Mizzou AEPi Enlists Star Point Guard Phil Pressey To Help Promote Rock-a-Thon, Their Wildly Successful Philanthropy (VIDEO)

Rob Fox12 years ago

AEPi’s Rock-a-Thon is one of the most successful philanthropies at the University of Missouri every year. This year, AEPi enlisted the help of Mizzou’s star point guard and likely future first round NBA draft pick, Phil Pressey, to help promote the philanthropy with a fun little video. Cool stuff.

In 2011, Rock-a-Thon raised over $80,000 for the American Cancer Society, specifically their Leukemia research. Rock-a-Thon is a pretty unique and entertaining philanthropy, I’ll let the official Rock-a-Thon website do the explaining:

So how does this philanthropy work?

A brother from the fraternity is elected as the rocker. This brother is a role model for the house, someone who has put in his time as a quality brother, student and person throughout their college career.

On the first morning of Rock-A-Thon, the rocker sits down in a rocking chair on a stage set up on 9th Street and Broadway in downtown Columbia, Missouri. The rocker rocks in the chair for 63 straight hours while brothers and volunteers ask for donations through canning around mid-Missouri. This year, our canning locations will reach St. Louis and Kansas City for the first time.

After three days of constant canning, the exhausted brotherhood and restless rocker gather at the corner of 9th Street and Broadway for the final announcement. With some help from his fraternity brothers, the rocker stands up from the rocking chair signifying the end of Rock-A-Thon. It is at that point that the grand total is announced.

Although canning is our main source of donations, sponsorship from the community and support from family, alumni and the American Cancer Society help us reach record-setting numbers year after year.

Rock-A-Thon takes months of planning and an unquantifiable amount of passion from the brotherhood. We hope you will either join us from April 25-27, 2013 or make your contribution through the Rock-A-Thon website to help fight cancer.

Quite impressive, really.

Yay for fighting cancer! You should donate! Et cetera! Let’s get to what’s really important here, which is that this has got to be good karma for Mizzou this Thursday in the NCAA Tournament, right? RIGHT!?!? Maybe for the whole weekend? I mean, Flip’s helping fight cancer here. That’s got to buy the Tigers a full 40 minutes of intelligent play from Pressey and prevent another late game meltdown that makes me want to throw my TV, and then myself, into oncoming traffic, doesn’t it? PLEASE GOD LET THIS BE TRUE!

Plus, while Pressey is buying good karma points by helping AEPi raise Rock-a-Thon awareness, Missouri is slated to face one, and possibly two, of the sleaziest coaches in the entire field. Colorado State’s coach, Larry Eustachy, famously partied at Mizzou in 2003 after his Iowa State Cyclones lost to Missouri. Apparently Eustachy was so drunk that students had to call a cab for him, and he also propositioned several girls at the party.

Should Mizzou be lucky enough to move on to the round of 32, they would most certainly face a Louisville squad helmed by Rick Pitino, who has, uh, done some stuff.

I’m inclined to think this is good karma, but then again I’m a blind optimist when it comes to Mizzou sports, because if I weren’t I would have attempted to hang myself roughly 90 times in my life.

So good on Phil for helping out with a good cause, if there’s any justice in the universe that gives us at least one tournament win, and very cool of AEPi to get the most famous athlete on campus to participate.

If you’d like to donate to AEPi’s Rock-a-Thon you can do so here. I suggest you do.