During the month of October, the NFL heavily promotes Breast Cancer Awareness. Players, referees, cheerleaders and coaches all sport pink gear and accessories. Fans readily buy pink equipment in support of the fight against Breast Cancer.

However, what fans do not realize is that only about 8 percent of money spent on pink sales actually goes towards breast cancer research. The NFL is a $9.3 billion industry. A paltry .02% of that enormous figure will be spent on research for breast cancer.

While this is not only the NFL’s fault, the league can do a better job of educating the fans on how their money is spent. Instead of promoting its own merchandise as support for Breast Cancer Awareness, the NFL could instead allow fans to donate directly to the American Cancer Society (ACS).

As a multi-billion dollar industry, the NFL and its constituents can keep a lesser percentage of the 87.5% that the company that makes the merchandise and the company that sells the merchandise keep from the pink sales.

Considering that the NFL is selling Breast Cancer Awareness jerseys for the price of $104.95, of which only $8.40 will go to research, fans are barely contributing to cancer research. Instead of giving that $104.95 to the NFL and receiving a pink jersey, if fans gave that money straight to the ACS, they would be donating a whopping 12 times as much to cancer research.

Even though the NFL may be promoting Breast Cancer Awareness more than it is donating to research, it can certainly do a much better job of donating a bigger percentage of the revenue generated by the Breast Cancer Awareness sales. The NFL has an inordinate amount of money and it makes even more money by “promoting” Breast Cancer Awareness. However, the pathetic .02 percent it donates towards cancer research is downright unacceptable.