I have an opportunity for you to win some great prizes, but you'll have to excuse this personal thread to get to the why and how.

The basics are that we are having a fundraiser for one of my closest friends (dating back to the mullet days) who has been diagnosed with ALS.

Jeff is my age but he found true love much later in life and as a result has sons who are 6 and 4 and a stepdaughter who is 27.

I'm sure you can imagine the fear and uncertainty that comes with battling a disease with no cure with a young family.

One of Jeff’s rougher moments came a few weeks ago when his son asked him to change the batteries in a toy and he didn’t have the strength or dexterity in his hands to do it. And it broke his heart.

We’ve been planning the fundraiser for months and hoping COVID would be a non-factor, but that’s not the case.

It would be irresponsible of us to have a mass gathering at this time in an enclosed space. So we’re taking it virtual, which means anyone -- i.e. YOU! -- can win.

We have more than 75 donated items – autographed footballs, gift certificates, themed baskets, a one-year subscription to The Athletic! – that we are raffling off.

You can buy raffle tickets for $1 each or 6 for $5.

All prize drawings, along with a Split the Pot contest, will be done on Facebook Live on Saturday night from 8-10 p.m. on the fundraiser page, which is also where you can view all of the raffle items:

https://www.facebook.com/events/596685300990978/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22search_results%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22search%22%7D]%7D

You can purchase raffle and the Split the Pot tickets via Venmo or PayPal, and the fundraiser page has all of the details on how to assign your tickets to the specific prizes you hope to win. Thank you for taking time to read the thread. My DMs are open if you have any questions.