Mixed feelings over a halted gesture

But it also would have caught our throats, our consciences, our moment.

The glove would have sparked a controversy whose flames would have engulfed the NFL down to its buttoned-up core.

But it also would have reflected America's fire within.

The practical part of me was relieved that Brandon Marshall's touchdown celebration for the Denver Broncos was stopped before it cost his team a penalty and possibly the game.

But the patriotic part of me wishes he would have done it anyway.

Did you see it? You should have seen it.

Thursday night, an end zone in Cleveland, final minutes of the game, Marshall caught a touchdown pass that gave the Broncos an eventual 34-30 victory over the Cleveland Browns.

He immediately pulled what appeared to be a glove out of the front of his pants, obviously preparing for some sort of elaborate celebration, when teammate Brandon Stokley ran up to him with wagging fingers and a constraining hug.

Gesture stopped. Celebration over. What happened?

Hiding his emotion behind sunglasses, Marshall later explained that he wasn't trying to deify himself, but his president-elect.

He was going to be the first athlete to publicly honor Barack Obama.

"Barack Obama's election as the 44th president of the United States is a tremendous symbol of unity," Marshall said, reading a statement. "I want to create that symbol of unity because Obama inspires me [and] a multicultural society."

Forty years after two other star athletes raised black-gloved fists to protest racial inequality, Marshall was going to raise a fist covered in a half-black, half-white glove to symbolize racial progress.

"I know that at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised that black glove and fist in a silent gesture of black power and liberation," he said. "I wanted to make my own statement and gesture to represent the progress we made."

It would have been strange, awkward and beautiful.

As millions of Americans continue to celebrate the historical implications of Obama's election -- the lines outside this newspaper's building for souvenir copies were still a block long Friday -- why not athletes?

They work on playing fields that placed the first cracks in the wall that Obama has shattered. They work in the diverse and tolerant environment that has been fertile soil for the growth of minority leaders everywhere.