Chip Scoggins: When Santa Claus wears a uniform

Peter Mortell unfurled his shopping list with a look of excitement, which is how you'd expect a college student to react when handed $452 to spend at an electronics store.

As part of the Citrus Bowl gift package, each Gophers player receives a gift card to Best Buy. The team will hold a private shopping spree at a Best Buy in Orlando after it arrives for bowl festivities. Players are free to buy whatever they desire with that $452 allotment.

Mortell did his shopping early. He couldn't wait to tackle his long wish list. Except he didn't buy presents for himself.

The Gophers' All-Big Ten punter feels blessed. He's getting a free education and playing college football. He's happy, healthy. Life is good.

He wanted to do something to help someone less fortunate. Mortell decided to use his gift card to buy presents for boys and girls living at St. Joseph's Home for Children, a Catholic Charities program that provides shelter and other needs for kids in crisis situations.

"I've been given so much," Mortell said. "It's time for me to start giving back."

This has been a tough year in the sports world. High-profile cases of child abuse and domestic abuse consumed sports pages, airwaves and social media discussions.

Bad things happen every year in the sports world. Athletes commit crimes and do dumb stuff. Those headlines will appear this coming year, and the next year, and the year after that.

Guaranteed.

Those stories deserve our attention, particularly when they involve important societal issues. But too often we overlook the good deeds in sports that serve as a counterbalance to the ugly side.

Teams in this market provided a handful of examples in the past few weeks alone. Timberwolves players took 22 kids from the Minnesota Adoption Resource Network on a shopping spree. Each kid received a $500 gift card to Target.

The Wild invited a local sled hockey team to hang out and share stories with players.

Twins manager Paul Molitor and former greats Jack Morris and Tony Oliva hosted a breakfast to help nonprofit Crescent Cove's efforts to build the state's first pediatric hospice.

All of those acts of kindness came within the past few weeks. We could write a column on charity work of our local teams every day of the year and still not touch them all.

It becomes an impossible exercise trying to pick and choose, or attempt to determine if one is more important than another. Or discern if something is a selfless act or motivated by a desire to make a person look good in the public eye.

So we often ignore it. Not today.

Twin Cities sports teams can drive us crazy with their decisions, their losing and their behavior. They look dysfunctional at times.

That message hit home as Mortell filled his cart full of presents for some kids who could use a warm embrace right now.

"I wanted to be a part of something bigger," Mortell said. "To be able to help people in need who wouldn't normally get these Christmas presents is something that far exceeds a $450 value."

At the Timberwolves' shopping event, kids were asked to divide their wish list into two categories: want and need. Under need, one little girl wrote "a mom and a dad."

We can talk about the Wolves' crummy record or their woeful defense another time.

On this day, we should reflect on the joy that little girl felt being treated like a princess by some really tall basketball players.