What Memphis is doing for its DeAngelo Williams Foundation Breast Caner Awareness Game

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and Memphis will look to raise awareness on Thursday during its “The DeAngelo Williams Foundation Breast Cancer Awareness Game” against East Carolina. Most teams raise awareness by wearing pink accessories, but the Tigers will do things differently under Charles Huff.

Huff met with the media on Tuesday and talked about the importance of that game and raising awareness for Breast Cancer.

“This game will be our DeAngelo Williams Breast Cancer Awareness Game,” Huff said. “Where we contribute and acknowledge, obviously it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the importance it is to DeAngelo Williams and his family and his foundation that’s here.”

The sport of football has become known for the pink accessories in October, but Charles Huff said his team won’t wear any pink accessories this month or during Thursday night’s game against the Pirates. Instead, the Tigers will give that money to the DeAngelo Williams Foundation.

“We do something a little different in our program,” Huff said. “So, the money we would spend on buying 200 pink socks and 200 pink towels we invest that money into the DeAngelo Williams Foundation.”

Huff is also educating his players on Breast Cancer and having players and coaches give testimonies about how the disease has impacted their families. According to the American Cancer Society, 1 in 8 women (roughly 13%) will have breast cancer during their lifetime, and they estimate that “about 321,910 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women.”

In addition to spreading the awareness to his team, he is asking players to give a free-will donation to the DeAngelo Williams Foundation, and he will match their donation. It appears that Huff’s approach is more about doing instead of just raising awareness.

“We have them make a free-will donation, it could be 50 cents it could be $100,” Huff said. “We collect that as a team. I will personally match whatever the team raises, and we will make that donation as well to the DeAngelo Williams Foundation. I’m just a believer in we have enough awareness. What we need is resources to help eradicate this disease.”

It’s an interesting approach, especially in the changing landscape of college athletics. Players are now making money, and Huff said he wants his players to be able to give back to the community or to a cause. 

He is using this as an opportunity to educate them on how you can do that.

In addition, Huff said players on his team will be working directly with Williams to create a shirt that will be sold with the proceeds going directly to his foundation. 

Huff said he talked to Williams about doing this instead of wearing pink to spread awareness, and he said the former running back was all in on the idea.

Memphis won’t be wearing the pink accessories, but Huff has made it clear that they are doing thing behind the scenes to help make a difference.

“Yea the pink towels are great, don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking any program that does that, but I want our program to make an actual impact.”