Haydel Consulting

Last month Jalen Hurts gave $600,000 to Northeast High School in Philadelphia so the kids would not have to sit in classrooms that hit the 90s. Now he is out, being treated for blood clots. So on Monday, the kids went out onto their football field and spelled QB1 for him. Here is the whole thing. By Hurts' own count, 52 schools in Philadelphia still do not have real air conditioning. When it gets hot in September, kids get sent home early. Hurts decided to do something about it. His foundation started a program called Keep It Cool. The first gift was $200,000. It put air conditioning into 10 schools. Then last month he went bigger. $600,000 for a new HVAC system at Northeast High, the biggest high school in the city. He stood up at the ceremony and said his goal was to take that number from 52 down to zero. A few weeks later, the news came that he was being treated for blood clots, and the Philadelphia Eagles would have to play on without him. The kids he had helped did not wait for anybody to tell them what to do. Northeast High has a tradition going back at least 15 years of making shapes on the football field that you can only really see from above. Football players. The V-Settes, the school's majorette and dance team. Students from all over the building. They had less than a week to put it together. On Monday, the day the Eagles played the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football, they walked out and formed two letters and a number. QB1. It took about three minutes to get everybody in place. The woman who organized it said it was a reaction to everything else people were hearing. "It's like everything in the news cycle is so negative and there's just no support." The principal put it simply. "This is our way of giving back to somebody who gave a lot to us." It was not just one school. Across the city at Clara Barton Elementary, one of the first 10 schools that got air conditioning from him, kids chanted QB1 at a pep rally and wrote him letters. Swoop, the Eagles mascot, showed up to carry them to him. Their principal said this. "He showed us so much love that we just felt the need to show him love back." And all the way down in Channelview, Texas, where his mother works in the school district, students made him get well cards. The district declared Monday Jalen Hurts Day. Here is the honest part. Nobody has said exactly when he will be back, and the team has said very little. But the kids did not need an update. They just needed him to know. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap