OFFER: Purchase a monthly subscription, receive two additional months for FREE!

The police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin grabbed the attention of the sports world Wednesday, with player protests causing the postponement of games in the NBA, WNBA, MLB and MLS.

The events sparked a conversation at Florida after the football team practiced Thursday.

“We talked about it today as a team,” UF coach Dan Mullen said. “I think it's really important that people educate themselves. There's a lot of ignorance in the world. … One of the best things we can do is try to educate ignorant people. The best way to respect somebody is to try to educate yourself about them, and if you do that, you have a chance of spreading a positive message.

“Spreading a great message of respect and love to other people in the world more than kind of hatred, ignorance, or those types of things. Those are obviously terrible, scary things. And you know what, I’ve never been in that situation, thankfully. I hope I never am and I think it’s terrible that people that are in those situations are even in them. I think the better we can educate ourselves, the better off we’ll be.”

Mullen was asked to give an example of how he’s been educated or had his opinion changed in recent months. He brought up the “All Lives Matter” response to the Black Lives Matter movement and why he disagrees.

“When Black Lives Matter comes out and people want to fight and say All Lives Matter,” Mullen said. “You look at that and say, 'OK, I can see how that makes sense.' And then you go educate yourself. ... After the Boston Marathon bombing, the Boston Strong shirts came out. Well, why isn’t everybody strong? Why does it only get to be Boston that gets to be strong, right? When you think about it in terms of that, of course all lives do matter.

“But that’s not what we’re talking about right now. We’re talking about this specific situation where we’re seeing racial injustice has happened and we’re trying to draw light to that. We’re not saying other things aren’t important. … When you say Black Lives Matter, it doesn’t mean I’m forgetting about other people. It means I’m focusing on the social injustice issues that we currently have in our country and let’s focus on that. That’s what it pays attention to.”

Mullen is paying attention to both his players and coaches on these issues, and wants to hear from them in person. The team decided Thursday to no longer hold Zoom meetings because “there’s just no personal aspect,” Mullen said. He also discussed the benefit of learning about other cultures and religions, which football facilitates.

“With Mohamoud [Diabate] being Muslim, I think that’s very educational to people,” he said. “One of the great places that I got to coach as a young coach was the University of Utah. You get out there and you have a giant LDS community. You get to learn about the religion and the background and the people. And there was a Polynesian community. I’ve always been someone who loved to learn about different cultures.

“My mom is not a US citizen, she’s a British citizen. I had family that way. … You get to learn about different people and get to respect different ways, different thoughts, different beliefs. You know what? I get frustrated with myself when I’m ignorant to different things, but we all are at times. I get really frustrated when I’m ignorant about things. Why would I not process this and think about this in a better manner? It happens to everybody.”

In addition to the four pro leagues postponing games, at least eight NFL teams and the Kentucky Wildcats reportedly did not practice Thursday in response to Blake’s shooting. Mullen said football is “kind of a safe place” for his players and they didn’t consider not practicing.

“No. Our guys love football, they want to play football,” Mullen said. “They really enjoy being out there practicing, getting ready for a football season. But I think they’re very conscious about using the platform that they have to do it.

“We had a great discussion about it after practice, great discussion about everything, and I think we'll still have more. We've had some in the past, we had some today. We need to have more. We’ve got to find even better ways to do it.”