NFL players to participate in inaugural Advocacy in Sports workshop

Long before a Fox News pundit implored LeBron James to “shut up and dribble” last week, leaders from the NFL, Morehouse College and the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE) were plotting ways to help athletes not merely use but also amplify their voices to speak about social and political issues.

A series of closed-door meetings at Morehouse, a historically African American college in Atlanta, that began in the summer of 2016 have now led to the creation of the inaugural Advocacy in Sports workshop. It is scheduled to kick off Wednesday afternoon and includes more than 30 athletes — including current and retired NFL players, WNBA players and female tennis players — who will be studying the history of the civil rights movement and learning how they can use their personal stories to affect social change.

More: What if LeBron James had just shut up and dribbled?

The takeaway from those initial meetings, which included representatives from other pro sports leagues, was that athletes sought education and the tools to become better community leaders, said RISE CEO Jocelyn Benson.

“We want them to take away an understanding of the important role they have to play at this critical moment in our country’s history, in bringing people together and developing real solutions to address inequality,” Benson told USA TODAY Sports.

Among current and former NFL players participating in the workshop are New York Giants defensive end Olivier Vernon, who took a knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice for much of last season; free agent linebacker DeAndre Levy, who has been outspoken about sexual assault prevention and player health issues; and Hall of Famer Carl Eller, 75, once a member of the Vikings’ famed “Purple People Eaters” defense and now a vocal advocate for retired players.

The curriculum’s goal will be to connecting the current climate and social justice movements to the past. Fifteen of the participating athletes will travel next week to Alabama for civil rights lessons in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma. That trip, which will be led by Benson, is expected to also include NFL vice president Troy Vincent and former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

“We’re all coming together because we’re trying to move the needle forward for communities and make sure that folks feel good, healthy, whole, secure and aren’t objectified. I think that athletes in many respects within American society are objects, they’re pawns, they’re tools, they’re manipulable pieces,” Morehouse associate professor of psychology Dr. David Wall Rice, who is leading the workshop, told USA TODAY Sports.

“That’s an example of someone saying, ‘Just shut up and dribble.’ Well you’ve totally stripped this person of their subjectivity. We’re doing this with and for one another.” 

Rice said that because the participants will arrive in Atlanta on “different spaces on the activist arc,” the objective is for each of them to leave Friday with a personally tailored plan for what they want to do next, whether it’s growing with their own established non-profit organizations, starting foundations or becoming an ally for other outlets.

“The athletes that are coming, they do have a platform. Is it one that is as amplified as LeBron James? No, but it’s not one that is any less valuable than his voice is,” Rice said.

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Follow Lindsay H. Jones on Twitter @bylindsayhjones