Gary Acosta is an entrepreneur, public policy advocate, investor, and thought leader passionate about advancing prosperity for Latinos and other underserved communities. As an industry leader, he protects and improves the business environment required to close the wealth gap, particularly via homeownership. Amongst other endeavors, he is Co-Founder & CEO of NAHREP, the country’s leading Hispanic business organization, and Co-Founder of L’ATTITUDE, the preeminent platform for Latino economic empowerment. Acosta is also a general partner of L’ATTITUDE Ventures, the nation’s largest venture capital fund exclusively focused on Latino-led start-ups. Join Gary as he dives into today’s issues through many creative formats.
I once read that sports are a universal language. Regardless of ethnicity or what language you speak, almost everyone speaks sports. No place has that been more evident than the Olympics, where every four years, we are moved by images of athletic rivals from around the world shaking hands and embracing each other in moving displays of sportsmanship.
The NFL markets its brand as well as any enterprise in the world. I heard a comedian once say that the NFL is so popular, it has its own day. NFL football is huge. Each NFL franchise brings in approximately $400M a year in revenue; almost double the annual revenue of NBA teams and 2 ½ times as much as MLB clubs.
NFL teams have 53 players and twice as many coaches, trainers, and support staff, but to win a Super Bowl you must have two things: an elite quarterback and a superlative coach. The Rams won the Super Bowl last week, with veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford at the helm. This past season was the first year…
Despite a decade of lawsuits and scandals, the NFL is bigger than ever. I enjoy football as much as anyone. While basketball and soccer have gone global, and baseball fades to second-tier status, football stands alone as the quintessential American sport. The latest NFL imbroglio is the lawsuit by Brian Flores. Flores claims he has…
Almost everyone is familiar with the Tom Brady story. Growing up in San Mateo, California, Brady was a lightly-recruited quarterback who didn’t show up on any major scouting publications. Even after a successful senior season at the University of Michigan, almost nobody thought he would make the NFL. Brady himself had a resume ready for…
Some CEOs say great companies only hire the best talent. I say “bullshit”. The Los Angeles Lakers opened the 2021-2022 basketball season with two surprising losses after going 0-6 in the preseason. While it is way too early to draw any conclusions, it does raise some questions about their personnel decisions and team chemistry. During…
Devin Booker’s maternal grandfather was from Mexico. He was raised by his Puerto Rican-Mexican mother, while his father, who is Black, pursued a basketball career internationally. Booker, who was just named to the USA Olympic team, is 24 years old and has been one of the marquee stars of the NBA playoffs this season. He…
What do Chris Duarte and Iverson Molinar have in common? They both eat patacones and are moving up NBA draft boards with a bullet. Duarte, who was born in the Dominican Republic and plays for the Oregon Ducks, was runner up for POY in the PAC 12 conference. Molinar, who is from Panama City and…
I recently stumbled on this 70s photo of Puerto Rican legend, Chi-Chi Rodríguez and his caddie, John Lynch at the Masters Golf Tournament held in Augusta, Georgia. Rodríguez, who turned 85 last October, was one of my favorite athletes growing up. It’s a great photo, but the back story is even more interesting. At the…
Last Friday was the 52nd anniversary of one of the most historic and controversial moments in the history of the Olympics. Most of us are familiar with story of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who after finishing first and third in the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, raised their black-gloved fists in…
My son is a star basketball player at Colorado College. He averaged 18 points per game and was an all-conference performer as a sophomore. He was the only Latino on his team and on the all-conference roster. Latino surnames are rare in college basketball and even more rare in the NBA. For decades, Latin America…
For those of us who are missing sports, The Last Dance, has become a weekly sanctuary. The ESPN 10-part documentary takes a deep dive into the career of basketball legend, Michael Jordan. Jordan is widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time, but the film is a lot more than a collage of basketball…
I don’t have many heroes who are younger than me, but Kobe Bryant was one of my biggest heroes. On Sunday, January 26th at 11:44 AM PST, I was at a hotel gym in Colorado Springs doing a light work-out. I was getting dressed in the locker room when my friend, Raul Espinosa sent me…
Photo Credit: Jamie Lamor Thompson / Shutterstock.com For the first time in 50 years, the Kansas City Chiefs will play in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs will square off against the San Francisco 49ers. The Chiefs were almost knocked out of the playoffs in the first round when they trailed the Houston Texans 24-0 in…
The narrative in the sports world this week was dominated with the bruhaha around the Houston Astros cheating scandal. For those that don’t read the sports page, Major League Baseball suspended Astros Manager, A.J. Hinch and GM Jeff Luhnow for orchestrating a sophisticated signal stealing scheme dating back to their 2017 championship team.
It’s fun to win, and with the NBA’s best record at 20-3, LeBron James has been doing plenty of winning. James is also enjoying the success of his HBO series, The Shop, and his many other television and film projects. Two years ago, the scuttlebutt around the sports world was that James was moving to…
The Washington Nationals completed their fairy tale season by winning the World Series for the first time in franchise history. Manager Dave Martinez brought the city its first baseball championship in almost a century in only his second year. The success of the Nationals mirrored the unlikely achievements of the Toronto Raptors, who won its…
There was a lot of talk this past week about the escalating tension between the NBA and China. It’s a complicated story, but in a nutshell, Daryl Morey, an executive with the Houston Rockets posted a tweet expressing his support for protests that are currently occurring in Hong Kong. The protests are over a variety…
College sports is a multi-billion-dollar industry. College coaches at top universities earn million-dollar salaries while the players get almost nothing. It doesn’t seem right, yet the NCAA, the entity that governs college athletics, has done nothing to address the issue. According to the NCAA, college athletes should receive an education and little more for their…
The NFL Season opens today with a new controversy. Like a lot of us, I’ve been observing the blowback from the surprising partnership between the NFL and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Company. Under any other circumstances the partnership would be applauded by just about everyone, but given the NFL’s collateral damage from the Colin Kaepernick situation…
