{"id":778436,"date":"2026-02-26T21:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/778436\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T21:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:38:20","slug":"dolphins-aleksander-barkov-a-week-of-goodwill-in-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/778436\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolphins, Aleksander Barkov, a week of goodwill in sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an ode to the good done in the name of sports. It often goes unnoticed, even as they go hand in hand through a community, goodness and sports, as seen by Stephen Nimer planning to ride his bike 100 miles on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll celebrate afterward with the thousands of other riders, from cancer survivors to Miami Dolphins cheerleaders, who will help the Dolphins\u2019 Cancer Challenge surpass raising $100 million in its 16 years.<\/p>\n

Then, on Monday, he\u2019ll do something no one riding in the DCC does: He\u2019ll spend that money.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good the DCC has done is almost endless,\u2019\u2019 said Nimer, director of the University of Miami\u2019s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. \u201cA lot of the cancer centers around the country are jealous of what we have in this here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe you don\u2019t care. Maybe you just want your sports teams to play for you and the players to shut up and dribble.<\/p>\n

But look at the work outside of sports this week by those inside them. Florida Panthers star Aleksander Barkov upped his careerlong commitment to the Joe DiMaggio Children\u2019s Hospital in Hollywood by giving $1 million toward its rehab center.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s joined by the likes of Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo, who for years has given money and time to the Chapman Partnership homeless assistance center in Miami. They join generational links with Dolphins legends Jason Taylor, who continues his community-funding foundation years after playing, and Dan Marino, who helped build an internationally recognized center for autism.<\/p>\n

Athletes who care. It\u2019s a thing. Franchises, too. Saturday\u2019s DCC is the largest annual fundraiser by any NFL team. What does the $100 million raised over the DCC\u2019s 16 years mean for the Sylvester center? Where is it applied to fight cancer?<\/p>\n

Nimer explains that following this money isn\u2019t typically as direct as Sylvester endowing a second faculty chair this week in the DCC\u2019s name. Some other money helped double the space of its Griffin Research Center. Some was put to help research a nagging question.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever the treatment, why doesn\u2019t it work on everybody?\u201d Nimer said. \u201cAnd then the treatment stops working for some people. Why? Those are two areas we\u2019re spending a lot of investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a constant bigger picture for Sylvester, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it is there\u2019s a multiplier to those dollars (from the DCC),\u2019\u2019 Nimer said. \u201cIt has allowed us bring down great doctors and researchers and build great teams, and that allows us to apply for federal dollars and state funding for research.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of that helped Sylvester earn a National Cancer Institute designation in 2019. That\u2019s the gold standard of cancer designations that allows patients and donators alike to understand Sylvester\u2019s standards. It reconfirmed the NCI designation in 2024.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to grow something good from something painful. That\u2019s what often is at the root of sports and good deeds. Dolphins great and media star Jim Mandich suffered from bile-duct cancer in 2010. He and the team came up with this DCC fundraiser to help Sylvester, where he got treatment.<\/p>\n

Mandich left plenty of memories across South Florida, from being a tight end on the 1972 Perfect Season to loving his, \u201cgreen lizards\u201d beer (Heineken). But his legacy soon will be what he started with the DCC, and it will live long after he died in 2011.<\/p>\n

His sons, Michael and Nick, will form \u201cTeam Maddog\u201d again, as they\u2019ve watched it grow from an idea into an event of more than 8,000 participants. So have the changing cast of Dolphins players. Sylvester, too, started a \u201cBelieve In You\u201d program four years ago for surviving cancer patients to ride or walk in the DCC. The idea folded into the center\u2019s program of not just having patients survive cancer but reclaim the full activity of their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 200 survivors will be in the DCC this year,\u2019\u2019 Nimer said.<\/p>\n

Nimer began cycling in the event 14 years ago when he was ill-prepared. It was held on a Saturday and Sunday then, and he did back-to-back 100- and 75-mile rides.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were the ninth and 10th times I\u2019d been on a bike,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cAt some of the rest stops people were looking at me like I wasn\u2019t going to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He became a regular cyclist. He\u2019ll do Saturday\u2019s 100 miles. He\u2019ll be part of the good being done in the name of sports that especially this week, from Barkov to the DCC, everyone should notice.<\/p>\n

\"FloridaFlorida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov, a longtime supporter of Joe DiMaggio Children\u2019s Hospital in Hollywood, wipes away tears as he watches a video made for him by pediatric patients on Tuesday. His donation to the hospital this week was more than $1 million. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is an ode to the good done in the name of sports. It often goes unnoticed, even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2049],"tags":[217,7,929,216,251,2087,6,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-778436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-dolphins","8":"tag-dolphins","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-miami","12":"tag-miami-dolphins","13":"tag-miamidolphins","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116139099995500914","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}