Christian McCaffrey is making a significant contribution.
The NFL great chatted about The Logan Project, his newest effort with The Christian McCaffrey Foundation that honors the memory of his super fan, Logan Preston Hale, who died in late 2021 after a fight with childhood cancer, to keep his dream alive.
McCaffrey, 26, remembered his first contact with Hale, a 12-year-old fan who looked up to the athlete throughout his six-year stay with the North Carolina Panthers before being traded last autumn.
Someone from the NFL reached out to him and requested that he sign a ball for a kid who had cancer and was presently in the hospital getting treatment, McCaffrey, who is now with the San Francisco 49ers, says. Additionally, he always responds positively to requests, so he signed the ball right away.
As the recently engaged running back got to know Hale more, he realized that he was “a huge fan” of both him and the Panthers as a team. Then he found out about six months later, or maybe a year later, that he had passed away, McCaffrey recalls with sadness.
He continues to say that it hits him pretty hard, as they told him that he got buried in his jersey. He believes one always realizes that as an athlete and someone in the spotlight, one has an influence on individuals, but he didn’t realize how much.
And, just as McCaffrey influenced Hale, the little child influenced McCaffrey, motivating him to act. What was his initial thought? “I need to do this quickly and let his name live on forever,” he remembers.
“Although he is no longer with us, I hope his name will be remembered for a long time.”
So McCaffrey got in touch with his family and “ended up helping the mum with the funeral,” he adds. The spark that sparked The Logan Project was reading Hale’s obituary.
In his obituary, he stated that he wished to provide Xboxes to children all over the world so that they could communicate with and stay in touch with their friends. McCaffrey is currently working hard to make Hale’s dream a reality.
How? The Logan Bowl is a live, bracket-style Madden Tournament starring McCaffrey’s fellow NFL players that will be streamed online to generate donations for The Logan Project. The funds earned will be used to deliver gaming consoles to children’s hospitals in order to link youngsters with friends and favorite athletes and bring back a sense of normalcy.
Saquon Barkely of the New York Giants and Juju Smith-Schuster of the New England Patriots are among the NFL players participating in the Bowl, and McCaffrey says their presence means a lot.
He adds that he believes what he does is football, and undoubtedly, we all love the game, but to be able to do something bigger than oneself is really cool. It just goes to show how tight-knit the football community and the NFL are, so having a lot of these guys not only jumping on board but being so happy to do it says a lot about them.
He is simply grateful for this game, McCaffrey says. This game has given them so much.
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