No, I was not watching the Bills-Bengals game live when Damar Hamlin made what at first glance appeared to be a typical tackle in the first quarter, then subsequently collapsed as a result of a cardiac event. But I intended to watch the game after arriving at my job at 10pm. It was a big game between two of the elite teams in the league, and there were a lot of ramifications for the AFC playoff picture. So I was definitely interested and intended to follow the results.
When I got there, the game was being shown. I saw players in both Bills and Bengals uniforms on the field. But it was strange, because this all of this was on CNN, a news station that literally never broadcasts games. Frowning, I took a closer look, and learned about the collapsed player and the delay of the game, which was eventually suspended. It has been prominent in the news headlines ever since, and not just for sports. The young man is still in the hospital and, to my understanding, still in critical condition, and not quite breathing on his own just yet.
Since then, I have heard a lot of criticism of American football, which is a violent and even, at times, a brutal sport. Not sure if all of that is warranted. After all, we have seen very serious, even life-threatening injuries in other sports. I remember one hockey player having his throat at least partially slashed by the blades of another player's accidentally. Also, I have seen some quite serious injuries when a puck goes flying to someone's neck or head. It is not always a player. In 2002, 13-year old Brittanie Cecil died after a hard shot was deflected by a defenseman and the puck went into the stands, obviously at a very high speed. She did not die immediately, but after complications once she was in the hospital later that day.
The truth is that almost any sport can be dangerous, even possibly life threatening. I remember one of my favorite boxers during my childhood, WBA Lightweight champion Ray ":Boom Boom" Mancini beat South Korean challenger Duk Koo Kim on a nationally televised fight in November of 1982. Kim had been knocked down in the 14th round during the fight, but he did get up. Minutes after that, Kim collapsed and fell into a coma. Days later, he died. Mancini fell into a deep depression, blaming himself for the fighter's death. Even more tragic, Kim's mother committed suicide three months later. And Richard Green, the fight's referee, killed himself the following summer.
Sometimes, I almost wonder how such life-threatening injuries do not happen more often. We all know about very serious injuries, even deaths, in professional wrestling. Yes, much of wrestling is staged. But some of the injuries - and certainly the tragic deaths - are obviously not part of act.
Then, there is the ultimate fighting leagues. When you watch them and see how brutal it can be, then you really wonder how more people do not sustain very serious injuries, or even death. At my previous job, one of the guys was a huge fan of Mixed Martial Arts and UFC fighting. He would watch some of the fights, and I will admit to being interested enough to watch them when they were on, as well. It was hard to ignore. One of those fights was Jon Jones vs. Lyoto Machida. If I recall correctly, Machida was considered a very serious title contender, and he came in smiling and looking confident. Early on, he looked good, and was giving Jones seemingly all that he could handle. In fact, it appeared to me that he was winning. Then, the fight changed. Machida took a shot and began to bleed seriously. Jones took the initiative, and eventually trapped Machida against the cage with an awkward looking choke hold. The referee stopped the fight, and when Jones let him go, Machida simply collapsed, unconscious and bloody, face first onto the mat. It was scary to watch, and made an impression on me. Yet, Machida was up and about, apparently more or less alright, minutes later after the fight ended. But I have watched that again from time to time, and it seems to me that it would not have taken much more time, or perhaps a slightly different angle, for that to have been far more serious. Possibly life-threatening, and the possibility of Machida suffering a broken neck seems to have been a real possibility, if things had worked out slightly differently.
In writing this, I decided to do a little bit of research into other very serious injuries in sports. It was a revelation to learn about how serious some of the injuries in baseball could be. Admittedly, I have never really been a huge fan of baseball, because it always seemed a bit "boring" to me. Much of a baseball game seems to be players on the field standing around, waiting for something to happen. Baseball fans have accused me of not understanding the game, that 85 or 90 percent of it is mental. Perhaps. But again, I rarely could sit through an entire game.
So when, after looking it up, I learned of some of the serious injuries, it kind of made me sit up and take notice. There are on field collisions between players. There are players who run into walls, or jump up and collide with the walls trying to make a catch, and they can sustain serious injuries. But the most common seemed to be, not surprisingly, from the baseball itself. Obviously it travels at high speeds, both from the arms of players (particularly pitchers, of course) to when it flies off the bats of hard-hitting players, who of course have trained all of their lives to be able to hit the ball as hard and as fast and as far as possible. When those baseballs hit people, however, it can obviously do serious damage, even to the point of being life-threatening.
There are collisions between players in many sports, including basketball, football/soccer, rugby, and American football. Surely, there are plenty of other sports that I am not thinking of where serious injuries - possibly even leading to death - can and have taken place. We all know that the players take risks just by suiting up and taking the field, and most likely, nobody knows that better than the players themselves. I think that you could see that with the reactions from the players, with how they reacted after watching Hamlin first collapse, and then receive serious first aid, including shocks from the AED device. There were players on the field who were crying, players from the opposing teams embracing one another with a closeness that you almost never get during or after a typical game. Clearly, this had a serious impact on the players, and the coaches, as well. I think it was the coaches who decided that the game simply could not go on.
Apparently, however, the NFL assumed that the game should go on. It was announced shortly after Hamlin was driven off the field by an ambulance that the players would have five minutes to warm up before the game resumed. To their credit, both players and coaches simply refused to continue play. Some things are more important than a damn football game, after all. Good for them to collectively stand together and refuse to go along with the "business as usual" mentality.
I do not know how this particular game will be handled, and I do not care. Again, it was a huge game with all sorts of ramifications. The Bills entered the weekend as the number one seed in the AFC at 12-3, but the Chiefs won, which meant that they moved into the top spot temporarily. If the Bills won, they would remain the top seed. But if they lost, not only would the Chiefs now control their own destiny as the number one seed, but the Bengals would jump ahead of Buffalo for the number two seed. The Baltimore Ravens also were watching that game with great interest, because a loss by the Bengals would set up a winner takes all showdown for the AFC North division title in the regular season finale.
Never mind all of that, though. Again, some things are bigger than football. That young man is still in critical condition, and lying in a hospital bed. We still do not know what is going to happen.
But we do know that the NFL initially handled this wrong. It seemed that they simply figuratively clapped their hands after Hamlin was driven off the field by ambulance, and more or less asked, "Okay, so anyway, now that that's over, is everybody ready to go?"
Does that sound harsh or unfair? Maybe. But it does not seem entirely off the mark, either.
This is something that I have said before, but I will say it again: the NFL used to feel more like an escape from the world than it has in recent years. But it has taken a hit with how it has handled certain situations, including players who have been guilty of domestic violence and other forms of violence. I still am horrified by how Ben Roethlisberger was made into a hero in the final game of his career last year, as if he was some stand-up guy, a man we can all look up to. But that seemed to be the official response by the NFL and those around the league, because a more serious discussion about him would be...well, uncomfortable. Michael Vick is now doing commentary, despite his sickening crimes.
I remember the NFL suspending all games for the weekend after the September 11th attacks. That might seem like a no-brainer, but keep in mind that the NFL was still sensitive to criticisms from decades earlier, when it had not cancelled the games the weekend after the Kennedy assassination. Apparently with the NFL, it is not a sure thing.
Perhaps even worse, there was a somewhat similar situation that the NFL faced before. In 1971, Chuck Hughes of the Detroit Lions was walking back to the huddle between plays, when he simply collapsed and died, right there on the field, before a crowd of thousands. The NFL continued the game, although apparently, the crowd remained mostly in stunned silence the rest of the way. Maybe we should give the NFL credit for having made better decisions the second time around, both with September 11th, and this time around with Damar Hamlin. Then again, remember that the NFL wanted the players to simply resume the game as usual. It was the players and coaches collectively refusing that forced them to take a very different position.
Ultimately, the game was suspended. Again, I do not know how the league will handle this important game in terms of the standings. Will the game simply be cancelled and, if so, will both teams get a tie, or possible both get wins? I do not know and and right now, I do not care. But how the NFL almost mishandled this situation, yet again, is a much bigger source of concern to me.
The NFL Just Showed the World What It Thinks of Its Players When a player almost dies on the field, the game must end. By Dave Zirin, January 3, 2023:
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nfl-damar-hamlin-buffalo-bills-cincinnati-bengals/?fbclid=IwAR0RaQRUrhNdsm_GyLyf5WJJxT9nYNfKM_-UwKZ2RujFMr-bBBs94XNDFq0
Flying Puck Dangers at Hockey Games ByABC News via via logo, March 21, 2022:
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126241&page=1
40 of the Worst Injuries in MLB History by Mark Miller, October 24, 2011:
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/905469-30-of-the-worst-injuries-in-mlb-history
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