The Laureus awards and Brett Favre

ABU DHABI -- The Laureus awards make for a fascinating study. Lots and lots of organizations and charities and foundations say they're out to translate the animating principle of the Olympic movement, the notion that sport can transform lives and communities, into reality.

Even so, as Cathy Freeman, the great Australian champion from the 2000 Sydney Games, put it, emphasizing that she was speaking generally in an interview ahead of the annual Laureus ceremony, held here Wednesday, "There's a lot of talk but not a lot of walk."

Laureus walks the walk. It's involved in dozens of projects worldwide, all tied together by the principle, as the actress Gwyneth Paltrow elegantly put it during the show,  that through sport "under-privileged children across the world find hope and self-respect."

The show is a mix of sport and Hollywood-style celebrity -- two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey played host Wednesday, Hugh Grant and Clive Owen were in the house, Usain Bolt (in a jacket and tie) appeared from Jamaica on closed-circuit TV in accepting his second straight "Sportsman of the Year" award, former NBA standout Dikembe Mutombo moved the audience in accepting an award for charitable work he has done in his native Democratic Republic of Congo.

The thrust of Mutombo's work has been the construction and opening about three years ago of a $29 million, 300-bed hospital on the outskirts of Kinshasa. It has since treated more than 25,000 people.

"All I wanted to do was change the living conditions of the people in Africa," Mutombo said from the stage. "It's been very hard for me, every day as I played basketball, to see how many millions of children continued to die on the continent of Africa.

"… If we are not putting in an effort to save these women and children, our world will continue to suffer."

That's leadership. That's commitment. That's real.

So why, with all of that kind of thing going for it, is Laureus still such a relatively minor entity in the United States?

Couldn't it be bigger and better if its American presence was enhanced? And wouldn't that make all kinds of sense?

The show Wednesday marked the organization's 10th anniversary. That makes for an opportune time to take stock.

Edwin Moses, the great hurdles champion from the 1970s and 1980s, the chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, acknowledged that the early years started "without much direction -- but with the thought of using sport as a tool for social change."

At the very first Laureus awards show in 2000, Nelson Mandela set the tone.

He said, "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair.”

The initial budget, Moses said, was about $1 million annually. It's now significantly more: "... Our turnover has really multiplied tremendously, especially in the last three years.

"That has enabled us to go from six projects in four countries to 72 projects in 38 countries. We now have nine foundations spread out around the world ...

"From an initial idea and 28 people in a room ... we now have 46 members.

"There is no doubt that the Laureus World Sports Awards are now a major event on the international calendar. We're respected by those who win awards, as well as by the world-class athletes who come to support us."

Tennis star Kim Clijsters, the 2009 U.S. Open winner after taking two years off and becoming a mom,  winner Wednesday of the 2009 Laureus comeback award, said it's "virtually the Oscars of sports ... the pinnacle of recognition among athletes to be nominated and, hopefully, to win one."

This is one of the ways Laureus can and should grow -- because, apologies to Clijsters, who graciously went out of her way to answer my questions via e-mail, it's not quite yet the Oscars of sports.

For instance, when you're nominated for an Oscar, even if you don't stand a chance of winning, you darn sure make it to the Kodak Theater for the show and the scene.

Clijsters had to be in Indian Wells this week, at the tennis tournament there.  Bolt, to emphasize, stayed home in Jamaica.

Maybe the timing of the Laureus show should be changed? If the awards were held early in January, it would stake out a defining space on the international, and American, sports calendar -- when, frankly, not much is going on.

Moreover, Laureus' ties to Hollywood ought to be developed further.  To music, too.

Another thing that would help, at least in the United States: A move away from the strong Laureus focus over the years in tennis and motor racing -- Formula One, not NASCAR.  Two of the awards Wednesday went to Formula One (British driver Jenson Button and the team for which he drove, Brawn GP), two to tennis, to Clijsters and to Serena Williams.

Whether such a move is realistic is unclear.

"You know, it's so tough in the United States, there is so much choice and college sports are unbelievably popular, which to anyone outside the U.S. would be very hard to believe," Clijsters said.

Putting aside for the moment the disconnect between Williams' outburst at the U.S. Open and whether, given that, Laureus should have honored her this particular year as it goes about promoting "hope and self-respect" among children -- other American nominees for individual and team awards included Sanya Richards, Lindsey Vonn, the Los Angeles Lakers, the New York Yankees, Lance Armstrong, Brett Favre, Tom Watson, skateboarder Chris Cole and surfer Greg Long.

None won.

Just another thought or two for the Laureus people as they go forward, because they do indeed do good work:

Marcus Allen, the NFL Hall of Famer, is a Laureus academy member. If a goal for the next 10 years is to become more relevant in the United States, and it ought to be because America still means sponsor dollars, wouldn't it make sense to lean on Allen to get the NFL more involved?

In that spirit: It wouldn't hurt if Brett Favre won something. He's kind of a big deal.