Breast Cancer Awareness Night?

We just did this week. Lots of people in pink. Don't think the American Breast Cancer Society saw any donations from the evening, just a publicity stunt, which is why we did not participate as a team.

We allow kids to wear Pink accessories as long as they donate $20 to Breast Cancer. Also, we take the 50/50 or Split the Pot, whatever you call it, and donate it to the cause. We collect the money and send it in following the game.

I like that. How do you organize it?

I asked my players to donate between 10 and 20 dollars and then I gave them pink socks and wrist bands and then we give the money we donate to our local Night of Hope chapter. The organization was real excited to hear we were doing it. They use the money to help with medical and other bills for cancer patients. I think it can be a real beneficial learning experience for the players not just a "hey we get to wear pink" for a game.

That's all well and good, except be weary of the who you give your money to. For example, Susan G. Komen only spends about 20% of their donations on actual cancer research. The rest is PR, executive salaries, lawsuits against other organizations that use the phrase "the cure", etc. 

We don't let our players wear pink because the whole "Pink" thing started as a marketing ploy by the NFL to appeal to women. 

I like the donation idea. I think I'll go that route in the future. I think then you take it out of just wearing pink because its cool to do it and takes it into really doing something for a cause.

I would not let my kids do this. We would have a "donate your money to the actual cause" promotion instead of the "hey look at me" aspect of this.

We are doing ONE game - they can pink themselves out all they want...

We do it. Everyone loves it. We sale pink t shirts at school and at the gate. Proceeds go to relay for life.

My story with the pink stuff.....we were going have the kids all wear pink socks on one night later in October. I (the assistant jv coach) tell a jv kid at our first game in October to take off the pink socks because everybody else was wearing black socks and we were going to be uniform. Less than a week later our superintendent gets a call from a News Station doing an investigation on our JV team refusing to let players wear pink to support breast cancer (love how they miss the part about us doing it later in the month as a team not as individuals)....My problem with it is with JV games attended by very few people I just don't see the support for the cause I see a handful of kids who wanna be individuals rather than team guys.....but hey that's just me. No money goes anywhere and I highly doubt the Pink Nike Socks, wristbands, gloves they buy sees a dime go anywhere besides Phil Knight's pocket.....but then again I am a skeptic

I think every program needs to have a policy one way or another now. I was at a school that had no position one way or another, and the kids ended up with all sorts of pink for the whole month. Which is fine, but we had shoe laces, wristbands, random tape jobs, one kid even put pink tape on his helmet over our red stripe so he would have a pink stripe to show how aware he was!
I am all for the pink but I am also all for actually raising money that will support cancer research, all that garb didn't do anything other than look terrible. I love the idea of a team issued pink item that they can purchase and we can donate as a team. A big theme night that donates a piece of the gate is also a very good idea.

I think most of this is look at me. We are doing pink socks this month, if I had my druthers we would support fighting all cancer and do it for one week instead of a month. I agree that Schools should adopt a policy, too much bs PC in the schools and our society.

We had our "Pinkout" night. It was fairly successful. The students did great at wearing pink, but the rest of the crowd was mixed. I wasn't a huge fan of the pink shenanigans (not because I'm not supportive of the cause, but because I feel kids don't understand the true meaning and it's really patronizing millions of people that are affected).

We ended offering a solution to fans by offering them an avenue to donate money to the American Cancer Society, but nothing direct from the gate. I was kind of disappointed, but what can I say? We won. Kids can wear pink, green, purple, rainbow (but NOT red, that color is like satan's name in our fieldhouse) as long as they show up and play. As much as a I hate the individulalism and patronizing.

Yeah...but that pink helmet will probably nab the Ducks 3 5 star athletes...