UNC football players donate their meal money to victims of Hurricane Florence

North Carolina football players will donate meal money to buy supplies for victims of Hurricane Florence, UNC coach Larry Fedora said.

The supplies will go to North Carolina residents in the eastern part of the state who were hit hardest by the storm.

Bobby Hundley, a UNC athletics spokesperson, said 85 players will donate $15, the per diem each player would get after their game against Pitt on Saturday. Together they’ll donate $1,275.

“It’s kind of a grassroots effort of people thinking ‘What can I do to help?’” UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham said about the players. “I’m really proud of those guys for thinking that way.”

According to NCAA rules, a school can provide players a meal, or up to $15 in cash after each home and away game.

Fedora said former UNC linebacker Kevin Reddick, who played for the Tar Heels from 2009-12, called the program to ask if it could help donate and collect items for victims in his hometown of New Bern, a city that experienced substantial flooding from Florence.

The football program announced earlier this week that it was setting up a donation site on campus and would deliver collected goods to areas in need with its 18-wheel equipment truck. The truck will head to Lumberton on Friday.

“We’ve tried to participate in as many of those efforts as we could,” Fedora said Wednesday. “We will continue to do that going forward.”

On Tuesday, Fedora and a few of his players helped load the donations onto its truck. He said the truck was about two-thirds full on Wednesday.