My love for sports started when I was a child learning how to ride my first bicycle, throwing from the pitcher's mound for the first time and feeling my father's excitement as he watched Monday night football.

Sports are the great unifier. Sports unify people who differ in every imaginable way yet share one passion: baseball, football, soccer, track, volleyball, golf, and so many other sports. They are an equalizer of sorts, one of the few places in life where performance triumphs over sex, religion, association, race and culture.

Stereotypes are very real to the people who think according to them, even though they may be based on limited or biased information. Because of stereotypes, some would assume that professional basketball players are black, gifted soccer players are Brazilian, great gymnasts come from Russia and awesome swimmers reside in Australia.

Although we may find some truth in these statements, this may only be part of the equation.

In American inner cities, for example, black youth can easily see the preparation and steps needed for athletic success. They are clear cut: practice, work hard, compete by the rules and the results will speak for themselves. By contrast, in a corporate environment, the rules may be unknown or ambiguous, the competition may be objectionable and the results difficult to measure without personal bias.

Black males succeeding in athletics has nothing to do with a predisposition or genetic makeup and more to do with what African American males see as attainable. The very fact that they believe they can become a professional athlete is the reason many to rise to that level.

Some believe blacks lack intellect. Combine that way of thinking with a substandard educational system and you will find lack of success in business and academics. The results are low percentages of African American males in the corporate infrastructure and beyond.

But look at an NFL playbook, which is usually over 1500 pages easy. Ask an athlete to learn this entire playbook in a 4-6 week training camp. After learning the playbook, the athlete is required to make decisions in a matter of 2-3 seconds or less.

From my experience playing football, I know that sometimes a missed play at the wrong time could cost you your job, which in turn would cost you at the very least hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet athletes make split second decisions under a tremendous amount of pressure based on playbooks they learned in 4-6 weeks. Talk about a stressful work environment!

A poor predisposition to learn in an academic environment is not the basis for such a small percentage of African Americans in corporate America. The cause is simply a lack of examples and equal opportunity in the corporate infrastructure. Just like Brazilian soccer players, Russian tennis phenoms and the like, their athletic success has more to do with what they believe is attainable. Given good odds, they believe they have the opportunity to succeed if they put their heart, body and soul into a chosen field.

The key to success is believing that if I put my mind to it, I can do it. It is not the educational system failing urban youth or lack of intelligence in young African Americans, but the opportunity available to these young people once they’re qualified.

Uh oh… no, I’m not talking about any kind of agenda to keep African Americans out of corporate America, but rather, I am talking about having a systematic approach to providing opportunities within corporate America. We all have used the phrase, "it’s not what you know, but who you know." And if there are low percentages of women in upper level management positions and low percentages of ethic minorities in the corporate environment, wouldn’t make sense that there are most likely low percentages of opportunities for them in those areas?

Most people hire not only who is qualified, but who they feel comfortable with, who they understand and who they are more likely to trust. This is why success in corporate America is so complex and rather ambiguous. When you look at the ethic makeup, lack of women in upper management positions, low percentages of Hispanics and blacks at all levels, success becomes more complicated for these groups. Not unattainable, but complicated.

I am a big supporter of individual sports that eliminate or decrease the need for referees or outside influences, such as swimming, golf, tennis, track and field, motocross and bicycling. With the recent issues coming out about biased NBA referees and the like, it is evident that they can influence a game and/or make a player ineffective.

In team sports such as baseball, basketball and football, a coach, agent or scout must say you have the ability to play and give you an opportunity on the field. This, too, can become a very biased and ambiguous process that at times won’t make sense. In individual sports talent, hard work, perseverance and dedication are always rewarded because failure only arises when you choose to quit.

This is the reason I love sports -- or specifically, golf, because with all things being equal, performance is always rewarded.