NFL’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month is fun. It’s surreal seeing Ray Lewis chasing down a quarterback in his pink glove gloves and cleats. While nothing Brett Favre does should surprise us anymore, it’s still weird seeing the Wrangler man in bright pink schwag.
It’s all for a great cause. The players autograph their pink gear after the games. It then gets auctioned off with all of the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society and team-specific charities. Everyone wins, and there’s nothing to complain about, right? Not so fast.
Breast cancer is a big problem. It’s great that the NFL is contributing to disease awareness, but is it the right disease?
Let’s face it. The NFL’s core demographic isn’t women. It’s men. It’s the guy eating brats and drinking beers in the parking lot before each game. It’s the guy scarfing down a couple dozen wings and drinking a few pitchers on Monday night. And for these guys, breast cancer isn’t the biggest problem. For every 100 breast cancer cases, less than one is male.
Over at Reddit there’s a great conversation going on about what the NFL should really be supporting. Heart disease is the number-one killer in the United States. It accounts for more than 615,000 deaths per year. It even kills more women than breast cancer.
Between 70 and 89 percent of sudden cardiac events occur in men. In 2006, over 315,000 men died from heart disease. This is the real problem facing NFL fans. And if you asked most of these guys, they wouldn’t even know it. Most men suffer their first heart attack at 66—outside of the league’s core demo—but it’s behavior earlier in life than can either lead to or prevent heart problems.
Sure, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and February is American Heart Month. But the NFL is our most popular league and one of the most powerful voices among American males. Rather than just attaching itself onto something convenient, shouldn’t the NFL put its charitable efforts towards something that makes a little more sense?
Even if it’s not heart disease, the league should be trying to make men more aware of diseases that could actually affect them. Maybe it’s prostate cancer or maybe it’s something else, but it’s not breast cancer.
What do you think? Should the NFL continue to support breast cancer awareness? Or would there efforts be better placed supporting another cause?
About Ryan O'Hanlon
Why not change charities every month?
My problem is with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Cancer is cancer, but there has been information provided that people believe breast cancer is the deadliest, this is not true. Does that make it any less painful to deal with? No.
Some say that BCAM is meant, now, to raise awareness of cancer, in general. If that’s the case, why don’t we just call it… Cancer Awareness Month!
Is the money raised going to the general cause of fighting cancer? Even if it is, a majority of it is funneled directly into research combating breast cancer.
Let’s not pigeon hole the efforts, you just end up pushing potential supporters away.
the arguement is that it affects the NFL fans because they all have either a mother, wife or sister who could be affected by breast cancer and most men, it appears don’t care much about their own health but they do seem to care about their mothers, wives and sisters.
It doesn’t surprise me that you would assume that because so few men are diagnosed with breast cancer, they are not at all affected by the disease. It also doesn’t surprise me that you’d think the NFL would only target their core demographic when conducting awareness campaigns and sponsorships. You clearly didn’t study marketing in college.
I’m pretty sure the NFL took into careful consideration all of the facts when pursuing a sponsorship with the ACS during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. What you’re not taking into consideration is that this “core demographic” of men have wives, mothers, daughters, nieces, aunts and grandmothers. Brett Farve’s wife is a survivor – but you’re not thinking about that, either.
Not knowing how the NFL and ACS plan to measure the success of this campaign or how many men and women they are trying to reach, if “A Crucial Catch” gets even 30% of men to talk to their women in their lives about the importance of early detection, or inspires 25% of their female demographic to talk to their doctor about their history and risk factors, that’s a BFD.
I get what you’re saying and congratulations on writing an article aimed at not raising money for a deadly disease with such aplomb, but I think if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
The NFL is raising money for a worthwhile charity. And if we’re being honest, they’re probably also trying to rope in more female fans while they’re at it. Besides, if you aim the charity at heart disease you’re telling these men not to eat brats, drink beer and stuff themselves on Sunday. And without that, what’s the point of watching football??
Firstly, it should be noted that the NFL’s most recent figures show that 48% of their viewers are women.
The NFL runs several significant philanthropic campaigns each year, targeted towards men. For one, there’s the “Know Your Stats” program with the American Urological Association, which gets great play each year. Major League Baseball does a huge Prostate Cancer campaign each Father Day. It’s hard to notice blue in the midst of many blue teams, but it’s out there.
The reason that this campaign makes such a splash each year is because it’s counterintuitive. If, for example, ACS relied on a partnership with a fashion event, it would not turn nearly as many heads. Pink stands out on a football field full of green, red, blue and black (etc.).
Most men know a woman tho, and all of them came out of one, so that argument I don’t buy.
You could perhaps argue that the cause doesn’t *deserve* so much attention if you wanted, but that would be a pretty tough argument to win.
If it’s true that it’s mostly men that watch the NFL, it would make sense for the organization to come up with a gesture that would gain the attention of large numbers of women.
If only there was a cause that the NFL could support that all women also support…
Right. Instead, they should just support the “guy eating brats and drinking beers in the parking lot before each game” because that’s clearly a healthy lifestyle choice to begin with. I’ll bet you a good percentage of those 315,000 thought so.
Right on. Look, if the NFL were to target heart disease it would have to discourage the deliberate obesity of every linemen in the league. Of course, they could also draw attention to concussions but that would mean dressing in whatever color they want and then no one playing at all.
Breast cancer is a terrible illness. It is not the only terrible illness in our community. Mental illness and Suicide carry with them very high rates of suffering and mortality but fail to attract serious funding to further research or to help the sufferer and their carers. We need to share the load. Unashamedly.
I have a hard time telling any person or organization trying to do good that they should focus on a different type of good. That being said I think this article was written with an aim to address the fact that men’s health risks are not getting enough attention. I remember the red dress campaign to raise awareness of heart disease in women but I don’t remember any health campaigns targeting men. This is a problem larger than the NFL. It should be addressed on the national level and also in family conversations and doctor’s offices.
It doesn’t surprise me that this topic would generate on Reddit. The misogyny there is overwhelming. The only women they like are the ones in the pornography that they distribute and giggle about all day.
That’s just stupid. Every man who has a mother or a wife or sisters or daughters is indirectly affected with this disease, and I think it’s wonderful that the NFL recognizes that and is trying to do something good.
A great deal of the money generated by BCAM in the NFL goes towards other efforts to raise funds for research; further research funding iis the most efficient way of making improvements of treating/preventing this cancer.
Why should the NFL jump ship to support heart disease foundations when most of those affecteed by heart disease lead an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle? Think SNL’s Ditka skit back in the day (daaaaa bears)…why should we allocate the scarce resources to coming out with new drugs or treatment that will further motivate/allow people to live unhealthy lives?
I understand the argument for putting money into prostate cancer or male-oriented diseases, but I disagree with the idea of pumping limited resources into research for diseases that can otherwise be prevented by a more healthy lifestyle….
Take the money provided through donations to fighting heart disease and apply it towards education and implementing healthier choices while at the stadium watching the game?
I’m sure a major part of BCAM is education, aka prevention, aka early detection, aka wake the hell up and check yourself. Is that not what would be part of a heart disease foundation’s purpose?
Are we really saying that, because most NFL fans are dudes, the NFL shouldn’t support breast cancer? Do these dudes not have wives, moms, daughters or sisters?
Furthermore, all the players may be dudes but there are a ton of women involved in the NFL, from doctors, therapy and conditioning to female agents to the Commissioner’s office and Team ownership.
And let’s face it, we spend way more researching how to keep old guys in hair and erections than we do on a cure for breast cancer (or ANY cancer, for that matter) so, yeah, I think this article has got it ass backwards. The NFL should be doing more.
I’m late to the party here, but you base your entire piece on a false assumption. Recent market research indicates that women consist of 50% of the NFL’s demographic. That alone is reason enough for the product to support a cause that has traditionally been considered “female.” That is, of course, not even taking into account the comments above that many men have females in their lives for whom the topic is an important one. Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to non-proprietary/confidential report (but trust me, I’ve seen many of them). The SBD article on the Scarborough Research Database is already 4 years old.