NFL star Chris Long is donating his entire year's salary to a great cause.
His $1 million salary will go to help fund education.
One of the NFL's top players won't be taking home a paycheck this season. He's doing something much better.
Now playing in his 10th season in the league, Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long decided to up his charity game. At the beginning of the season, just weeks after white supremacists marched through his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, Long committed to donating his first six game checks of the season to funding scholarships for local students.
Long during the Eagles' Sept. 10, 2017, game. Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images.
"In August, we watched people fill our hometown streets with hatred and bigotry," Long said in a press release. "Megan and I decided to try to combat those actions with our own positive investment in our community."
That same day, he teased a larger undertaking, promising to share more in coming weeks. Today, he unveiled that new project, committing his final 10 game checks to funding educational programs in the three communities he's played for during his career (Philadelphia, St. Louis, and New England), saying that he hopes it'll "inspire others to invest time, money or passion into our communities and into our kids." Long's base salary for the 2017 season is $1 million.
Long's career has been marked by the good he's done off the field as much as what he's done on it.
In 2015, Long launched the Waterboys initiative, an off-shoot of his charity, the Chris Long Foundation. Waterboys was created to bring clean drinking water to communities in rural East Africa. To date, the group has funded the creation of 26 wells. Long's foundation has also done some great work addressing homelessness, helping returning veterans get back on their feet, and providing support for youth programs.
He's also been a thoughtful, supportive voice during the controversy surrounding NFL players kneeling during the anthem. Asked what he thought about Colin Kaepernick's protests in 2016, he told ESPN that while he wasn't comfortable kneeling, he supported Kaepernick and other players who did.
"I play in a league that's 70 percent black and my peers, guys I come to work with, guys I respect who are very socially aware and are intellectual guys, if they identify something that they think is worth putting their reputations on the line, creating controversy, I'm going to listen to those guys," he said.
This season, he's shown solidarity with teammates Rodney McLeod and Malcolm Jenkins, who both decided to hold a raised fist during the anthem, by putting his arm around Jenkins's shoulder.
Long stands beside teammates McLeod and Jenkins during the national anthem on Oct. 8, 2017. Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images.
While Long's history of charity work and allyship is hard to match, it's not entirely out of the ordinary.
"What good does kneeling do?" asked some observers of the recent protests. "If these spoiled millionaires REALLY wanted [to] 'improve' these communities, shouldn't they use their money [to] support and move into these communities?" asked another.
The truth is that professional athletes have been doing all the things that people suggest could be done instead of kneeling — which league officials have been trying to pressure them to abandon. Even though he's not on anyone's roster this season, Kaepernick has continued to make good on his million-dollar charity pledge, outlining his actions on his website. Deshaun Watson of the Houston Texans gave his first paycheck to stadium workers affected by Hurricane Harvey. The list of thoughtful, charitable acts goes on and on.
Long's bold act of giving back to his community is more than a publicity stunt; it's a way of life that he and many of his NFL colleagues share.



A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
At least it wasn't Bubbles.
You just know there's a person named Whiskey out there getting a kick out of this. 


An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.