Titans Announce Donations to Social Justice Initiatives

Team promises to maintain the momentum built by major local, national events in 2020.

Ryan Tannehill figures that sometimes the second time is the charm.

In 2016, then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started his much-debated pre-game protest with aim of change in systemic racism and policing. In the NFL, it didn’t stick.

However, after the summer of 2020, the league’s overall perspective and those of its respective teams, the Tennessee Titans included, on social injustices drastically changed. The Titans, for example, announced Wednesday donations that totaled more than $130,000 to organizations addressing social justice in the local community.

“The ball started rolling with Kapernick in 2016, and for whatever reason, it didn’t catch a whole lot of league momentum, and organizational momentum,” Tannehill said. “This is the second time around and it’s been really cool to see organizations, the league and the players realize that we didn’t do it right the first time around and now we have another opportunity to do some good.

“You don’t always get second chances.”

Titans players didn’t take their opportunity to do some good lightly. And the personal donations throughout the season were matched by both The Titans Foundation and the NFL to grow local impact.

One organization to which Titans’ players donated was 100 Black Men of Middle Tennessee, a nonprofit that provides resources to further the academic and social development of black male students in Nashville and middle Tennessee.

Another helped through the donations was YWCA Amend Together, a prevention initiative dedicated to ending violence against women and girls by engaging men and boys to change the culture that supports violence.

A third, Project Return, is a program dedicated to the successful new beginnings of people who are returning to the Nashville community after incarceration.

In the grand scheme of things, the Titans’ time/monetary donations aren’t going to change the world, but what they are doing is transforming individual lives. And that is something Tannehill and the Titans organization as a whole are proud of.

“There are so many great organizations out there, and it’s an honor to be able to help out in a small way,” Tannehill said. “To be able to hear how our help, how the Titans’ help and my teammates’ help is inspiring young men, and hopefully changing lives and changing life directions for young men in our local, middle Tennessee community is humbling.”

Going forward for the franchise, what is clear is that the league and the individual organizations now understand the value of the platform they possess in the community.

Players and franchise officials, as well as other teams around the league, now have evidence to show that what they say and do can greatly affect local change. And now, the hope is that it shouldn’t take catastrophic events such as the murder of George Floyd and a pandemic to positively affect drastic change.

“It doesn’t matter whether we continue to have events that form rallying cries,” Adolpho Birch III senior vice president of business affairs, and chief legal officer, said. “We now know that we have a platform, and that platform is helpful. We have people … who can tell us in real terms what the impact of our efforts could be. And I think that will serve as a catalyst to continue on and even improve in the ways that we can connect to the community and have a real impact.”

It may have taken two tries, but this time it appears as though the Titans and the NFL got it right.