Hampton Roads – Antone Exum already had some headphones picked out for himself and a few for his friends on Christmas Eve. The Virginia Tech cornerback was thinking about some speakers, maybe a few DVDs to finish off the $470 gift card to Best Buy that all the Hokies got as part of the Russell Athletic Bowl swag. “It was really all wants,” he said before practice Tuesday. “It wasn’t anything that I needed or anything, so I just put it back and tried to help some kids out.”

Exum put his things back on the shelves and sought out a few kids he saw earlier in the store. They were playing a demo version of the PlayStation 3 when Exum offered to take them on a shopping spree. “They asked me like three times, ‘So … we can get anything we want? We can just buy anything we want?’” Exum said. “They kept asking me. I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah. I’ve got this money and I want you to go shopping and get what you want.’” Eventually convinced that the gesture was on the level, the three kids, two brothers and a cousin visiting Florida from the Bahamas, picked out what they wanted for Christmas.

Originally, Exum thought it was only two boys. But a third, the youngest of the group, was with his mother and quickly joined the spree. Their haul — a PlayStation 3, some controllers, some video games and a Blackberry — totaled over $500, which was a little more than what Exum had on his card. Teammates Tariq Edwards and Marcus Davis covered the difference.

“It just came down to at the end of the day, I was blessed to have a lot of fortunate Christmases when I was a kid,” Exum said. “So I hope that every kid deserves to have those perfect Christmases. “So when I had the chance, I wanted to give those kids the chance to shop in my cart and get anything they wanted and hopefully it’s a Christmas that they won’t forget. And I know that it was a Christmas that I won’t forget because I won’t forget those smiles and the excitement on their faces when I told them they could get whatever they wanted in the store.”

 

I had to look for like 2 hours but I finally found a nice, happy news story from the past week.  Seriously it’s like everywhere you look somebody is killing somebody these days.  Some horrible news story followed by another horrible news story.  Nice to see there’s still some good people left in the world like Antone Exum using his bowl game gift card to buy some random kids Christmas presents at Best Buy.   Restores your faith in humanity a little bit.  Although to be honest I’m not sure what that kid’s problem is who just jumped in at the last second and bought himself a Blackberry.  Like I’m not some NFL superstar bro.  I’m a poor unpaid college cornerback.  That’s my pizza money for the week I just spent on your fucking Torch.   At least join the rest of the 21st century and get an iPhone.