For many American athletes, concentrating on games is the furthest thing on the minds of those who lost homes or have relatives dead or missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
So, teams, owners and athletes are banding together in a heart-felt show of sympathy and support, not willing to count on luck to help people stranded in the flood waters from Katrina.
Grid-iron hero Marshall Faulk is among those with missing relatives and friends in the storm-ravaged southern United States region.
Faulk was raised in New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina destroyed his boyhood home. He still doesn’t know the whereabouts of four of his brothers.
The future hall-of-fame running back has earned seven Pro Bowl invites, but instead of planning for a new season all he can think of is what’s happening in New Orleans.
”I find myself going between the game plan and what’s going on down in New Orleans while sitting in meetings,” said Faulk, who recently learned at least one of his brothers and his mother are safe.
”I will see what kind of challenge it is going to be. I never had a distraction where I have had to deal with it while trying to play football.”
Thousands are feared dead from Katrina’s fierce winds and flooding. More than a million people are without power and thousands of homes have been damaged or destroyed.
Professional sports leagues have already raised more than $7-million in donations, and the total is climbing.
In some cases, they are using chartered airplanes to provide non-perishable food, equipment and emergency supplies to the scores of people made refugees by one of the worst natural disasters in North America in a generation.
Money is also being raised through auctions, blood drives, autograph sessions, ad campaigns and public-service announcements.
Golfing superstar Tiger Woods, who is competing in the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston, Massachusetts on Monday, has been following the developments on television.
”It’s just a terrible thing to watch happen,” Woods said. ”I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The Green Bay Packers and the Red Cross are joining forces to aid the victims with an autograph session and blood drive.
Like Faulk, Packers all-star quarterback Brett Favre lost his New Orleans boyhood home. But his wife and children are alive and hosting about 50 relatives, friends and friends of friends who have taken refuge in their storm-damaged house.
Favre’s Packers loaded up their charter plane with generators and other emergency supplies and flew it to Nashville, where the goods where to be unloaded and then trucked into the region.
”To think we’re going to try to play football and enjoy it, it’s difficult,” Favre said.
Packers players Javon Walker and Ray Thompson also fear for the lives of their relatives in the region. Wide receiver Walker can’t get in touch with his grandparents and Thompson doesn’t know the fate of his mother and grandmother.
”I just can’t watch the news. Everything is just bad news,” Thompson said.
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and his brother Eli, of the New York Giants, were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the weekend distributing more than 13 000kg of emergency supplies, including diapers and bottled water.
US cycling hero Lance Armstrong is donating $500 000 dollars to aid cancer patients displaced by the storm.
”It just seems like help was late to come there,” the seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor Armstrong told The New York Times. ”If you’ve started treatment and you miss a week or two weeks, it’s potentially fatal.”
Armstrong’s donation matched that of the US Tennis Association, which organises the US Open. The association said a portion of the proceeds will go to the Red Cross for hurricane relief.
Of the four major pro sports, the National Basketball Association (NBA) topped the donation list by giving $2-million.
The National Football League (NFL) donated more than $1-million and the New York Yankees gave $1-million. All teams in the NFL observed a moment of silence for the victims this weekend.
The National Hockey League’s Anaheim Ducks raised $400 000 and college football’s Wisconsin Badgers hoped to raise at least $80 000 at their season opener in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Saturday.
Baltimore Ravens grid-iron player Deion Sanders has called for pro sports teams to give $1 000 apiece through payroll deductions.
The NBA’s New Orleans Hornets were forced to move their training camp to Colorado Springs and are facing the prospect of having to play most, if not all, of their games this season on the road.
The grid-iron team has no home after the storm-damaged Superdome was also used a temporary shelter for the refugees in the days following the hurricane.
The Saints’ first home game was scheduled for the Superdome in two weeks, but NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue moved the game against the Giants to the New York area. — Sapa-AFP