Eagles defensive end Chris Long—who skipped the Patriots’ White House visit and supported teammate Malcolm Jenkins’s anthem protest earlier this year—said today that he would be using the rest of the season’s game checks to start the Pledge 10 for Tomorrow campaign.
Long will donate the money to “organizations supporting educational equity and opportunity” based in the three cities he’s played in: St. Louis, Boston, and Philadelphia. He used his first six game checks to fund scholarships in Charlottesville, Va., which means he will use his whole 2017 salary to educate others. Long is in the first year of a two-year, $4.5 million deal with the Eagles, and his base pay for the year is $1 million.
“I’m playing the entire 2017 NFL season without collecting income because I believe that education is the best gateway to a better tomorrow for EVERYONE in America,” Long said on his website. He told the Associated Press that the campaign was about equality and upward mobility:
“My wife and I have been passionate about education being a gateway for upward mobility and equality,” Long told the Associated Press. “I think we can all agree that equity in education can help effect change that we all want to see in this country.”