Oct 19, 2013 2 min read

It’s October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The National Football League is on board with promoting and making it visible throughout all of their games. Losing family or friends to any form of cancer is devastating, and for those inflicted the treatment is sometimes worse than the disease.

Rather than painting the players and equipment pink for the month in a show of support, wouldn’t it be nice if the league and each team would just cut a check to the Cancer Society? The NFL is a multi-billion dollar business. Doing some quick math of 60 players per team, 32 teams and about $200 for a piur of cleats comes out to $384,000. This doesn’t take into account coaches, trainers, managers and other team personnel dressed in pink, or the wristbands, socks, yardmarkers, penalty flags and everything else that gets pinked for the month.

Rather than dress up the stadiums, players and officials, commissioner Roger Goodell should ante up $1 million from each team. Compared to the money that the league makes each and every Sunday, a million dollars is a drop in the bucket. If the commissioner and league want to show some support, then do it from the checkbook instead of the field.

Players likely would get involved. If a 350-pound defensive tackle who makes $5 million a year was given an option of wearing pink or donating $1,000, which do you think he’d choose? Let’s calculate: $1,000 per player, 60 players per team, 32 teams equals $1.92 million. That would be some real support.

The NFL fined Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III $10,000 for being on the sideline during a preseason game and wearing what was referred to as non-approved apparel. He wore a hat without a team or NFL insignia. If they can levy that much money for such an infraction, the $32 million would be nothing. Think about that in February when Super Bowl tickets will loom around $2,500 each.

Frank Trapuzzano

Washington