DeAngelo Williams can’t wear pink, but can and will pay for 53 mammograms

The NFL won’t allow DeAngelo Williams to wear pink wristbands when the calendar turns on breast cancer awareness month due to the league’s uniform policy, so the Pittsburgh Steelers running back found another way to honor his late mother, Sandra Hill, who succumbed to breast cancer in May 2014.

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According to ESPN.com’s Jeremy Fowler, Williams will purchase mammogram tests for 53 women at a hospital in Pittsburgh and Charlotte, where he spent the first nine seasons of his NFL career on the Carolina Panthers. While most health insurance plans will cover a mammogram, the average cost of the test in Charlotte and Pittsburgh is roughly $190 for the uninsured — more than $10,000 for 53 women.

The number of tests for which Williams will pick up the tab is a tribute to his mother’s age when she died from breast cancer. He also lost four aunts to the disease, making the cause near and dear to his heart.

NFL vice president of football operations Troy Vincent told Williams by phone he could not play in pink outside of October because there are no exceptions to the rules, according to ESPN.com. His reaction:

“The same way it made you feel after you heard it — like, man,” he said. “He told me no. I’m assuming they are telling everybody else no as well. … It wasn’t about selling it. You know and I know and everybody else knows before I made the phone call.”

Williams has found a rather ingenious way to circumvent the league’s rules on the field, too, dyeing his dreadlocks pink. “The hair, it’s part of the uniform from the standpoint of being tackled,” he told ESPN.com, “but it’s not specific on what color it has to be or if it has to match the uniform.”