Welcome to Fearless with Jason Whitlock. I am Jason Whitlock your host. Happy Monday to you and yours. Hope you had an awesome weekend. We have a great show playing for you today and all week.

We're going to get you rocking and rolling here very quickly. Steve Kim, Jimmy, Michelle will be here with us today. We'll start with my fire starter about my dear friend Jim Brown.

Jim Brown never sold out. That's his legacy. He couldn't be bought or compromised. He epitomized the kind of masculinity America now rejects as toxic. Brown 87 died on Friday.

People struggle to accurately define him. He's far more than the greatest running back to replay professional football. He was not a civil rights activist attempts to paint him as a serial domestic abuser with unproven allegations come across as a smear to taint his reputation and impact. No sellout.

Those two words make Jim Brown unique and the most important athlete of the last 65 years. Brown evolved without changing. He stood on a set of principles and values regardless of consequence. His peers did not. Muhammad Ali, he changed.

He disavowed the nation of Islam never apologized for racially denigrating Joe Frazier and became the darling of white liberal America.

Bill Russell chose the same path as Ali, the adulation of liberal America over truth. Russell dumped his first wife and collared sweetheart Rose Swisher from Miss USA 1968 Dorothy and Stead. He then married two more times before his death.

Cream Abdul Jabbar is arguably one of the worst sellouts in sports history. He skipped the 1968 Olympics to protest US governmental policies. He is now an unofficial spokesman for the experimental medical vaccines supplied by our government and virtually anything else the Democratic Party tells him to endorse.

For 87 years Jim Brown could not be controlled. He thought for himself and did what he believed. When Russell was releasing pictures of himself on a knee in support of Colin Kaepernick, Jim Brown was telling Kaepernick to choose between activism and football.

Quote, and this is directly from Jim Brown, I'm going to give you the real deal. I'm an American. I don't desecrate my flag and my national anthem. I'm not going to do anything against the flag and the national anthem.

If you have a cause, I think you should organize it, present it in a manner where it's not only you standing or sitting on one knee, but a lot of people can get behind it and do something about it.

Jim Brown quit football at age 29 to pursue acting opportunities in Hollywood. In 1988, he launched the Amara I Can program, a life skills teaching organization that mentored gang members.

Brown never believed in pointless gestures and symbolism. He believed in organization and programs. Amara I Can developed a curriculum specific for developing men into productive citizens.

Brown was uninterested in creating awareness. He was about creating solutions. I first met Jim in the early 1990s. He spoke at Indiana University.

I attended the event as a sports writer for the Bloomington Hero Times. Brown abrasively blew me off as I followed him down a hallway, pestering him with questions. His gruff demeanor reminded me of my father.

I told him he couldn't offend me or scare me off because I was Jimmy Whitlock son and he reminded me of my dad. That caught Brown's attention.

As my profile escalated as a sports writer, Brown began returning my phone calls. I eventually visited him in Los Angeles and learned more about Amara I Can and the guys who work with the football legend.

Rockhead Johnson, Julian Mendoza, and Bobby Glanton. In 2008, I wrote a long profile story for Playboy Magazine on Brown's organization.

Brown backed his commitment to slowing gang violence in Los Angeles with an organization dedicated to juke just that and opening his home to men that the rest of America feared.

Jim's peers chased checks and adulation. Jim worked. He spent his own money. He took real risk to achieve his cause. Jim was authentic in a way most athletes are not.

Modern pro athletes worship the bag. They all have a price. They want to be billionaires. They bought the lie that the black community suffers from a financial crisis, not a spiritual crisis.

I never remember discussing religion with Jim. I do not know his religious beliefs. What I know is that Jim believed in purpose. He lived a purpose driven life. His purpose required him to stand on a set of principles and values.

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