GospelCity Black History Month Salute – Pioneers in Sports

Eldrick “Tiger” Woods
“No matter how good you get you can always get better and that's the exciting part…”

Golf Digest magazine has predicted Tiger Woods will become sports’ first billionaire athlete by the year 2010. Not bad for a thirty-two year old who has done more for the game of golf in terms of generating interest among a multicultural audience than any other player. The surge in interest is due to the fact that Woods is multiracial.
Eldrick, who would legally change his name to Tiger at 21 years old, wowed audiences as a two-year old putting against comedian Bob Hope on The Mike Douglas Show. The child prodigy would begin winning junior championships in 1984 and turn professional at the age of twenty after completing two years at Stanford University. Woods walked away from his education to earn over sixty million dollars in endorsement deals from Nike and Titleist. Within his first year as a pro, Woods enjoyed the fastest ascent to number one in golf rankings with major wins at the Masters, and the honor of being named PGA Player of the Year.
To date, Woods has been PGA Player of the Year a record nine times, won the Masters four times, and he is the second player to Jack Nicklaus to win all four major pro golf championships more than once.
In keeping with his father Earl’s edict to give back and serve, Woods practices philanthropy with a foundation, a touring inner city golf clinic, an educational facility in Anaheim, California that focuses on technological advancement and he supports a junior golf team.

Michael Jordan
“I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.”

During Michael Jordan’s sophomore year of high school, he was deemed too short at five feet eleven inches tall to play varsity basketball and was rejected. However, he persevered, grew four inches and the following year he was selected to play averaging 25 points per game and became a member of McDonald’s All-American Team his senior year. In 1981, he entered the University of North Carolina where he would become a standout athlete and earn national honor for his athletic prowess.
One year before he graduated from UNC, Jordan entered the NBA draft and was ultimately selected by the Chicago Bulls as a guard. He would win MVP titles in the league multiple times until his retirement in 1993, his first retirement.
Proving that he was the king of reinvention and fulfilling dreams, Jordan reemerged in minor league baseball with the Chicago White Sox’s farm team, the Birmingham Barons and played for a year before returning to the Chicago Bulls until his second retirement in 1999. In 2000, he returned to the NBA as a part-owner and president of the Washington Wizards. Post September 11 (2001), Jordan returned as a player for the Wizards, donating his salary to the families of the victims of the attack. He would retire as a player for the third time in 2003.
Currently, Michael Jordan is part-owner of the Charlotte Bobcats in his home state of North Carolina, as well as managing member of basketball operations. He spends his free time playing golf and managing his varied business interests including a continued stake in Nike’s Air Jordan brand.