For most people, Santa Claus is depicted as a jolly, bearded elderly man in a red outfit, with a bag of toys slung over his shoulder.
For many people this Christmas, Santa will actually look like this:
QB1 #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/MsO8HWPn9b
— Primetime Adam (@AdamZientek3) October 20, 2022
For those who think “Bills Mafia” is an organized crime syndicate full of people named “William,” the above image is of Buffalo Bills All-Pro quarterback Josh Allen.
The 26-year-old Pro Bowler is considered by many football pundits to be a top-3 quarterback in the league, if not the best.
But the dual-threat quarterback isn’t just a superstar on the field — he might be an even bigger star off of it.
That’s because Allen, partnering with public benefit corporation ForgiveCo, wiped out a substantial amount of debt for a bevy of Americans.
As Fox Business noted, Allen and ForgiveCo teamed up to absolve over $10 million worth of debt across the country. Specifically, Allen aimed to help those in Buffalo, Wyoming and central California, which is where he played professional, college and high school football, respectively.
The $10 million of consumer debt being forgiven will be spread across 2,600 people, which equates to roughly $3,847 of debt forgiveness per person.
“The beauty of this debt forgiveness model is that the debt is purchased in the same manner that debt collectors use — buying debt at cents on the dollar,” ForgiveCo CEO Craig Antico told Fox Business.
Antico noted that there is one significant difference between what Allen and ForgiveCo are doing versus the more predatory debt collectors out there.
“The difference is that rather collecting on the debt, Josh Allen and ForgiveCo are forgiving the debt — removing the burden of these individuals needing to pay the debt themselves.”
Antico is intimately familiar with how debt collectors work because he used to work at a collection agency at the start of his career, before realizing that collecting debt (in that particular manner) was not something he wanted to do with his life.
Allen approached ForgiveCo in December to initiate this generous deed. While it’s easy for cynics to point to Allen’s monster contract extension (which will kick in next season) that pays him a base salary of $27.5 million in 2023 when it comes to his charity, it shouldn’t diminish the act itself.
$10 million of debt forgiveness is $10 million of debt forgiveness. Period.
Besides, ForgiveCo is hardly Allen’s first foray into charitable giving.
Allen helped create the Patricia Allen Fund in 2020, named after his late grandmother, after Bills Mafia fans began donating to the Oishei Children’s Hospital in $17 increments (Allen’s jersey number) after learning of Patricia’s passing. Patricia Allen dedicated a large portion of her life to working with children, hence the donation to a children’s hospital.
You can watch the Buffalo News segment on the Patricia Allen Fund below:
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Oftentimes, a star NFL quarterback may not fit with the team he’s drafted to, or at least the region he ends up in. Tom Brady is infamously a California kid who wound up playing most of his career in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
But in this instance?
It’s inarguable that Josh Allen is not just a perfect fit, but the perfect fit, for the City of Good Neighbors.
CORRECTION, Dec. 16, 2022: ForgiveCo is a public benefit corporation. An earlier version of this article included a different description of the group.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
