We investigate the valence quark parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the pion within the light-cone quark model (LCQM) using quark-quark correlation functions. The initial-scale PDFs are evolved to higher energy scales using NLO DGLAP evolution. We present the first prediction of the pion F₂ structure function at NLO accuracy, compared with ZEUS and H1 data at DESY-HERA. We also compute Drell-Yan cross-sections for forward pion production using LHAPDF nucleon PDF datasets, and provide EIC projections for F₂ at electron-ion collider kinematics. The study spans 21 pages, 15 figures, and 4 tables.