The nightmare of watching last Monday night when 24-year-old Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field after a routine tackle disturbed the millions who watched as the tragedy unfolded on live TV.
While the video is unsettling enough, even more creepy was the anti-contact-sport lobby that immediately leaped into action, faulting the NFL and chastizing the league for not making the game absolutely 100% safe.
What makes that argument even creepier is that no one knows what caused a seemingly perfectly healthy, magnificently conditioned professional athlete to collapse after a routine tackle.
It could very well be that the hit Hamlin absorbed when tackling receiver Tee Higgins had nothing to do with his heart stopping. It could very well be that there was a small defect in an artery that broke off and traveled to his heart — a genetic anomaly that could have erupted when he was home playing with his kids.
But there’s no value in pontificating about how violent pro football is if Hamlin had been the victim of a birth defect.
The N.F.L. often seems mired in turmoil yet impervious to it. In recent years, it has confronted accusations of racial discrimination by Black coaches, allegations of workplace misconduct at a flagship franchise and posthumous diagnoses in more than 300 former players of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is associated with repeated blows to the head. Yet the league remains on track to meet Commissioner Roger Goodell’s goal of earning $25 billion in annual revenue by 2027.
Even this week, as the N.F.L. faces one of its worst crises in decades, it is also preparing for the next slate of games this weekend, which is going ahead as scheduled. Players and coaches have jobs to do. The N.F.L.’s business depends on it.
The simple fact of where Hamlin collapsed is a reminder of how quickly we move on from the startling violence in America’s most popular sports league. On the same field just three months ago, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was taken off on a stretcher after his head was slammed against the turf. He missed the next two games with a concussion.
Yes, it’s dirty money that’s causing all these injuries to these poor, poverty-stricken players who play the game unaware of how violent it is. Someone should tell the players how dangerous it is to play pro football!
The “crisis” is a public relations crisis. Ask any fan in Baltimore, Green Bay, or Detroit how much “crisis” the NFL is in. Those teams, battling for a playoff berth in the last week of the season, feel bad for Hamlin and his family but would just as soon have everyone get over it and go back to playing football.
Aliens in a Star Trek episode described human beings as “ugly bags of mostly water.” When a bag of water is hit hard, bad things happen — especially when the smaller bags of water that make up our organs and that are vital to the human’s continued existence on this planet are also extremely fragile. Football players know that. They know that the next snap may be their last because of the possibility of a career-ending injury, although very, very few pro ballplayers believe the next snap will result in their death.
It’s a violent game. But each and every player has weighed the risks and rewards and concluded they’re willing to play. They know the price their bodies will pay later in life. The knee and hip replacements and the risk of serious brain injury are factored into their decision.
And who the hell are any of these people to tell them any differently?
Almost as many people watch NASCAR or Indy Races as watch pro football, and the chance for sudden and violent death has been demonstrated time and time again on tracks all over the world. Pro hockey is also a terribly violent sport that’s even more dangerous considering that players are falling on a much harder surface and moving at 20 miles per hour when they collide.
Even the staid game of baseball can be extremely dangerous.
Thank God for helmets.
The NFL has done as good a job at minimizing injuries as can be hoped for. Unless the critics want the NFL to become the NFFL (National Flag Football League), they should sit back and marvel at the display of athletic brilliance unfolding before them.
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