You’ve probably heard Damar Hamlin’s name by now.
If not, Hamlin is a security for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. He collapsed in cardiac arrest during a major time Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals earlier this week. He was administered C.P.R. on the sphere and rushed by ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he stays in critical condition.
As you would tell from the reactions from each teams and the printed crew, this was not a routine football injury. A lot in order that the National Football League took the unprecedented step of indefinitely postponing the sport (which had major playoff implications, very late within the season) and sending the fans home.
The nation united in prayer: Pull through, kid. I don’t ever remember so many individuals offering prayers so openly and quickly on sports studio shows. Hamlin’s GoFundMe for toys for youths in need has raised over $6 million from over 200,000 people. ESPN’s broadcast of the sport, which is usually myopically focused on X’s and O’s, as an alternative pivoted its coverage to indicate empathy, sensitivity and hope for a young man’s life.
The nation united in prayer: Pull through, kid. I don’t ever remember so many individuals offering prayers so openly and quickly on sports studio shows.
“That is about Damar Hamlin,” Ryan Clark, an ESPN analyst and former N.F.L. player, reminded ESPN’s viewing audience. Everyone’s focus ought to be on his well-being, the consensus gave the impression to be.
Rightly so. But I actually have been wondering since Monday if that is basically the one place our thoughts and prayers ought to be focused.
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With every horrific mass shooting in america, a routine drama plays out in the general public discourse concerning the value of thoughts and prayers. It’s a great human impulse to supply prayers for victims and their families, and yet so many find those prayers to be inadequate and even cynical within the face of collective inaction on gun control. “Your thoughts and prayers won’t bring back my loved one,” “Faith without works is dead,” and all that.
It seems that individuals don’t prefer to make sweeping changes to their environments and cultures, even within the face of massive suffering. There are more civilian-owned guns than people in america. Guns are so intertwined with American life that it’s difficult to essentially imagine untangling it without massive cultural change.
You realize what could be the one thing more deeply embedded in American culture than guns? Football.
You realize what could be the one thing more deeply embedded in American culture than guns? Football.
It stays an awesome unifier in a deeply divided country. Our fandoms are traditions that connect generations. With so many disparate shows and films to stream, football is the last true water-cooler conversation topic.
I say all of this as someone who loves football and grew up playing it. (I used to be the meanest third string quarterback Dempsey Middle School has ever seen.) I still watch my Cleveland Browns and Ohio State Buckeyes on weekends. It’s a typical talking point between so many individuals in my life, from my grandfather to my barber. I’ll very likely watch with close interest the N.F.L. playoffs in the approaching weeks.
I could attempt to comfort myself with some talking points: There have been changes to football! After Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s first of two concussions this season, the N.F.L. modified its concussion protocol. Helmet technology continues to enhance, and there are recent rules about how hard (and where) you possibly can hit a quarterback.
But these minor rule changes all skirt around football’s fundamental problems. No other sport lets 22 players (who’re 6 feet 2 inches and 245 kilos on average) run at each other at full speed, with the express purpose of stopping an offensive player by force. Then they get 40 seconds to regain their energy in between every play to go full throttle again, again and again for 4 hours. Perhaps only boxing has more raw inherent brutality.
Is the circle of our compassion limited by the suffering we see on prime time national television? Because that’s the thing—a lot of the suffering that football inflicts is hidden from view.
As of now, it stays unclear whether Hamlin’s collapse was explicitly a results of his play on the sphere.
However the sheer visibility, the pictures of what happened appears to be what has America reeling: a 24-year-old athlete collapsing, grown men in shoulder pads weeping and embracing, the flashing lights of an ambulance carrying away a mother and son.
“Football modified on Monday night—we won’t know the way for years—but we comprehend it modified, since the N.F.L. finally was forced to stop,” Kevin Clark wrote in The Ringer. “None of us desired to look. This was an evening of glazed eyes, thousand-yard stares, and prayer. We hope we never need to see it ever again.”
Is the circle of our compassion limited by the suffering we see on prime time national television? Because that’s the thing—a lot of the suffering that football inflicts is hidden from view.
Players carry injuries that fans don’t learn about. Consider Keith McCants, a former first round draft pick. McCants spiraled out of the league after an addiction to painkillers led to more drugs. “I became homicidal and suicidal and couldn’t be trusted,” he told The Recent York Times. “I didn’t know where I used to be. I didn’t learn about no family or nothing. I didn’t know who Keith McCants was.” He thought that the N.F.L. pushed players to play through pain and injuries. “I’ll proceed to inform the reality, how they got me hooked on drugs,” he said. “I feel it’s my duty as a retired player to clarify the difference between being hurt and being injured.” Keith McCants died last 12 months, on the age of 53, in an apparent drug overdose.
That game stopped. However the query stays: Should the remainder of them proceed?
Then there are the victims of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which has been present in the brains of greater than 320 former N.F.L. players, including a minimum of 24 players who died of their 20s and 30s. C.T.E. has even been linked to a mass shooting, within the case of Philip Adams, a former N.F.L. defensive back who killed six people in April 2021 before dying by suicide. Regardless that the research on concussions and C.T.E. is in early stages and difficult to check (C.T.E. can only be diagnosed post-mortem), the list is already long enough for a lot of to start drawing conclusions.
The share of American parents nervous about their children playing football continues to rise. A study published by the Barrow Neurological Institute found that in 2016, 68 percent of Arizona parents would let their child play football. That number has declined every 12 months, falling to 47 percent in 2020. The parental concern raises the query: If I won’t let my son play this dangerous game, why am I O.K. cheering on another person’s?
“And so the subsequent time that we get upset at our favourite fantasy player, or we’re upset that the guy on our team doesn’t make the play…we should always do not forget that these guys are putting their lives on the road to live this dream,” Ryan Clark said on SportsCenter on Monday. Perhaps it’s time to ask whether people should put their lives on the road for a game.
Within the immediate aftermath of the injury, broadcaster Joe Buck reported that the N.F.L. wanted to provide players a five-minute break before resuming play (the N.F.L. denies this was the case). A national moral consensus emerged: Stop the sport. Anything could be inhuman.
In order that game stopped. However the query stays: Should the remainder of them proceed?