Big Cat Country: Doing Right By Our Military

With the nation's birthday approaching tomorrow, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little about our nation's military. They've done so much for this country, in many cases making the ultimate sacrifice, so they deserved to be remembered and honored.

Big Cat Country covers the Jacksonville Jaguars for SB Nation and Jacksonville has a lot of military personnel, because of that they decided to team up with another organization of Jaguars supporter to do a little something for Jaguars fans serving in the military. What they came up with is Operation Patch Drop.

Big Cat Country (BCC) and the Bold City Brigade (BCB) have teamed up to give those Jaguars fans deployed throughout the various theaters of Operation Enduring Freedom something to remind them of their home team. Dubbed 'Operation Patch Drop', BCC and BCB will send patches featuring the crest of the Bold City Brigade to service members deployed in combat zones along with a personalized letter of gratitude for their service.

The Bold City Brigade is an organization with one stated mission: Our focus is to engage and unite Jaguars followers from all walks of life, but particularly those who have grown with the franchise since its inception. Our long-term goal is to cultivate and grow our fanbase-locally, regionally, and nationally- through our mutual passion for team and city.

As explained in the Big Cat Country article on Operation Patch Drop, military personnel in combat zones like to wear different kinds of patches for different reasons. Some of them are flag or unit patches, but other times it's humorous stuff, and in this case it will be an uplifting patch to remind them of home and their favorite football team.

I asked site editor Alfie Crow about how BCC got involved and how it's gone so far.

It was an idea by one of our contributors who has a lot of military friends. Being in Jacksonville, we're a big military city with some big bases in the area. While sending care packages to deployed soldiers he knew that a lot of soldiers enjoyed patches to place on their stuff, so we figured a Bold City Brigade patch would be something deployed Jacksonville members would like who are also Jaguars fans. The Bold City Brigade is a grassroots support group that Big Cat Country is a big part of, and we decided to combine our efforts to allow people to donate patches overseas to deployed Jaguars fans.

Within the first hour there was already over 60 patches donated and as of right now there are 160 patches donated. We're working with the USO and the Jaguars to get some names of soldiers to send them to, as well as allowing people to nominate deployed soldiers. We thought it would be nice to give them a little piece of home while they're deployed.

It may not seem like much to us, but to them, any reminders of home and to know there are people thinking about them can be a real boost.

You can help the cause by going here.

Any leftover proceeds from patch donations will be split and sent to the Silent Warrior Scholarship Fund, which sends scholarships to students with familial relationship to Reconnaissance or MARSOC Marines, and the Green Beret Foundation, which provides resources to facilitate the special needs of wounded, ill, and injured Green Berets and Green Beret Gold Star families.

We salute Big Cat Country and Bold City Brigade for getting involved. We salute our military for everything they do for us in very dangerous situations. They are the best!