It's Super Bowl Week. What's the Game Plan?

It's Super Bowl Week. While a large part of world attention will focus on the game, the commercials and the halftime show, I've posted articles here almost every year since 2007 that show a role athletes can take beyond the charity causes they already support.

In 2024 I used this image from the NFL Awards show in this article, with a headline of "Multiplying Good - Map the Network".  The goal of the article was to encourage one or more data researchers to create a library of EVERY pro sports athlete, and the causes they support.  Make it searchable by city, by sport, by cause, by team, etc.  Use visualizations like Kumu.io and Gephi to help people use this information.

 

In March 2025 I included the graphic below in this article, showing an example of how networks can be mapped.

In this section and this section you can find many more articles about mapping networks using tools like Kumu.io and NodeXL. Find more ideas in this section.

In January 2026 I wrote an article titled "Making Philanthropy Work Better" and introduced Project 990, which is mining data of all nonprofit 990s reports and mapping the information. 

Since the 1990s I've been trying to influence what visible people do to support youth and youth serving programs in all high poverty areas of the cities where they play sports, or where they grew up.  

In the mid 1990s the Tutor/Mentor Connection created the map below, showing high poverty areas of Chicago and locations of non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.  It was signed by 11 pro athletes during a weekend golf event, to indicate their support of the idea of athletes "adopting neighborhoods", not just single programs.  I've share this often, such as in this 2024 article. 

If you search "Super Bowl" on this blog you'll find many articles where I've shared ideas similar to these.  In 2007 I wrote "Go Bears! The Super Bowl of Life". In that I wrote:

While many athletes have foundations and do great things to help their communities, there's no strategy that I know of that enlists athletes and coaches in an effort to use their celebrity visibility to draw attention to a social cause, and to draw volunteers and donors to specific neighborhoods throughout a city.

For instance, on the Super Bowl broadcast Terry Bradshaw, a former star quarterback, and current TV broadcaster, made an appeal for viewers to stay involved in helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The TV footage focused at New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, but I heard him end a phrase with "and the other areas".

If someone created a map of the area that had been destroyed by the Hurricane, it would be possible to enlist athletes from many sports to adopt different communities, or zip codes, in the entire area. Then, whenever that athlete were to have a TV opportunity, he/she could draw attention to his zip code, as part of an effort to keep attention on the entire area of destruction. As the season moves from Basketball to baseball to football and back to hockey and basketball, different stars, in different cities, would have many opportunities to focus attention, and draw resources to the various parts of the entire geographic area where volunteers, donors, and all sorts of help will be needed for many years.

In the same way, I want to enlist athletes to focus attention on the high poverty neighborhoods of big cities. Instead of just talking about the Boys and Girls Clubs, or Big Brothers, Big Sisters, or other highly visible charities, we need to focus attention regularly on every neighborhood where kids need help, and the organizations in those neighborhoods who are providing help. 

This is a strategy I hope athletes will adopt. If you read this, and you know a Bear, or a Bull, or a college coach, or even a high school coach, who might want to be a champion of this idea, please pass this on.

While I've shared these ideas for many years I still have not found any photos of a pro football or basketball player standing in front of a map like I do in this 1990s photo, urging people to support youth programs in EVERY high poverty neighborhood, not just the few high profile programs in a few places.

I still have found no athlete or team supporting the "Adopt a Neighborhood" strategy that I outlined.

So as you watch this year's game, I hope you'll share this idea with high school and college coaches, and with any athlete you know.  Think of these articles as a "playbook" that coaches and players can study to see how they can do better next year than they did this year.

That's a habit that could make a quantum difference in the lives of millions of people.

The best time to have started this was 30 years ago. The next best is now, in 2026 when the technology available to build big databases and visualize the information is now available.

Thanks for reading.  Enjoy the game!

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitter and Mastodon (see links here).

And, if you value what I'm sharing, please visit this page and help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.