While 14 NFL fran­chis­es are using their sta­di­ums in the vot­ing process, for­mer play­ers such as Hall of Famer Will Shields are going into com­mu­ni­ties to help with reg­is­tra­tions and mail-in ballots.

Shields, who received the league’s Wal­ter Pay­ton Man of the Year award in 2003 and was a mem­ber of the 2000s All-Decade Team, rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of “doing your part.”

Through his Will To Suc­ceed Foun­da­tion, part­ner­ing with the Black Archives Youth Coali­tion Net­work, Shields held a get out the vote event Tues­day at the Black Archives of Mid-Amer­i­ca in Kansas City, Mis­souri. Oth­er such ini­tia­tives are planned for the Kansas side of the city and in more com­mu­ni­ties head­ing toward the Nov. 3 elections.

Tues­day was the first day in Mis­souri when cit­i­zens could vote, using bal­lots they could take to Union Sta­tion and cast.

“We had a reg­is­tra­tion set up at Black Archives where peo­ple who need­ed to change address­es or need­ed a notary or need­ed to reg­is­ter could do so,” Shields says. “To make sure every­thing was done and prop­er. We’re try­ing to make it easy for peo­ple to vote and do it for free so they don’t have to go through any hoops.

“We just want to make sure every­body gets an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cast their vote and every­one can be say­ing, ‘Hey I actu­al­ly did my part, to get my say in and be part of the com­mu­ni­ty,’ and mak­ing sure they had time and a place to do it.

“We even had a van set up for those who had pre-reg­is­tered so they could go to (Union Sta­tion) to cast their vote.”

Shields and two oth­er for­mer play­ers — Chester Pitts and Steven Jack­son — who are involved in “boots on the ground” pro­grams stress the need to pro­vide all sorts of ser­vices to help peo­ple vote.

In the Austin, Texas, area Pitts, who played nine pro sea­sons as a guard and tack­le, has been direct­ly involved in get­ting out the vote for years. Often, he has char­tered a bus and helped the elder­ly get to their polling places. He has sim­i­lar plans for this fall dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

“We end­ed up tak­ing a lot of seniors that absolute­ly want­ed to go vote — and we were more than hap­py to dri­ve them in the van or bus. It was like a shut­tle ser­vice going back and forth,” Pitts says.

“We have had some dis­cus­sions of social dis­tanc­ing on a bus and wear­ing masks, but when you are talk­ing about a pop­u­la­tion at a much high­er risk for COVID-19, should you real­ly have to risk it all to have to go vote? There are a whole lot of peo­ple who risked it all for oth­ers to be able to vote. Should we be hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion wrapped around that in 2020? How is it not a no-brain­er for every­one to have the abil­i­ty to go vote?

“I own a school bus for my res­i­den­tial treat­ment cen­ter for young girls … and will use my bus — and real­ly for any­body who needs a ride to get to vote, we will get a ride for them. We are licensed to vis­it oth­er facil­i­ties, senior facil­i­ties. We will make sure we have all the rules and under­stand the same rules as pub­lic bus­es have. If there is a way to help some­one to get to exer­cise their pub­lic right to vote, we will do that.”

Nat­u­ral­ly, the pan­dem­ic has placed obsta­cles in the way of, well, every­thing. Actu­al­ly get­ting into the com­mu­ni­ty phys­i­cal­ly is a challenge.

Jack­son, a Pro Bowl run­ning back for the Rams who played 12 NFL sea­sons, finds val­ue in social media for reach­ing the pub­lic — par­tic­u­lar­ly youths.

“It is pow­er­ful as a retired guy to see what has been hap­pen­ing,” he says. “I thought I was bring­ing light in the St. Louis com­mu­ni­ty because I was active there for so long. But I also know we have so far to go, and how these young peo­ple have social media and how they can learn so much of what they need to know about vot­ing and government.

“Social media can be a great tool, it sure can. A lot of times we see that social media can be used for very divi­sive things. But if you have peo­ple who want to learn, with curi­ous minds, — and let’s say they have favorite ath­letes, and those ath­letes shared on social media what they are doing in their com­mu­ni­ty — those things are pow­er­ful for get­ting out the word. If you put a jack­et on it, those are things I like to be a part of.”

Jack­son, Pitts and Shields are encour­aged to see cur­rent play­ers get­ting out the vote, too. They believe the plat­form of any pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete should be direct­ed pri­mar­i­ly toward com­mu­ni­ty service.

One of those active play­ers, Titans tight end MyCole Pruitt, stress­es that vot­ing is “the first step we have to take in fix­ing things. Obvi­ous­ly, there’s no quick fix, there’s no instant fix. Some of these ide­olo­gies have been around for 400-plus years, and that’s some­thing that’s hard to just eas­i­ly fix.

“But if we take that first step,” he adds, “and go out and vote, hope­ful­ly we can make this place a bet­ter place for our chil­dren and the future.”

AP Pro Foot­ball Writer Tere­sa M. Walk­er contributed.