In October, we started a dialogue in this space about honor and dishonor, heroes and villains, black and white. This is the third in a three-part series.

You've heard the expression as a form of greeting:

"Hey man, what's up?"

"It's your world."

Loosely translated it means: "I'm doing okay, but, you're the man. You're the one who sets the standards to which I aspire."

It's funny how well that applies to our athletic icons.

Why did my feature on Terrell Owens lead me here? For one thing, Owens' world has no boundaries. And his brash refusal to cave in to convention reminds me in some ways of a certain former heavyweight champ.

On Christmas Day, the film Ali will be released. Nearly 40 years after joining ranks with the Nation of Islam and refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, Ali still defines the socially conscious athlete. Because he took his power beyond the ring and tried to change the world around him, Ali's greatness transcended mere athletic ability.

It's Muhammad Ali's world.

Arthur Ashe was more than the first black man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Open; he was a man whose fierce ambition led him to triumph over powerful racial, political and social obstacles. He was active in the fight against AIDS, supported the rights of Haitian immigrants, and was always cognizant of his responsibility as a role model for black student athletes.

It's Arthur Ashe's world.

In Ashe's memoir, Days of Grace, he said something that touched me. He was doing an interview when the reporter asked if dying from AIDS was his heaviest burden.

"No," he replied. "Being black has been my heaviest burden."

I think he meant that being black was an added filter through which all information is processed. It was a cumulative life experience, and he chafed under its weight.

Ashe wasn't blithely drawing a parallel between a deadly disease and his ethnic identity. Long before he contracted AIDS, he struggled with issues of race. And he knew that racial tension would be central to the nation's health for decades -- maybe forever.

For the past four years, I've carried the burden of my wife's death. While personal tragedy has colored my world for just a short time. I have always viewed life from the perspective of being black. Like I've said before, we choose our heroes based on how closely we identify with them. That's why I say Arthur Ashe's name with reverence. His world is my world.

Michael Jordan, like Ashe and Ali before him, has struggled with the burden of blackness. You may recall in 1990, when Harvey Gantt, a black man, ran against Jesse Helms for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina, Jordan took a neutral stance. When asked about it, the Wilmington native reportedly said, "Republicans buy sneakers too." Many black voters vilified him. They wanted him to set an elbows-flaring pick for Harvey Gantt.

At the time, I too wished Jordan would muscle his way into the racial/cultural/political arena, like Ali and Ashe did. But now I realize Jordan's world isn't Ali's world. Today, an athlete can soar -- Air Jordan like -- over the political arena and land firmly in the arena of mass appeal.

Jordan's world isn't one in which an athlete is compelled to be overtly socially conscious. Nor is he compelled by civil unrest to make public statements about anything other than sport (if he does, he runs the risk of losing endorsement opportunities). Today, the athlete with the greatest mass appeal rules our world. And no one has more mass appeal than Michael Jordan does.

I'm not suggesting that MJ has matched Ali's or Ashe's "greatness." But his business savvy endears him to white America. (With the exception of Colin Powell, very few black men have gained such acceptance.)

I ain't mad at him. He didn't just come back to the game he once dominated. He didn't just come back during a war. He came back and told us he'd play for free. By donating his entire salary to aid the victims of September 11, Michael Jordan has established that it's his world, too.

Believe me, T.O. is paying attention.

Alan Grant is going to a screening of Ali this weekend. Rest assured, he'll have an opinion.

Grant, a former NFL defensive back, writes football for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at alan.grant@espnmag.com.