a degree in psychology. In 1993, she became the first softball player to win the prestigious Honda-Broderick Cup as the most outstanding collegiate female athlete.

OMAR TORRES/AFP/Getty Images

Pitcher Lisa Fernandez was a four-time All-American at UCLA who led the Bruins to two national titles.

A four-time All-American, Fernandez led the Bruins to two national championships and two runner-up finishes. She returned to UCLA as an assistant coach. None of the sports management students knew Fernandez's 2004 gold-medal teammate, Jessica Mendoza, a four-time first-team All-American at Stanford (1998-2002). Mendoza was named softball player of the year in 2006.

When asked to name the top female golfer in the world, two of the DeVos students, including Horacio Ruiz, the Latino student, mentioned Lorena Ochoa. In April, Ochoa became the world's No. 1-ranked golfer, following Annika Sorenstam, who held that title for so many years.

Ochoa, 25, hails from Mexico, where she won Mexico's National Sports Award from President Vicente Fox. On Aug. 6, Ochoa won her first major championship, the Women's British Open, which was held for the first time at the Old Course at St. Andrews -- a place associated with the likes of Sam Sneed, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. In 2006, she was named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, and when this summer ended, she held 15 career LPGA titles. She plays a great game and gives back to children in need through the Lorena Ochoa Foundation.

She is so good that when she played for Arizona in the Pac-10 championships in 2002, the players who had finished the round came back to walk the final five holes to watch her. She played at Arizona in 2001 and 2002 and twice was named the college player of the year. Four years into her pro career, her first-round 62 in the 2006 Kraft Nabisco Championship tied the record for best score by a male or female golfer in any major tournament. She never won a major before 2007 but came on strong. In her fifth professional season, she won six tournaments, topped the money list and was named the LPGA Tour player of the year. Yet she plays on the brink of obscurity sometimes shared by women in general, but certainly by too many women of Latina origin.

I knew the students were too young to remember Nancy Lopez, who won 48 golf championships, was a four-time LPGA player of the year (1978-79, 1985 and 1988) and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1987 at age 30.

And since Mary Jo Fernandez is more known to the students as an announcer, they did not know she won two Olympic gold medals in tennis and was a pro who won seven singles and 17 doubles titles in her 14-year pro career.

It is amazing that in 2007, the only Latina athletic director in Division I (more than 300 schools) is Irma Garcia, who just took over at St. Francis College in New York, after being a student-athlete in its women's basketball program, a coach and an associate athletic director and senior women's administrator. She is the only Latina athletic director ever in Division I.

Division I-A has 120 major schools. There are 367 people in leadership positions (presidents, athletic directors and faculty athletics representatives). Of those 367, only France Cordova, the president of Purdue University, is Latina.

In the NBA, NFL, MLB and Major League Soccer combined, Diane Aguilar, senior vice president for ticket operations and special services with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Rosi Hernandez, vice president for market development for the Houston Astros, are the only Latinas at the vice president level. There have been no Latina team presidents, general managers or owners. The Mets' Omar Minaya is sports' only Latino general manager, and the Angels' Arturo Morena is the only Latino owner.

The good news is that when I used to do surveys like the one with the students in the early 1990s, few could name more than 10 African-American sports figures and hardly any of them were women. In the survey this week, almost all named 20 African-Americans, and there were at least seven women out of the 20 on each list.

There is hope that celebrations during Hispanic American Heritage Month will inform us so the students' "lists" will be filled in the years ahead and the great Latino and Latina athletes and sports leaders will receive the accolades they have earned.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The WNBA had more male head coaches last season than ever, a development the author of an annual diversity study of the league called "a positive sign."

"I think for me it was a sign of the WNBA kind of growing into a self-confident organization that is just going to hire the best person available, and if it happens to be a man they're going to give the opportunity to the best person," said study author Richard Lapchick, who annually evaluates the gender and racial diversity of all major pro sports.

"I saw it as a positive sign," he said.

There were just 15 women assistant coaches in 2006, the lowest total since the league's first few seasons and down from 17 the previous year, according to the report released Tuesday. The number of female vice presidents dipped from 23 in 2005 to 18 in 2006.

More WNBA teams were hiring men in several areas, from assistant coach and even trainer, researchers from the University of Central Florida's Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sport found.

Just three head coaches were women in the 2006 season, the lowest total ever. But two more women were hired at the start of the 2007 season -- Karleen Thompson with the Houston Comets and Jenny Boucek with the Sacramento Monarchs -- bringing the total to five, the previous low in 2005.

The study did downgrade the league slightly because there were fewer opportunities for women. The league got an A for race but slipped to a B+ for gender. In 2004 and 2005, the WNBA received A's in both categories.

Women did gain ground in some areas. Women working in the league office increased from 16 to 33 in 2006, and no men held vice president positions. The number of female team physicians doubled from three in 2005 to six last season.

The number of women with an ownership stake in a franchise doubled from two to four after Carla Christofferson and Kathy Goodman replaced Jerry Buss as the owner of the Los Angeles Sparks. The previous two female owners were Colleen J. Maloof and Adrienne Maloof-Nassif, both with Sacramento Monarchs.

A WNBA spokesman did not immediately return telephone messages left early Tuesday afternoon seeking comment.

Recently, there has been a wide-open discussion in the media about a study that suggests a disproportionate number of calls against black players are being made by white officials in the NBA. ESPN.com alone has carried at least six articles on the study, which was written by Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics.

Is it true? The NBA adamantly denies it. ESPN's Stephen A. Smith said on "Outside the Lines" that there is no way race plays a role in the way officials make their calls. Many academics, however, support the study's findings.

In the wake of the officiating concern and a handful of other matters in contention in the NBA recently, it's worth highlighting the bigger picture about the league's role in the issue of race.

On Wednesday, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida published the 2006-07 NBA Racial and Gender Report Card. I am its author, along with Horacio Ruiz and Marina Bustamante. Among other things, the report card points out that African-Americans make up 75 percent of the league's players, which is up from the past two seasons. (The low point in the last decade was in 2004-05, with 73 percent.)

I know from previous experience that I will receive phone calls and e-mails from fans around the country asking why I don't criticize the NBA for a lack of opportunities it provides for white players. Those fans miss my point.

The reality is that the NBA, from the day that David Stern became commissioner in 1984, has been the model for doing things right on the issue of race in professional sports. It is the only major men's professional sports league that has ever had an African-American franchise owner (Robert Johnson of Charlotte) and African-American CEOs or team presidents. Even before Stern took over, the NBA was the first major pro sports league to make an African-American a head coach (Bill Russell in 1966) and the first to make an African-American a general manager (Wayne Embry in 1971 in Milwaukee). Embry also became pro sports' first African-American team president in 1994 with Cleveland.

We correctly laud the progress made by the NFL with its recent head coaching hires. However, 40 percent of the head coaches in the NBA are African-American, and that's more than double the percentage of any other league. At the end of last season, the New York Giants hired Jerry Reese, giving the NFL a total of five African-Americans in positions the NFL says are the equivalent to general managers (some teams use titles like VP for player personnel). By contrast, there were eight African-American general managers in the NBA when the regular season ended last month.

Many celebrate the fact that two African-American head coaches faced each other in the 2007 Super Bowl -- the Colts' Tony Dungy and the Bears' Lovie Smith. That happened in the NBA's counterpart to the Super Bowl -- the NBA Finals -- all the way back in 1975 when K.C. Jones and the Washington Bullets met Al Attles and the San Francisco Warriors for the league championship. To date, four African-American head coaches have won NBA titles: Attles, Jones, Russell and Lenny Wilkens. Through the end of this season, the league has had 53 African-American head coaches. Major League Baseball is a distant second with a history that includes 25 managers of color, including African-Americans and Latinos.

So in that big-picture context, the possibility of an officiating bias based on race seems less consequential. Thirty-six percent of the referees in the NBA this season were either Latino or African-American, which puts the NBA far ahead of any other sport in that area. Is it possible that white referees make more calls against African-American players? Wolfers says it is more than a possibility. If he is right, his study tells us as much about society as it does about the NBA because there are so many other areas where this sort of "taste-based discrimination" happens, such as corporate executives making hiring and promotion decisions, or police officers, prosecutors and judges making decisions in which preconceived images may play a role in their "calls."

Such calls in the court have far more serious consequences than calls on the court.

Another small-picture issue in the NBA these days is the perception that an increase in the number of international players is bringing up the total of white players in the league. This year, international players made up 19 percent of the league's rosters, the same percentage they have held the last three seasons. But also it should be pointed out that of the 81 international players, 30 are players of color.

And yet another small-picture flash point about race and the NBA came in 2005 when the league drew some criticism over its dress code. I believed that policy was a statement about the image the NBA wanted to project, and should not have been interpreted as an anti-hip-hop, anti-African-American measure. The league wasn't asking players to dress differently in their everyday lives, but only when they went to work, where we are all expected to dress appropriately. I believe the dress code helps the league in an era when some fans might have difficulty identifying with NBA players because of their income, glamour and seeming ability to live whatever life they choose.

Maybe those issues -- refs' calls, the number of international players and the dress code -- might resonate more if the NBA didn't have such an overall leadership role in matters of race.

So as we look around at what Major League Baseball and the NFL and other sports are doing to better their opportunities for people of color in front offices and on the field, we need to remember that the NBA has been the industry leader and a great model for nearly two decades. Stern once articulated this goal to me: "When an African-American coach is hired and, more importantly, when a team fires an African-American, that nobody will notice." It is clear the NBA has reached that stage.

Not only has the NBA increased its numbers, but it has also tried to change attitudes through its diversity management training. (It was the first league to undertake that sort of program, back in 1997.) That has helped counter the perception that women and people of color in the NBA offices were hired simply to fill a quota rather than to help an organization be better and stronger.

The NBA surely isn't perfect, and questions involving the racial issue will be raised from time to time. Some will be justifiable; some won't. But, in the end, we should remember that the NBA is the best we have as a model in sport.

That's why the NBA got the first ever A+ for racial hiring practices in the 2006-07 NBA Racial and Gender Report Card issued Wednesday. The league set all-time records for people of color in the positions of league office professionals, team vice presidents and assistant coaches, as well as senior administrative and team professional positions.

So please, as you examine other smaller-focus items on race, keep the big picture in mind.

We might finally be approaching the end of the story about Don Imus and the obscene, vulgar, racist and sexist language he used on the air to describe the women's basketball team at Rutgers University. It's fitting that Imus was removed from both MSNBC and CBS, and it's good that coach C. Vivian Stringer's team is being recognized as a classy, intelligent group of outstanding student-athletes.

Another good might have come out of this, too, in that it seems to have helped us open a more far-ranging discussion about the lyrics of hip-hop music, which sometimes denigrate and objectify women. Oprah devoted two hours to the topic. For a week now, CNN has been airing comments comparing rap lyrics with what Imus said. Op-ed pages in newspapers around the country have carried many commentaries. There have been debates on the issue in our classrooms in the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program at the University of Central Florida, and I imagine that is happening on many other campuses as well.

Some hip-hop artists create music that is eloquent and empowering. Some manage that even while they also use lyrics that might be objectionable. Ludacris, for example, has recorded a touching, positive song called "Runaway Love" that deals with the lost children of troubled parents, but also lists among his credits a song called "Hoes in My Room." And it should also be pointed out that lyrics in other popular musical genres don't always point listeners in directions that society in general might deem productive.

But for years, most commentators have been afraid to touch the language in the lyrics, including the use of words such as "hos," in hip-hop music, videos and contemporary film. Now, thanks to Imus, we can't avoid the discussion any longer. The debate is wide-open for the first time since hip-hop became popular nearly 25 years ago and adds poignancy to Byron Hurt's film, "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhythms." That film courageously exposes the imagery and language used about women that makes them really look like "hos." One scene in the film shows a man swiping his credit card through a nearly naked woman's rear end. One woman interviewed in the film told Hurt, "It is true that these women appear not to resist it. What I would hope, however, is that these women understand the extent to which these women are participating in a culture which commodifies women sexually." Hurt is trying to eliminate the racial and sexual images that have long perpetuated such stereotypes in our society.

If the discussion on hip-hop leads to changes in those lyrics and images, then it will follow in the tradition of other sports stories that have helped to open discussions about controversial subjects and issues in our society.

One example: In the early 1970s, America was among a handful of countries that still had economic, cultural and sports contacts with South Africa. An international boycott of sport in that nation had long since taken apartheid South Africa out of the Olympic Games and kept its contacts with most countries around the globe to a minimum regarding other individual sports.

Because the United States had full diplomatic, economic, cultural and sporting relations with South Africa, the apartheid government often was portrayed in the U.S. media as pro-American, democratic, Christian and anti-communist. Officially, the U.S. government did nothing to try to stop those sports contacts. I was the national chairperson of a group that led the grassroots U.S. boycott for more than 20 years. When we started, the media rarely reported about the realities of apartheid, which strangled the economic, social and political lives for the 81 percent of South Africans who were people of color. Partly because we pushed to get stories about the boycott onto the nation's sports pages, more people became aware of the realities of life in South Africa.

I was blessed to be one of the guests Nelson Mandela invited to his inauguration in 1994. After the inauguration, he left Pretoria, ignoring a number of diplomatic parties being held in his honor. Instead, he flew to Johannesburg to watch a Zambia-South Africa soccer match. I sat with him in his box and asked, "President Mandela, with all of the people who wanted you at all the diplomatic parties in Pretoria, why did you come here?"

His response was simple.

"I wanted to be here at this sports event," he said, "so my people know that I recognize that democracy came to South Africa and I became its president much more quickly as a result of the sports boycott of South Africa and the way that it spread the news around the globe about the horrors of apartheid. Now we are free."

In that case, sports stories had a positive impact on society.

In 1986, many Americans considered cocaine to be a "recreational" drug, a regular part of the culture in many parts of the country. But on the night of the NBA draft, as he celebrated his future with the Boston Celtics, Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. That was part of the impetus for the most intense anti-drug campaign in the history of American public health.

Until Pete Rose was thrown out of baseball, many people knew little about gambling in America. The Rose story helped increase the awareness of the nearly 8 million Americans who, according to the Harvard Medical School's Division on Addictions, suffer from serious gambling problems that affect their families, careers and financial well-being.

When Arthur Ashe contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion and Magic Johnson contracted HIV from a heterosexual encounter, the news enabled government health officials to mount a huge campaign to educate the public that AIDS and HIV affect more than gay men and intravenous drug users.

Finally, as the O.J. Simpson story broke in 1994, the subject of domestic violence came to the attention of the public in an unprecedented way. Two years earlier, organizations for which I worked (Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society and the National Consortium for Academics and Sport) had started a program called Mentors in Violence Prevention to help confront what we knew to be an epidemic in our society of men's violence against women. The program had been created to go to colleges to train people to be active bystanders in preventing domestic violence on campus and in society at large.

In the program's early stages, we found that few people were welcoming us on their campus because there was a fear that our presence would somehow be an admission that such problems existed. But in the wake of the O.J. case, the requests poured in. Partly as a result of the media coverage, our MVP Program has gone to more than 150 campuses in the past 12 years and is used by the U.S. Marine Corps to train noncommissioned officers worldwide. It has been adopted by the entire Southeastern Conference.

Now, many people across the country outside the hip-hop world are paying attention to that music genre's lyrics. Imus' choice of words ("nappy-headed hos") contained both racial and sexual slander against the women on the Rutgers team. I think his targeting those 10 smart, talented and articulate student-athletes had much to do with the strong reaction that ended with his dismissal. Imus said in his defense that he picked the phrase up from the culture of hip-hop and thus thought it was acceptable.

Imus got fired. But what should happen to Snoop Dogg and other rappers who use such offensive language? Here is a sample of his lyrics, some of which we have to edit to be able to use on ESPN.com to make a point:

Two in the mornin and the partys still jumpin
Cause my momma aint home
I got b------ in the living room gettin it on
And, they aint leavin til six in the mornin (six in the mornin)
So what you wanna do, s---
I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too
So turn off the lights and close the doors
But (but what) we dont love them hos, yeah!
So we gonna smoke a ounce to this
Gs up, hos down, while you motherf------ bounce to this

Snoop Dogg told MTV that rappers aim their lyrics at "hos in the hood," not at collegiate athletes. Explanations such as that might have gotten Snoop off the hook at some point, but they aren't holding up so well in the wake of the Imus story. It is as if Snoop is saying the Rutgers women are "good girls who have made it to college" but isn't changing his tune about the majority of African-American girls who will not gain entrance into college and will remain in the hood as "hos." It's similar to white people saying that someone is an "exception" rather than what they really think of when they think of black people. Shock jock hosts such as Imus and rappers such as Snoop Dogg and Ludacris are using racist, sexist stereotypes and making them out to be hip cultural perspectives.

Finally now, we are addressing the ways in which an ignorant white man, as well as rap singers, use these images in their language, their lyrics and their videos. Another negative sports story might have helped us better address what we needed to confront a long time ago.

I am a blessed man. I was asked to write the autobiography of coach Eddie Robinson with coach Rob in 1996. I did not know him personally before that, but enthusiastically agreed because of the incredibly high regard in which I held him after following his legendary career. Eddie Robinson was a rare gift to humanity.

We called it the autobiography, "Never Before, Never Again," because there never was nor will be another man like coach Robinson.

Ten years ago this month, I flew to Monroe, La., and drove to Ruston right outside of Grambling to meet Coach for the first time. In my phone call setting up the meeting, Coach told me, "No one goes to Grambling unless they plan to go there." I understood what he meant when I arrived at the Holiday Inn in Ruston deep in the Louisiana countryside.

It was the night Major League Baseball gave its tribute to Jackie Robinson on the 50th anniversary of his breaking baseball's color barrier. We watched the TV in the hotel lobby, then went to my room to start the interviews. At 2:30 a.m., the 78-year-old coach was still going strong but I suggested we pick it up again the next day.

I always will remember calling my wife at that late hour and telling her she would meet someone so much like my father, Joe Lapchick. My dad was a legendary basketball coach. He died before I met my wife. Not only did she get the chance with Coach, we also became good friends with Coach's wife, Doris, who reminded us so much of my mom. Thus began 10 years of treasured family friendships.

AP Photo/Dave Martin

Grambling State football coach Eddie Robinson was a mentor, role model, father and counselor to his players.

In the course of the next year, coach Robinson told me more than 50 stories about his amazing life. We decided to stop the interviews and write the book, which was published in 1999. I was in touch with Coach and Doris every couple of weeks since the publication. Before the Alzheimer's started to wear on him, Coach told me another 20 or more stories worth including in a book.

I did nearly 100 hours of interviews on the phone. I took notes and taped his words for three hours at a time. My wife, Ann, is not a big sports fan but she often sat on the floor in the home office listening to Coach talk, mesmerized by his wisdom and philosophy. He talked around four themes.

The first was his love for Doris. They always held hands, even after nearly seven decades of marriage. He wanted his players to see a happy home so it could be envisioned as the center of their future lives. This was a real-life love affair.

During the interviews, Coach often said, "Listen, Rich, I have to go now to have lunch with Doris," or, "It's time for dinner with Doris." At first I thought he might just be tired from hours of talking to me, but then we would pick it up at 10 p.m. and go until 1 a.m. For years I believed I didn't know any man who loved his wife as much as I did. I might have met him that first night with Coach.

The second theme was the role he played in American race relations. Never a public crusader for civil rights, Coach courageously challenged racism in his own way by proving that a black man could be a great football coach and, simultaneously, build the tenacity and determination of those in his charge as he led adolescents into manhood. I think of coach Robinson as every bit the barriers breaker that Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali were.

Coach said in "Never Before, Never Again" that in looking back at the issue of race, "We made extraordinary statements to break stereotypes: … Grambling won 17 SWAC championships and nine National Black Championships. The Howard Cosell documentary on Grambling in 1968 had black and white sports fans calling me a 'great football coach.' As we traveled across the South, we tried to use Grambling green (dollars) to quietly integrate hotels and restaurants. None of my players or coaches were seen at demonstrations in the 1960s. We made our own. The civil rights movement was helping to change the laws. Our goal was to help to change attitudes."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson told me, "Eddie Robinson has always been a hero in my eyes. Without question, he is an ambassador for our people, not only African-Americans, but all Americans. That's why I have such respect for coach Robinson."

The third theme was Eddie Robinson, the coach. His career at Grambling State is all over the news today. It lasted through 11 presidents and three wars. Grambling State was home to Coach and his wife for more than 65 years. They were married that long and he coached for 56 years -- all at the same institution. In spite of having more wins than any other coach, sending more than 300 players to NFL camps, having a graduation rate of 80 percent when football graduation rates were around 50 percent, and never having a player get in trouble with the law until his 56th year of coaching, Robinson was never even offered an interview for a Division I-A university head coaching job. I do not think he ever would have left Grambling State, but he told me he would have liked to have been asked.

When he retired in November 1997, too many people in America stood up and took note for the first time of the winningest coach in the history of college football. He was very likely the best known coach in America in the African-American community and was surely the most beloved. However, many of society's racial barriers kept Robinson a secret from most of white America outside of the world of sports. Robinson, who began his career in a segregated society, helped football transcend race in the America he loved and treasured. I co-authored his autobiography in the hopes it would help Americans of every color discover this great son of America. Seeing the morning news 12 hours after his passing filled with tributes made me smile through my sadness. America does know Eddie Robinson.

That was the fourth theme: Eddie Robinson was a proud American. That night in the Holiday Inn, there was a table filled with six older white men about Coach's age. They kept coming by us, shaking his hand, hugging him, asking how Doris was. I could have believed that these same men were raised in a racist, segregated South which Ruston, La., was surely part of in their younger days. But Robinson had regularly walked that part of the earth and forced them to see a great American who happened to have black skin. He broke big barriers and smashed stereotypes along the way.

Coach Robinson told me he had never been called "an American" until he took Grambling State to play in Japan in 1976. He confronted segregation in his life. But Eddie and Doris Robinson would stand still for the national anthem, their eyes fixed on our flag. Often you would see tears in his eyes when the singer hit "the land of the free." This was a great American leader who happened to be a coach and happened to be African-American. He was proud of his country and always tried to make it better.

He was so humble. How often do we hear coaches and players seem ready to extol their own virtues? I had to drag game stories out of him because he wanted to talk about his players and fellow coaches as men. Getting him to talk about himself was never easy, which made writing his autobiography with him a challenge. But it was pure joy for me to get to know Coach and Doris.

After achieving one of sports' most incredible records with his 400th win in 1995, Coach said, "I wish I could cut up all of these victories into 400 pieces and give them to all the players and assistant coaches I have had. They are the ones who truly deserve the credit." Straight from his heart.

Coach told me, "They said I would never be able to reach my third-grade dream of coaching football. I saw a coach then, he looked so good and his boys seemed to worship him. The fact that he was their hero was written all over their faces. That was the life I wanted. Seventy years later I ended a 56-year ride as a college head coach!"

Coach has proved the power of an individual to make a huge difference in the lives of young people. He tried to prepare a new generation of coaches to help today's youth because he knew life had changed dramatically in America. Coach said to me, "I know life isn't easy for young people now. They face all these challenges that my generation didn't have. When I was growing up in Jackson and Baton Rouge, children weren't killing each other; crack didn't exist; I never heard of steroids; most families had a mother and father. Many of today's student-athletes were raised in poverty and despair. They know that some white people will decide who they are just because of what they look like. Yes, indeed, life is hard today."

That is why he assumed the role of mentor, role model, father and counselor to his student-athletes, on and off the field. Grown men who are leaders across our nation are calling each other remembering this man who helped change lives. I am lucky to be one of them, a better man for having known coach Eddie Robinson.

Coach ended the book with, "If I had the chance, I would call for an instant replay of my entire life -- in slow motion -- so I could savor every second as I continue to work on the next stage of my life. If I could have created a game plan for my own life, I'd want to be born in America to my same parents, marry Doris, go to work for Grambling and have Eddie and Lillian as our children, their children as our grandchildren, and their children as our great grandchildren. I have a great life."

Coach Robinson had a great life. He loved his God and the next stage will be with Him. May God bless you, Coach.

Here are my winners in the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments.

Holy Cross.

And Holy Cross.

Yes, I understand that no one is predicting the Cross to go deep in either tournament. The Crusaders men's team plays fourth-seeded Southern Illinois in the first round, while the Holy Cross women meet national powerhouse Duke. But I'm not talking about the Crusaders' wins and losses on the court. I'm talking about their academic successes.

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida has just published "Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2007 NCAA Men's and Women's Division I Basketball Tournament Teams." I authored the study along with Marina Bustamante, a graduate assistant in the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program at UCF. We looked at the freshman classes that entered school in the period from 1996-99, and included players who transfer, who enter from junior colleges and who graduate late.

We found a great deal of good news about both the men's and women's teams that made the tournaments, none of it better than the 100 percent graduation rates for both the men and women playing at Holy Cross.

If I could give a combined NCAA men's and women's basketball title for academics, it'd go to the Crusaders.

Unfortunately, the brackets we're all poring over this week don't attach graduation rates along with the team names. For the next few weeks, we'll hear plenty about spectacular freshmen, dream breakers and move makers. But we won't hear much about grade point averages and we won't be told much about areas of study.

Women's teams should have been trumpeting their academic successes for years, because they've had great records in that area. The men, on the other hand, ought to be embarrassed by their past graduation rates. Historically, the NCAA has had no ability to penalize schools for failing to fulfill their missions to educate their student-athletes, a failure that affects African-American players in a much greater ratio than it does their white teammates.

This year's study shows some encouraging signs. The graduation success rates, along with the Academic Progress Rates (APR), have improved. We are doing so well that it's time to raise the goal higher than the 50 percent level that has been in place previously.

Let's look at the No. 1 seeds, the basketball powerhouses in both the men's and women's tournaments. Our study shows that the Florida men and the Tennessee women, both from the SEC, graduated 100 percent of their student-athletes. The grad rates for both the Duke women and the UConn women were 91 percent. North Carolina's teams are seeded No. 1 in both tournaments: the men's team graduated 70 percent of its players, while the women's grad rate was 56 percent. The two worst grad rates among the eight top seeds were for the Ohio State men (38 percent) and the Kansas men (40 percent).

However, graduation rates are an indication of teams' academic performances in the past. The NCAA's APR is designed to measure current student-athlete's academic success as well as improve graduation rates by providing sanctions in the form of lost scholarships when teams fail to meet the NCAA standard for academic performance. Using that barometer, all eight No. 1 seeds have rates that predict at least a 50 percent graduation rate for their current players. Among the men, Kansas and North Carolina are far above the raw score that predicts a 50 percent rate.

That's true for all the top-seeded women's teams, too.

That news is pretty good.

However, we cannot lose sight of the gap between the academic successes of African-Americans and whites on Division I basketball teams in the tournament. Obviously, the goal is to graduate African-Americans and whites at the same rate, and our study shows that NCAA schools are far from reaching it.

The graduation rates for African-American student-athletes on nearly 60 percent of the men's teams and 94 percent of the women's teams in the tournament are above 50 percent. But a persistent gap between African-American and white basketball student-athletes still exists when it comes to getting a degree, and that gap is far more severe among men's players.

One hundred percent of the women's teams and 95 percent of the men's teams in the tournaments graduated at least half of their white basketball student-athletes. By contrast, 93 percent of the women's teams and only 54 percent of the men's teams graduated at least half of their African-American basketball student-athletes. That's a whopping gap of 41 percentage points for the men.

Race, obviously, is a continuing academic issue, especially since 44 percent of Division I female basketball student-athletes and 63 percent of Division I male basketball student-athletes are African-American.

In an e-mail exchange with NCAA President Myles Brand this week, he wrote, "I concur with you that the data point to overall improvement, and I also concur that we continue to have a problem in the grad rates of African-American males, both those who play basketball and those who are in the general student body.

"While it is true that the basketball players are doing better than the general population, the reasons for the low grad rates of African-American males in the general student body are likely affecting the low grad rates for African-American male basketball players. It will be very difficult to totally resolve the problems with grad rates for African-American basketball players without addressing the broader issues."

Still, there are some remarkable positive highlights to point out in the fields for the tournaments this year, using the NCAA's Graduation Success Rates.

• An impressive 98 percent of the women's and 64 percent of the men's teams graduated at least half of their basketball student-athletes.
• Ninety-seven percent of the women's teams and 52 percent of the men's teams graduated at least 60 percent of their players.
• Eighty-three percent of the women's teams graduated at least 70 percent. A respectable 37.5 percent of the men's teams did the same.

This is why I say we can raise our goals above the 50 percent expectation. Brand deserves a lot of credit here for the reforms he proposed and the NCAA approved in 2004. The key is the APR. I believe the APR reforms are more important than any previous attempt to keep the "student" in "student-athlete." When I visit campuses today, I am told straight up that schools are only recruiting athletes who have a good chance to graduate because coaches don't want to lose scholarships. (Of course, shouldn't they always have recruited only those players who have a chance to graduate?)

So who, other than Holy Cross, are the top teams, academically, in the NCAA tournaments this year? In the men's field, Florida, Holy Cross and Weber State graduated 100 percent of their players. In the women's tournament, eight schools (Belmont, Holy Cross, Marquette, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin-Green Bay) had a 100 percent graduation rate.

Those are encouraging indications that Brand has made some breakthrough achievements as the head of the NCAA. I look forward to seeing how he continues to address the issue -- not only within athletic departments but at the university president level and across campuses as a whole -- of making students of color more welcome. I hope all presidents, in turn, work within their communities to improve school systems, which are often underfunded and underequipped.

In 1955, three black undergraduate students sued for and won the right to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Frasier v. the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina. The decision applied to the entire Consolidated University of North Carolina school system and meant that African-Americans now had the legal right to attend universities previously closed to them.

That gave Irwin Holmes the right to go to North Carolina State University; and in 1956, he exercised it. The legal right, however, didn't make for an easy passage for teenagers confronted by racist acts and surrounded by symbols of segregation.

Holmes graduated third in his Durham, NC, Hillside High School class and enrolled at NC State as an electrical engineering major. As part of a required physical education course, every student had to take a physical test. The students were divided into three skill levels, with the top level reserved for athletes. The vertical jump and the standing broad jump were two of the standards used to determine the level at which students would be placed, and Holmes had the highest scores for both. That impressed the track coach, who offered him a spot on the track team to run the quarter-mile.

N.C. State

When Irwin Holmes joined the tennis team in 1956, he became N.C. State's first African-American athlete.

However, Holmes, who had been ranked as high as the No. 2 African-American tennis player in the country in high school, joined the tennis team, instead, becoming NC State's first African-American athlete. Later that year, he integrated the track team, too, but competed in that sport for only one semester so he could play tennis exclusively. He was the tennis team's co-captain in his senior year.

The times back then bred feelings of inferiority in many African-Americans, including Holmes. In an interview with ESPN.com, he said his mother tried her best to convince him he was as good as anybody, but there were simply too many signs around him telling him otherwise. Holmes said he didn't have a conversation with a white peer until his senior year in high school, and that one lasted less than five minutes. There were "colored only" signs at almost every public facility, segregating the water fountains, waiting rooms and building entrances. It had a not-so-subtle way of undermining Holmes' confidence.

"You had to feel inferior to some degree," Holmes said. "The old South was two civilizations living in the same place. Back in my head somewhere, I wasn't sure I was able to compete [academically] until I met so many dumb people. Brains have nothing to do with race. The dumb white people were just as dumb as the dumb black people."

Tennis, too, was overwhelmingly segregated during the time Holmes competed. African-Americans could only compete in tournaments sponsored by the American Tennis Association, the association for African-American tennis players. At one point in his career, Holmes finished as the runner-up at a national ATA tournament, which made him eligible for a qualifier position at the U.S. Amateurs, now known as the U.S. Open. He declined that opportunity because he believed his skills weren't as developed as those of other players. He greatly admires Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe for pioneering the integration of such all-white tournaments.

In spite of many supportive white students, including his teammates, Holmes said it was lonely on campus. In his four years at NC State, he didn't have another African-American student in his class and he didn't compete against another African-American tennis player.

His teammates did their best to stop the segregated South from crushing him. Once, on a drive back from a competition against North Carolina at Chapel Hill in which Holmes had been the only NC State player to win a match, the team stopped to eat at a highway diner. After the team waited longer than expected for its orders, the restaurant manager approached the head coach and said he wouldn't serve the team unless Holmes ate outside. When the coach told the players, they immediately left with the burgers cooking on the grill.

In Holmes' very first class as a freshman, he said a professor refused to teach an African-American student and forced the university to find someone else for the class.

Holmes recalled another professor who publicly criticized him for his grades, although he said his marks had been excellent. That changed after a white student stood up to the professor for him. At the end of the year, when each student had the option to drop one grade, Holmes decided to write completely off-topic on his final quiz. He received an A. He knew then that the professor had not bothered to read his work the entire semester.

Holmes said his dorm was so small that it had to combine with another hall to field a team for the intramural touch football league on campus. He and his roommate, an all-state football player, were the only two African-American players on the combined dorm team. In their first game, the team lost; neither Holmes nor his roommate entered the game. Someone who was unhappy with the situation then went to the intramural office, Holmes said, and saw to it that the schedule was redone and the team was split into two, forcing Holmes' dorm to seek out nonathletes to have enough players for competitions.

Holmes said the series of events made his teammates play harder, and they finished second overall in intramurals that year.

"The racism riled up not only the blacks in the dorm, but also the whites," Holmes said. "Before then, most of the guys were friendly when they ran into you, but they were not actively involved until they got riled up."

Holmes said he was knocked down hard in one game, and the referees didn't call a penalty. Two of his teammates told him they would take care of it themselves. After the next play, the man who had hit Holmes was carried off the field with a broken leg. It was clear his teammates would defend Holmes.

In 1960, Holmes became the first African-American student to receive an undergraduate degree from NC State. He then earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Drexel University and worked for IBM from 1969 to 1988. Holmes is currently semiretired while serving as chief financial officer for his wife's staffing company.

In the spring of 2006, Holmes was invited back to campus to speak to a group of about 300 African-American students who were being recognized for academic achievement. Holmes told them this: "Integrating the schools -- the classroom -- was far more significant than integrating the playing fields."

Holmes did both. That same year, the NC State Alumni Association acknowledged his contributions of 50 years earlier when it named a room in the alumni building after him.

A circle had been closed. Holmes arrived at North Carolina State as the first African-American student and returned to speak to a large gathering of academically gifted African-American students. When he walked the campus as a student, all the roads and buildings were named after white people. Now, there is a room named after him.

We surely have a long way to go on the issue of race in America, but Irwin Holmes is a measure of how far we have come.

Jerry Gaines has been a heavy lifter all his life, always willing to take on the big challenges, and he's never made decisions lightly. So when he decided to leave segregated Crestwood High in Virginia Beach, Va., to compete in track at predominantly white Churchland High in Portsmouth, Va., during the 1966-67 school year, Gaines fully considered the ramifications. He enrolled at an integrated school where his athletic prowess could be showcased, but he carried with him the heavy burden of leaving his friends behind. That burden stayed with him for decades.

The choice paid off. While his former classmates at Crestwood stayed shackled by segregation's cruel restrictions on opportunities for African-Americans, Gaines became the first African-American scholarship athlete in the history of Virginia Tech.

He never forgot the ones he left behind. Gaines, who said he was "a dime a dozen" athlete at Crestwood, became a star athlete in his new integrated world. But he knew there were many more talented athletes at Crestwood who didn't get the chance for a better educational opportunity, which was the basis of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) that ruled separate schools were inherently unequal and opened the doors to the integration of America's schools. For years, Gaines worried that his former classmates and teammates considered him a traitor to his race for leaving them behind.

Courtesty of Virginia Tech

Gaines sprinted into Virginia Tech's history books back in the late '60s.

In the fall of 1967, Gaines didn't know what to expect at Virginia Tech. Track coach Martin Pushkin tried to make him feel as comfortable as possible, and Gaines trusted the other Hokies athletes he'd met there while he was being recruited. Nonetheless, Gaines told ESPN.com, "It was never a thing of pure comfort. There were a whole lot of factors I had to balance. I didn't have any intention of going to Tech to be anyone's pioneer, at least not initially."

He quickly established a routine. He attended classes, went to practice, ate a meal and then either studied or rested. Gaines did not feel as welcome in the classroom as he was on the track. He felt the stares of some of the white students. There were professors who seemed to show disdain for Gaines as a student and were not timid about expressing it.

"African-American students were so few and far in between that you rarely ran into them," Gaines said. "There were the usual stares. And in 90 percent of classes, I was the only black face in there."

One English professor made a number of comments on Gaines' papers that he thought were inappropriate. By then, Gaines had befriended James Jarrett Owens, another English professor who had been a basketball player at Tech. Owens, who became a huge influence on Gaines, assured him that his papers were well-written.

Once, a student in one of the Tech dorms threw an egg that splattered on Gaines' shoes and pants as he walked across campus in his ROTC uniform. The student tried to duck away, but Gaines had seen him. He paid him a visit inside the dorm to let him know he didn't appreciate having egg on his uniform. Later, Gaines regretted that reaction.

"Things like that taught me that you don't need to go there," he said. "I wasn't the one with the problem. They were."

He worked hard both in the classroom and on the track. In his freshman year, he was the collegiate state champion in the long jump. When he qualified for the NCAA Indoor National Championships, Pushkin asked the athletic director to provide Gaines with new sweats since he would be representing the school at nationals.

The AD offered him one of the basketball team's sweat suits. Gaines chose to wear his old sweats instead, refusing to acknowledge an offer he saw as another slight.

"It was motivation to get good," Gaines said. "It was not a nice gesture, but it was part of what you had to deal with. It was character-building stuff, in the long run. It was hard work; but during those years when we grew up, it was all we knew. You could always work a little harder, no matter how talented."

Gaines still holds the Virginia Tech record for the outdoor long jump, the oldest track-and-field record in the Tech books, dating back to 1971. He also holds the record for the 120-yard hurdles and is fourth all-time in the indoor long jump.

Gaines humbly says his records might not still be standing if it weren't for the fact that Tech had only an indoor facility for a time, which kept many top track athletes from attending the school.

When his eligibility in track was up and he'd earned his degree in Spanish, Gaines received one more year of eligibility to play football. He had wanted to play football while he was running track, but Pushkin wouldn't allow it because he recognized the dangers Gaines would face on the football field.

Gaines said that Pushkin told him, "I have your legs tuned like fine Stradivarius violins. I'm not going to let them destroy my work."

Courtesy of Virginia Tech

Gaines, shown here during his Virginia Tech days, is trying to help refugees in Africa.

Gaines realized Pushkin was referring to people who wanted to deliberately hurt him on the football field, possibly including his own teammates. And in fact, some players did attempt to take him out with cheap shots to the legs, but Gaines proved to be an effective defensive back and punt returner.

He entered the Army as a second lieutenant. After his tour in the Army, Gaines was hired as a Spanish teacher in 1972 at Western Branch High School in Chesapeake, Va., where he also coached football, track and cross country. Gaines took the school's cross country team to eight straight district titles and three regional championships. In 1987, he was named high school coach of the year by the Portsmouth Sports Club; and in 1990, he was selected as the Teacher of the Year in Chesapeake.

Now, every year during the holidays, cards arrive from different parts of the world from former students wishing him the best.

"Those are just reminders that, yes, you did make a difference," Gaines said about the cards. "I did not train to be a teacher. But there are certain characteristics that make for good teachers. You have to have a heart for it. You have to have a passion for kids. It's a matter of creating what I think is the most important thing in life, which is building relationships."

In 1996, he moved to Great Bridge High School in Chesapeake to become an assistant principal. He is still working there.

And he never forgot the students he felt left behind at Crestwood High. He went to the school's 25th reunion in 1992 with some trepidation, unsure of the reception he would receive. He worried his old classmates might view him as a traitor who had left his past behind and sold out for the greener pastures at Churchland High School.

It was a great relief, he says, to discover he had the backing of his old schoolmates, even though it took him 25 years to find it out.

Gaines has always believed the events in his life were laid out for him by a greater power. A humble man, he gives credit for any successes to others and to that heavenly power. While he was still searching for his role in life, he got a sudden jolt with the birth of his first daughter in 1981, and his vision went global. Now, Gaines hopes to work with a friend to construct shelters for refugees in Africa. He questions how a continent rich with resources such as gold, oil and diamonds can have so many countries in dire need of the basic necessities.

"I would like to expand my horizons as far as helping people," Gaines said. He has applied to government authorities in both America and Africa to gain clearance.

The metaphorical shackles of a segregated society that might have held Gaines back if he had remained at Crestwood were painful enough, but he knows his ancestors somewhere in Africa wore real shackles on their way to America.

Gaines, a man who seized opportunity and became a servant for children in an integrated America, is ready to close the human circle and work to help those in need in Africa.

Right in the middle of Black History Month we found a sports event making history. The fact that the 2007 Super Bowl Sunday marked the first time two African-American head coaches led their teams against each other in a Super Bowl was widely discussed and extensively covered in the media. Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy, the two coaches, were so gracious and humble that their frequent references to their families and their faith seemed to further endear them to the nation.

But Black History Month will end in a matter of days and then what? Will we forget? Most were surprised when I mentioned that having two coaches of color in the NBA finals had only happened once and that it had never happened in a World Series, a men’s or women’s national championship, or in any BCS bowl game. Not one person I spoke to remembered which coaches (Al Attles’ Golden State team defeated KC Jones’ Washington Bullets in a four-game sweep) or when (the 1975 finals) the two African-American NBA coaches faced each other. Not many could name all the other coaches of color whose teams won the NBA championship (Attles, Bill Russell, Lenny Wilkens and KC Jones), the World Series (Lou Pinniella, Cito Gastin and Ozzie Guillen). Or the three African- American coaches (John Thompson, Nolan Richardson and Tubby Smith) who won the men’s Division I championship.

So why was it important if we eventually lose count of the facts including the who, when and how? Let’s take the NBA to see exactly why. Before Attles and KC Jones faced off, there had been five African-American coaches in the history of the league. After the collision of their teams, there have been 46 more. We no longer notice when an African-American has been hired or fired in the NBA. The same is true in college basketball. There had only been a few African-American head coaches in Division I basketball before John Thompson’s Georgetown team won the Big Dance. As we head toward March Madness in 2007, African-Americans now hold more than 25 percent of the Division I positions. Like the NBA, we rarely notice when an African-American is hired or fired. Unlike the past, both the NBA and college basketball feature fired African- American coaches getting rehired elsewhere. That was rare before championships were carved out.

OK, so we might not remember the specific facts but a championship has mattered in the past. What lessons then emanate from this Super Bowl for college sport? Before the game, the NCAA had all but dropped the idea of a Rooney Rule for colleges. Will it be reconsidered now? The Black Coaches Association has been threatening Title VII law suits against colleges that Executive Director Floyd Keith hoped would follow the successes of Title IX lawsuits for women when colleges finally began to more effectively comply after a series of successful Title IX suits in the courts.

I believe who coached in the Super Bowl and how they carried themselves will become more important than threatened law suits in the NFL or the Rooney Rule. However, both played an important part in getting us to the point where there were seven African-American head coaches in the 2006 NFL season. Johnnie Cochran and Cyrus Mehri, two attorneys, threatened to sue the NFL in 2002 leading to the adoption of the Rooney Rule which mandated that African-Americans be included in the interview process for every head coaching position. The NFL went from two to seven African-American head coaches in a short period of time. Now Tony Dungy stands as a humble Super Bowl Championship coach.

The Super Bowl has forced leaders to look at college football which has the worst record for hiring practices for head coaches in any pro or college sport. Next year there will be seven coaches of color out of 119 at the Division IA level, less than there was a decade before!

However, we do have a visionary leader on the issue in Dr. Myles Brand, the NCAA President. His role at the top has been unique for an NCAA leader. Brand has been outspoken on the issue. Moreover, his actions with the creation of the NCAA Office for Diversity and Inclusion, the hiring of Charlotte Westerhaus as vice president for Diversity and Inclusion , the work of a high powered Diversity Leadership Strategic Planning Committee he created, Brand’s support for the Black Coaches Association, and the funds invested by the NCAA targeted for this issue, are testaments to Dr. Brand’s desire for meaningful change. I am hopeful that as the work of the Strategic Planning Committee is implemented that bigger changes will come soon. However, for college football it cannot come soon enough.

Like the NFL five years ago, law suits contemplated by the BCA are on the horizon. The NFL short-circuited that by adopting the Rooney Rule. The results in the NFL are Black History Month worthy. College sport desperately needs a similar rule. College administrators are trying to avoid it. But surely they do not want law suits. It appears that Congressional hearings on the issue are on the horizon in the next few weeks. I believe that the effects of both will be avoided if colleges adopt the rule and hiring processes become more open. Five years ago the NFL was being even more criticized than the colleges for its poor record of hiring practices for coaches. Now the NFL is being called a model for diversity for corporate America.

The ball is in the air. It is up to the NCAA members to catch it and make a college football moment Black History Month worthy in the future.

No African-American athlete had played for a service academy. No African-American athlete had played in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Activists were literally dying fighting for civil rights in an era that most young people today have no idea about. That is why Black History Month is so important. We put history in the face of young people who make assumptions about entitlements for which others sacrificed.

It is strange how society makes people famous. This story is mainly about Darryl Hill, who most readers will not know. Playing a crucial role in his life and the history made by Hill was a young assistant coach who is now a media megastar with ESPN. Another was a white player for Wake Forest who later made such a warm and dramatic display of his openness on race that a movie was made about his life and death.

Hill made history when he enrolled at the Naval Academy in 1961. He started at halfback on the academy's freshman football team, catching passes from Roger Staubach, but it was not long before Hill realized life in the Navy was not for him. Before he left in 1962, he had a great game against the Maryland freshman team. At that time, Maryland had an assistant coach named Lee Corso who asked Hill to become a Terrapin.

University of Maryland Athletics

Darryl Hill with some of his teammates at Maryland.

Hill had Notre Dame and Penn State on his radar screen but he never thought about playing in the South. Hill told Corso: "You must have forgotten that you're in the ACC." Corso responded: "We've decided you're the guy we'd like to have to break the racial barrier in the ACC. If you don't do it now, it might be another three or four years before it happens again." That was a challenge and a heavy burden on Hill.

Was Hill the right person? He already had been the only African-American football student-athlete at Navy and at his high school. While that experience would be helpful at Maryland, it was not the same because he would have to play opponents in the Deep South. Nonetheless, Hill liked Maryland's wide-open passing game. In 1962, Hill enrolled at Maryland, about to become the ACC's first African-American athlete.

The University of South Carolina and Clemson University vowed not to play against an integrated Terrapin team in their home stadium. Hill didn't like it, but thought he knew why.

"Southern college football at the time was king," he said. "There were no other football teams. In the South, fans were really attached to their teams, fervently so. They worshipped the game of football and the stadiums were their temples. So to have an African-American in their temple, it desecrated it for them."

Like all transfers, Hill sat out the first year, making for a difficult transition on Maryland's campus, where he received a chilly reception. There were only 32 African-American students on the College Park campus. Those 32, along with teammates, became the nucleus of his social life.

His teammates bought into the mission and were helpful in Hill's move to the team. The team refused to stay in hotels that would not accommodate Hill. The hotels where they stayed had to screen his phone calls after some threatened to aim their high-powered rifles at him during the game. The team would not eat in restaurants that would not serve him. Jerry Fishman, a 230-pound middle linebacker, threw his plate of food to the ground when the team was walking out of a diner because it refused to serve Hill.

It all came to a head in his second game, which was in Columbia, S.C., where Maryland was scheduled to play against South Carolina. The game that had been threatened to never be played was taking place. Hill put the Terrapins ahead with a 13-yard touchdown run. By the half, Maryland led 13-0, outraging Gamecocks fans. On the way to the locker room, one of them dumped a drink on Hill. Fishman reached into the stands and smashed the man with his helmet.

"I never had an opposing player be disrespectful," Hill said. "But the fans were nasty. They had racial cheers and they would throw stuff at you. I told Jerry, 'If a riot breaks out, at least you can blend in with the rest of the players.' I would have nowhere to go."

University of Maryland Athletics

Hill broke the color barrier in the ACC.

The chilly reception in College Park turned warm after Maryland (0-4) hosted the undefeated Air Force Falcons. It was 14-14 with seconds remaining. Hill caught a touchdown pass early in the game. As the clock ticked down, Hill caught a pass in the middle of the field, eluded two tacklers and dove from the 5-yard line into the end zone. Maryland students poured onto the field, making Hill one of them for the first time.

"My hometown's attitude changed," Hill said. "They warmed up to me soon after that."

But the road games were rough. In spite of Clemson's threat not to play an integrated team, Hill entered Clemson's stadium on game day.

In those days, African-American fans were sent to watch the game from outside the stadium on a mound of dirt. Before the start of the game, Hill found out that his mother was refused entrance. Palestine Hill had been told not to travel alone if Darryl's father could not leave his business that day to accompany her. Hill's father could not make it to watch his son play, but his mother traveled alone anyway and attempted to go inside the stadium with her ticket. Hill was ready to leave the team and escort his mother safely back home. But Robert C. Edwards, then-Clemson president, invited her to watch the game from his box. Hill's mom was a teacher, and she and President Edwards began a friendship that lasted for years.

During warm-ups before a game at Wake Forest, Hill was the target of racist remarks and taunts. Brian Piccolo, who later played in the NFL and became the subject of the movie "Brian's Song," was Wake Forest's captain. That day Piccolo showed the crowd a preview of his feelings on race which would later be depicted in the movie about his profound friendship with the great African-American running back Gale Sayers. In a remarkable gesture for that era, Piccolo walked over to Hill and apologized for the fans' racist behavior. Piccolo put his arm around Hill and led him toward the Wake Forest fans, silencing their taunts. Hill recognized Piccolo as a hero long before America did.

University of Maryland Athletics

Hill felt that by playing football, he was involved in the civil rights movement.

Hill was a quiet celebrity in the African-American community. Often invited to visit local black colleges, Hill was once approached by Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Carmichael wanted him to get involved in protests. Hill convinced him he was involved in the civil rights movement by playing football. He fought a lonely battle. Not until his senior year was another African-American football player recruited.

Hill broke his foot that year and was never drafted by the NFL. After a brief time with the New York Jets, Hill realized he had no future in pro football and went back to school. Ultimately he earned a master's degree in economics at Southern Illinois University. Having left sports, he was ready to enter the business world.

As an entrepreneur, his vision went global and he set up businesses in Russia and China. Back home, Hill led the Metropolitan Washington Business Resource Center and the Greater Washington Business Center. Then he went to California and started the Pacific Energy Corporation, an energy-management company.

Nearly four decades after he entered Maryland, Hill was approached by football coach Ralph Friedgen, who asked him about returning as an administrator. Hill, now 63, became Maryland's director of major gifts. "It's wonderful," he said. "I'm doing a lot for a university that's done a lot for me."

Maryland gave Hill the chance to be a pioneer for other African-American athletes in the ACC.

Corso, the assistant who helped get him there, is before ESPN audiences on college football Saturdays. Viewers discover Piccolo on late-night reruns of "Brian's Song." Many people know their names.

Yet like other figures who made history, most could not tell you who Hill is. But the seven African-American ACC basketball coaches, Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage, the nearly 58 percent of African-American ACC football players and 67 percent of African-American ACC basketball players should all salute this lesser-known giant who paved the way for them to work and play without having to encounter the in-your-face racism Hill endured.

That day in Richmond, Va., stays with me even 10 years later. A rainbow of thousands of people gathered to pay tribute to Arthur Ashe in the most integrated scene I had ever witnessed. Now, even in a post-Sept. 11 era that prompts us to redefine our use of the word "hero" in sports, Arthur Ashe remains a giant. The people had come to Richmond from across the nation and around the world, knowing that they were saying farewell to a genuine hero.

	In 1975, Ashe became the first black man to win Wimbledon, one of his three Grand Slam titles.

I first got to know Arthur Ashe as an opponent. It was in the early 1970s, and Ashe was competing in South Africa. He was there because he believed he could break down the structure of the apartheid government by proving that he belonged on the tennis court.

I had become the American leader of the coalition of more than 50 groups that had come together to boycott South African sport. Arthur Ashe was our most visible and striking opponent. He was a great African-American tennis player who maintained that the boycott was wrong, and instead believed that competing allowed him to stand as an example of the result of integration, which was his way to bring about change in apartheid South Africa.

We were holding our first protest against South African tennis players at the U.S. Open in 1977. Dick Schaap, the legendary sportscaster, came over to tell me that Arthur Ashe was going to address the small band of protestors that had gathered. I was apprehensive about what he might say. I worried that if he expressed his opposition, some demonstrators might change their mind and leave.

But much to my surprise, Arthur told the crowd that he had been wrong all those years. He didn't realize that until he tried to purchase tickets for some young Africans for a tennis match in South Africa and was told to use an "Africans only" counter. Arthur knew then the boycott was the only way to bring about change. That he chose to join the boycott gave us an enormous boost and allowed us to see his courage and conviction up close.

I had always thought his going to South Africa was based on principle and never doubted that he believed he was doing the right thing. I knew he was a man with such commitment and passion.

	Ashe was arrested in 1992 protesting against U.S. treatment of Haitian refugees.

Recently, I was on "Seasons of Change," an ESPN roundtable discussion that explored the social changes that have affected the African-American athlete in the 40 years since Martin Luther King's March on Washington. Among those on the panel with me were former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, NFL Hall of Famer Bobby Mitchell, Tennessee Titans running back Eddie George and Michael Jordan Brand creator Howard White. Among the focus of the discussion was the question of whether athletes, especially African-American athletes, have a responsibility to speak out on social issues.

As so many bemoaned the inactivity of today's professional athletes, I could not get Arthur Ashe out of my mind. In he were still alive today, he would be speaking out on President Bush's assault on affirmative action, teaching younger athletes to first understand what it has done for women and people of color in our nation. You couldn't listen to Arthur and not think if he challenged your beliefs. The power of changing direction and changing your opinion was part of his life.

He would be very public about the Bush Commission on Athletic Opportunity's interest in softening the teeth of Title IX. He would not want to deny his daughter, Camera, the opportunity to be an athlete if that is what she chose to pursue in life. He would tell us that the Commission on Athletic Opportunity is, in fact, a commission designed to remove athletic opportunity from women under the guise of creating more chances for male student-athletes.

A product of a time when there were tennis courts on which he could not play, he would be up there explaining why Augusta National should not be allowed to exclude women from its club. Arthur knew that sport is such an important symbol in our nation and the world that holding the Master's at this private club would be unacceptable if it came at the exlusion of anyone.

I don't know if Arthur thought he could keep his battle with AIDS a private matter until the end, but he did not not have the chance to make such a decision when USA Today forced his hand by threatening to break the story. Arthur was simply Arthur, seizing the opportunity to help educate people that HIV and AIDS were not restricted to gays and intravenous drugs users. Always educating, always shedding light on the hard issues.

I believe there would be more athletes speaking out today if Arthur was still here to guide them, to urge them to stand up. I'll always remember how my opinion of John McEnroe changed from the one most people had of the star tennis player. It was because of Arthur Ashe.

McEnroe had just agreed to play tennis in Bophutatswana, a South African "homeland" that was used to mislead the world about the nature of apartheid. To play there, he was offered a virtually unheard of $1 million payday. Former U.S. Ambassador Franklin Williams and I met with McEnore's father, and Arthur met with John. Within 24 hours, John McEnroe became the first prominent white athlete to reject the apartheid government's gold.

I appeared on programs with Arthur for 15 years, learning lessons of life from my friend. I knew no person who better understood that all battles for human rights are fought on the singular plain than Arthur Ashe. If I ever became discouraged, I thought of his determination and courage to engage both global and personal battles of heroic proportions. I thought of him as a husband and father who missed his wife, Jeanne, and daughter Camera while he was so often on the road. He was a man unafraid to talk of the gentle love he had for his family.

One of the best days of my life was also a little bit sad. It was May 10, 1994, and I was a guest of Nelson Mandela at his inauguration in Pretoria, South Africa. It was a great day that showed that anything and everything is possible if we work to end oppression and racism. It was also a sad day because Arthur, who had worked so hard for this moment to happen, was not with us. I looked up to the bright African sky, nodding to Arthur because his life and his work had hastened the day that apartheid was smashed and democracy launched under President Mandela.

Athletes today should read about Arthur and realize that their voices could be amplified and their lives inspired by him.

I have been fortunate to receive some wonderful awards. The two I treasure most are the Arthur Ashe Voice of Conscience Award presented to me by Jeanne in 1997 and when I was in inducted into the Commonwealth Nations Sports Hall of Fame in 1999. In its 20th year, the Hall of Fame created an Humanitarian category and I was one of the first three inductees. The others were Nelson Mandela and Arthur Ashe.

Indeed, his legend and inspiration continue unabated.

History sometimes has a strange way of playing out. As we get into Black History Month, much attention is placed, understandably, on events in the civil rights movement and the National Civil Rights Museum located in Memphis, one of the centers of protest activities in the South during the movement. Arguably the saddest event in the civil rights era happened there when Martin Luther King was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in April 1968.

Rev. Jesse Jackson was there as a close aid to Dr. King. Nearly 40 years later, he has been a constant in the civil rights landscape. Last week, Jackson was talking about the historic lack of opportunities for African-Americans to coach in the NFL and in college football. That conversation, of course, was sparked by Sunday night's landmark Super Bowl, which represented a championship game between two teams coached by African-Americans for only the second time in the history of major professional or college sport. (The first was the 1975 NBA Finals when Al Attles' Golden State team defeated K.C. Jones' Washington Bullets.)

Georgia Tech/Collegiate Images/Getty Images

Eddie McAshan, playing here against Tennessee in 1971, still ranks high in Georgia Tech's passing records.

Jackson talks about how we have come to know the rules resulting in equal opportunity for African-American athletes to compete inside the lines on the playing fields. However, he consistently has remarked that the world of sport is not as clear off the field when it comes to hiring coaches, general managers and athletic directors. Like many others, the reverend hopes Sunday's game will help change that.

Jackson was a witness to the era during which African-Americans began to integrate predominantly white institutions; and by the 1970s, he was an activist in many of that drama's major happenings. In 1972, Memphis was back in the national spotlight when it played host to the Liberty Bowl between Georgia Tech and Iowa State, and Jackson was there again.

The NAACP had set up picket lines outside the stadium in protest of Tech first-year coach Bill Fulcher's suspending starting quarterback Eddie McAshan, the first African-American scholarship athlete at Georgia Tech. Up to the suspension, McAshan had passed for 32 career touchdowns, which still leaves him fourth-best in Tech history 34 years later. His five TD passes against Rice in 1972 set a school record, and he is seventh on the Yellow Jackets' career passing list -- all in spite of the fact that he played only three years. He'd helped lead Georgia Tech to a 22-9-1 record and two bowl appearances until Fulcher suspended him.

Before the game that day, five of McAshan's teammates were on the picket line to protest the suspension, but eventually went into the stadium to play wearing black armbands. McAshan sat outside in a white limo, next to Jackson.

The suspension ostensibly grew out of a disagreement over a request by McAshan for four extra tickets for the season-finale game against archrival Georgia so his family could attend. When Fulcher denied the request, McAshan skipped a practice; and in response, Fulcher suspended his quarterback for the next two games. This was an era in which a handful of black athletes protested against actions by what they saw as the white establishment. McAshan believed there was a double standard being applied to African-American athletes.

The suspension ended McAshan's college career. He entered the NFL draft the next spring.

Breaking barriers was part of McAshan's football career. He not only was the first black scholarship athlete at Georgia Tech but also the first African-American quarterback for a major southeastern university. Today, nearly 50 percent of college players and nearly 70 percent of NFL players are African-American, but few of them are aware of what athletes like McAshan went through to pave their way. He was the first African-American to play quarterback for a predominantly white Florida high school. A courageous coach at Gainesville High made that move in 1966 and paid the price with crosses burning in his front yard.

Today, big-time college coaches are escorted onto the field, surrounded by security. Back then, a different kind of security was needed when McAshan came onto the field. They were there to keep him safe from racist fans. During his college career, McAshan's tires were slashed and his dorm room burned in a suspicious fire. As Tech's team bus drove across the Auburn campus at a game, McAshan saw himself hanging from a tree in effigy; and at first, guards at Auburn's stadium refused to allow him to enter the players' entrance because they didn't believe a southern university would have black players.

In the limousine at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis that day, sitting next to Jackson, McAshan knew his career at Georgia Tech was finished. A few months later, he entered the draft, where he was taken in the 17th round by the New England Patriots, and he had a short, injury-riddled pro career in the NFL and the World Football League. His football dreams shattered, he showed his strength of character by completing his degree in industrial management at Georgia Tech in 1979.

As changes came about in the South, history twisted itself into a different ending. Eddie McAshan was inducted into the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame in 1995. And this year, Major League Baseball will hold the first ever Civil Rights Game, an ESPN-televised exhibition between the Cardinals and the Indians on March 31 in Memphis.

I hope they invite Eddie McAshan to throw out the first pitch.

In my 61 years, I have visited more than 125 countries. Wherever I traveled, as soon as it was discovered I had anything to do with sports, someone asked if I knew Muhammad Ali. Even the first time I visited Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, he asked if I knew Ali. When I said, "Yes," he smiled wryly and said, "I do, too!"

On this day, Jan. 17, we celebrate Ali's 65th birthday. I doubt there is another living American whose birth would be hailed more universally. We first met at Kutsher's Country Club in Monticello, N.Y., in the early 1960s when he was viewed as a brash and bold young man. His political side had not emerged publicly, and he was still known as Cassius Clay.

Some 15 years later, Ali had been through the maelstrom. His February 1964 victory over Sonny Liston allowed him to proclaim "I am the greatest" before a startled boxing world. He never stopped startling people after joining the Nation of Islam -- often called Black Muslims at the time -- and then refusing to fight in a war many of us opposed at the time. I marched against the Vietnam War, but Ali gave up a lucrative boxing career to stand behind his principles. He did more for the antiwar movement than many of the hundreds of thousands marching against the war. Although many white Americans and most of the American media saw him as racially divisive and unpatriotic, Ali became our hero. To those around the world who opposed the war, he helped them see that America was not a monolith. To those who saw injustices to people of color across the globe, he became a giant who stood for justice.

He had also become the greatest athlete of the 20th century. That gave him the platform.

Once he was considered racially divisive, especially after he proclaimed allegiance to the Nation of Islam and took his antiwar stand. Today, perhaps along with Mandela, Ali undoubtedly has become the public figure who best helps unite people across racial groups and makes them feel comfortable in the presence of people who do not look like themselves.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had just taken a job at the United Nations in 1978. The Vietnam War was over. The Civil Rights movement had gone quiet. And the antiapartheid movement was under way in an attempt to isolate South Africa, with boycotts of trade, bank loans, oil and sports. Ali already had refused to fight there while the U.N. hosted a branch of Chemical Bank, a lender to South Africa. I got together with Kofi Annan, then a U.N. staff member from Ghana, and another staff member from New Zealand to try to figure out a way to get Chemical out of the building. The man from Ghana asked if I could get Ali to speak to the general assembly to help our efforts. A few months later, Ali spoke for an hour in the General Assembly Hall, which often was empty but on this occasion was packed to hear the global hero that Ali had become.

Howard Bingham

Muhammad Ali, former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan and Richard Lapchick celebrate the day Ali became a U.N. Messenger of Peace in 1998.

That day started a real friendship with Ali that lasts to this day.

Our families have been together on many occasions, often several times a year. Lonnie, Ali's amazing wife, is a dear friend. Their youngest son, Assad, has played with our daughter, Emily. When Emily introduced her boyfriend, Steven, to Ali last summer, Ali playfully reached his arm out, rested his fist on Steven's chin and told him to be good to Emily. Howard Bingham, Ali's best friend and a world-renowned photographer, has become a good friend of ours, too. I consider the friendship with the Alis and Howard to be one of sport's biggest gifts to my family.

Some two decades after Ali spoke to the U.N., Annan became the first U.N. staff member to be named secretary general of the United Nations. He asked me to help get Ali to be his messenger of peace. For Annan, Ali was a logical choice because he had worked the globe, traveling to more than 200 cities annually. His message was always about healing.

After Sept. 11, 2001, an unprecedented wave of hate against Muslims swept through American communities. In a fundraising concert seen around the world, Ali stood and told the world he was a Muslim, and that Allah was a God of peace and justice. I do not think anyone else could have slowed the bandwagon of hate rolling through our cities. Ali again stood tall to stop the hate.

Despite Parkinson's, Ali continues to travel the world, making friends and working for peace. He has won the admiration of generations, even those who never saw him box. After the messenger of peace ceremony with Annan, Ali was asked to meet a march of 500 children who had walked from Harlem to the United Nations Plaza to commemorate International Children's Day. It was organized by Annan's wife. U.N. security was petrified as Ali walked into this crowd without guards surrounding him. They did not know he loves to be with people, especially children. These children, who didn't know his history, were simply swept away by the stature and charisma of this man. I bet that close to 100 ended up in his arms.

The scene reminded me of the night Emily, then 5, met Ali. She was shy, and standing with my wife, Ann, when Ali caught her eye from the other side of a table. This little girl, who at that age took 15-20 minutes to warm to friends she hadn't seen for a week, flew across the room and jumped into his open arms. That was in 1994.

Ali called himself "The Greatest" as he dispatched Liston for the first time. Most people thought it was clever or funny, but hardly true in February 1964. Four decades later, the world calls him "The Greatest."

As he celebrates his 65th birthday in Arizona with Lonnie and friends, I say "Happy birthday, dear friend!" How perfect it would be if our gift to Ali was to stop the hatred of Muslims and realize this peacemaker better represents the millions of Muslims around the world than the small band of terrorists who use the name of Allah to spread hate and destruction.

Muhammad, I love you, and I am hardly alone.

I have been writing the Racial and Gender Report Card (RGRC) since the 1980s. In the beginning, it was almost all bad news about how few opportunities there were for people of color and women to coach our teams and manage our pro league offices, team front offices and athletics departments. Then we added the colleges in the mid-1990s and it was even worse where it was assumed that things were more idealistic. The NBA was always better but in the beginning was not stellar. On the fields and courts, there were dramatically increasing numbers of African-American players.

How things have changed as we enter the new year. Is it a new era? Are we there yet? There has surely been so much positive change fueled by the leaders at the top. No doubt, David Stern set the tone but Paul Tagliabue and later Bud Selig and Myles Brand got it. Diversity is a business imperative. The world was watching and the leaders got it. It was not so easy to get teams and individual universities to get it.

In the new RGRC released by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport as 2006 came to a close, the NBA is still the best for creating leadership opportunities for people of color with the only A for men’s pro sport. However, Major League Baseball and the NFL have closed the gap tying for the second best grade among the men’s leagues for race with a B+. With college sport getting a B- for race, that meant that all sports covered got at least a B- for the first time in the history of the report.

As it has throughout its 10 year history, the WNBA was top’s when included with the men’s leagues. This year it got the only A in both race and gender.

The news was not so good for opportunities for women as every men’s pro sport and college sport slipped in their grades for gender. I will save the details on gender for a separate column.

It seems ironic that as leagues and college increased chances for people of color to manage and run our games, the percentage of African-American players dropped in the NBA, NFL, MLB and the WNBA while increasing slightly at the college level.

In the NBA, the percentage of African-American players decreased to 73 percent, the lowest percentage since the 1990-91 season when it was 72 percent.

A total of 39.7 percent of MLB players were players of color with 29 percent Latino and only 8.5 percent African-American. That was the lowest percent for African-Americans since the Report Card was first published in the 1980s.

In the 2005 NFL season, the percentage of African-American players decreased from an all-time high of 69 percent to 66 percent.

The percent of African-American male and female college student-athletes increased in Division I to 25 and 15 percent, respectively.

Overall, it is obvious that on our playing fields, teams are choosing the best talent irrespective of race. The slightly decreasing percentages still leaves many African-Americans on our teams.

For me, it is far more important that as of December 2006, the 25 African-American head coaches in the three major men’s sports were an all-time high. And that the NBA set historic high marks for race in the following categories: League Office, team senior and professional administrators, president/CEOs, physicians, trainers and radio/TV broadcasters. It equaled the high for team vice presidents of color.

• In the NBA, there were 12 African-American head coaches at the start of the 2006-07 season. The NBA continues to have the highest percentage in all pro sports. The same was true for general managers as the NBA led all others with seven African-American GMs.
• The 2006 NFL season saw a record number of African-American head coaches with seven along with a record of five African-American GMs. People of color in assistant coaching positions in the NFL also set a record with 162 assistant coaches of color, or 34 percent.
• Major League Baseball has six managers of color but only two GMs. Nonetheless, GM Kenny Williams led the White Sox to the 2005 World Championship while Omar Minaya strengthened the Mets to get them to game seven of the NL Championship Series.

Our colleges had the furthest to go with whites holding 91, 90, and 93 percent of the head coaching positions in Divisions I, II, and III, respectively. Men’s basketball aside, the opportunities for coaches of color in college and slim.

So do we begin 2007 as a new era? I think we have clearly gotten better with hiring more people of color. Are we there yet? While closer, we still have a long way to go.