The Rams defensive line has been donating $1,000 for each sack to a local homeless shelter. Two Rams defensive linemen decided that wasn’t enough.
Chris Long and William Hayes (pictured) chose to become homeless for a day (and a night), in order to better understand what the homeless experience. Hayes came up with the idea, and Long decided Hayes wasn’t going to do it alone.
The project resulted in an feature on ESPN’s SportsCenter and companion item posted at ESPN.com.
“We don’t understand,” Long said. “We weren’t hoping to understand. We were just hoping to gain a little perspective and put kind of a feeling with the cause that we had been [donating to] from a distance the last couple of years.”
As explained by Elizabeth Merrill of ESPN.com, Hayes didn’t want cameras present for the project, because Hayes didn’t want to create the impression that Hayes and Long were looking for positive publicity. Eventually, Hayes relented in order to help raise awareness to the problem.
It’s good they did. Take a few minutes to see the end result, either on ESPN or at ESPN.com.