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By MOWebDev
By: Savannah Sherman Doyle
If you are anything like me, life in the fall is consumed by football. Since a young girl, I can remember watching Sunday Night Football with my father and brother. Now, as an avid Baltimore Ravens fan, my Sundays are dedicated to watching them play. Many people can attest to the saying that football is more than just a game, and that can have a unique, personal meaning for anyone.
A few years back, I noticed that the National Football League (NFL) teams started wearing multi-colored gear during October games, a switch from their Pink October campaign. Since 2009, the NFL has launched the Crucial Catch program, which initially raised awareness for breast cancer and encouraged annual mammograms and early detection for women. In 2017, the NFL expanded its campaign, so in addition to breast cancer, the Crucial Catch initiative expanded awareness to increased early screening for multiple types of cancer. While I thought the campaign was admirable, I did not think much of it and was focused more on watching football.
Leading up to the winter of 2020, I remember my mother sharing with our family about a dark spot she found on her body. During this time, I was living at home and lost my daycare job because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I spent much of my time with my parents. I remember we as family encouraged my mother to go to the doctor to have her spot checked. I thought nothing of it at the time, as I was more scared of my parents getting sick with COVID. Fast forward to December of 2020, my husband and I have settled into our new townhome, and I get a phone call from my parents that my mother got her results…it tested positive for cancer. I get in my car, immediately drove from Baltimore to Northern Virginia, and find my mother, father, and brother with fear on their faces. My mother was scared. I was scared. We were all scared. But I knew, as a family, we were going to get through it. Six years later, my mother is still battling her cancer and has undergone several surgeries, while still being a mom, wife, sister, daughter, mentor, and professor. There are points in our lives that we can look back on and say, “that is where our lives changed forever.” I can point back to December of 2020 and say that test result changed our lives forever, especially my mother’s. If it were not for her going to the doctors to screen for cancer, I do not know if she would be with us here today.
The Crucial Catch campaign is a partnership between the NFL and the American Cancer Society, in which their mission is to fight cancer through early detection and risk reduction, and increase access to lifesaving cancer screenings. Per the American Cancer Society, since 2009, Crucial Catch has raised more than $38 million and has reached over 2.7 million people with interventions to increase cancer screenings. This campaign is incredibly important because the 5-year survival rate for many cancers is over 90% when detected early (American Cancer Society, 2026). Each October, every NFL team raises awareness during their Crucial Catch game, which features on-field and in-stadium Crucial Catch elements, like honoring cancer survivors and those currently battling cancer.
From a time when I thought the multicolored NFL team logos were cool looking, now I see and respect the need and immense impact the Crucial Catch campaign has. Like I said earlier, football is much more than a game. It unites us for many reasons. Every October, it gives us a time to learn more about the tools needed to help us better understand early detection and ways to reduce our cancer risk. Early cancer screening saves lives. I know it saved my mother’s life.
