On the Aftermath of the Damar Hamlin Injury

Damar Hamlin in a healthier moment

One of the biggest stories in the sports world this week has nothing to do with final scores, win streaks, or records being broken. Last Monday night, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field after making a tackle in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals. He was given CPR on the field and transported by ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He was given CPR again, either at the hospital or in the ambulance on the way there (reports differ). 

Exactly what happened remains unclear (or at least unpublicized). There is speculation that the cause may have been a rare condition called commodio cordis (“disruption of the heart”), in which a blow to the chest at a precise instant causes the heart to stop beating. So far, however, Curmie can find nothing definitive to state that this was, as opposed to could have been, the cause. 

The good news is that Hamlin seems on the way to recovery, the long-term extent of which remains uncertain. The fact that he’s now communicative is certainly a positive sign, but don’t expect to see him lining up in an NFL game any time soon (or perhaps ever again). 

What interests Curmie about this affair has more to do with the subplots and spinoffs than the main storyline. For one thing, Hamlin’s injury has received a lot of press. Coverage of other sporting events was interrupted for progress reports, which told us nothing we didn’t already know. Tweets from current and former players made headlines. There was even (barf) an on-air prayer led by former journeyman quarterback and current ESPN talking head Dan Orlovsky. 

Injuries, both acute (concussions, broken bones, etc.) and chronic (e.g., chronic traumatic encephalopathy) are “part of the game” and more preventable than the NFL would have us believe. There is a large enough percentage of fans who actually revel in the violence (and ensuing injuries) of the sport, however, that little is likely to change in the foreseeable future. 

Here’s the thing. The seriousness of Hamlin’s injury is rare but not unprecedented. Life-threatening or even fatal injuries occur with grim regularity at all levels of the sport. A report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention six years ago identified 28 football-related deaths among high school and college players over a ten-year period from 2005-14. How to interpret that figure, of course, depends on perspective and context. Given that we’re talking only about deaths and not, say, permanent injury—paralysis, for example—that’s a lot of young people dying. But fewer than three deaths per year from a sport played by well over a million athletes means an annual fatality rate of about .0024%, which doesn’t seem so bad… unless, of course, it’s your son, or best friend, or significant other. 

An article by Devan Markham on the NewsNation site lists nine “previous life-threatening NFL injuries.” Curmie remembers three of them, including the first chronologically, that of Darryl Stingley. What’s significant is that all of these incidents occurred during Curmie’s adulthood, meaning that two-thirds of them never even registered with him. Curmie chooses not to speculate on why that is the case, but notes that it would be impossible for any sports fan, not merely NFL fans, to be ignorant of Hamlin’s injury. Curmie’s Facebook feed features literally dozens of “thoughts and prayers” for Hamlin’s recovery from people Curmie knows for a fact don’t give a damn about football. 

One reason for this phenomenon is that, despite the litany of previous cases and the significance of the Bills/Bengals game (it was the marquee game of the weekend, as it would go a long way toward deciding seeding for the AFC playoffs), this was the first time an NFL game has been cancelled because of an injury like this. It is not entirely clear how this came about. It appears that the referees were intending to re-start the game (there’s footage of Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow warming up while the ambulance was on the field), but the stoppage seems to have been initiated by the Bengals’ coaching staff. After a lengthy delay, the referees, NFL office, players union, and the two teams agree to suspend the game (actually cancelling it came later). 

Curmie is not going to approve or disapprove of this action. There is no clearly defined rationale why this game should be handled differently than all the others in which similar incidents occurred, but it certainly qualifies as a sporting gesture, concerned with the mental and emotional health of the athletes and an appropriate prioritization of what really matters. 

That said, there’s a difference between saying that Hamlin’s health is the most important thing (we can all agree on this, yes?) and saying it’s the only thing that matters. Fox Sports talking head Skip Bayless had the audacity to wonder exactly how the NFL was going to handle the game’s cancellation: “No doubt the NFL is considering postponing the rest of this game – but how? This late in the season, a game of this magnitude is crucial to the regular-season outcome … which suddenly seems so irrelevant.” 

Look, Bayless is a narcissistic blowhard, but 1). the question he raises is a legitimate one, and 2). the last phrase of his tweet makes it clear that Bayless believes Hamlin’s well-being is of paramount importance. Of course, understanding this latter observation requires a 5th-grade reading level, so the usual litany of boneheaded jocks and ex-jocks jumped all over him. 

New York Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner led the charge, indignantly proclaiming “Damar Hamlin’s health is ALL that matters at the moment! Nothing else!!!” Gardner is a rising star on the team Curmie has rooted for since before they were the Jets. He’s also, alas, an idiot. That other stuff matters, too, and if you don’t understand what Bayless was actually saying, then I do hope the folks at MLK High School in Detroit and the University of Cincinnati are embarrassed that they failed you so badly. 

Bayless’s broadcast partner, former star tight end Shannon Sharpe, skipped the Tuesday show. Whether this was a sign of respect for Hamlin or in a fit of pique because he, too, would rather be indignant that competent is unclear. What we do know is that things were tense on the set on Wednesday (and ratings were WAY up), and that Bayless, although refusing to take down the offending tweet (good!), did grovel a series of apologies which may or may not have been sincere. 

For the record, by the way, Bayless was correct. The NFL couldn’t figure out a way to re-schedule the Bills/Bengals game, and came up with a convoluted solution involving the distinct possibility that the AFC championship game would be played on a neutral field. If it is indeed true that the Bills/Bengals game was suspended at the Bengals’ instigation, it is particularly ironic that the major objection to the league’s proposal comes from Cincinnati, as the home field for a potential Cincinnati/Baltimore game would be decided by a coin toss.  (As it happens, that situation was avoided, although the neutral field championship game could still happen.)

There were plenty of other stupid responses to Hamlin’s injury. The most egregious (please, let it be the most egregious!) came from Ernest Owens, who sees this as a racial issue. The fact that previous games weren’t called when white players (Mike Utley and Dennis Byrd, to name two) were paralyzed in on-field incidents apparently doesn’t register with Owens. Owens also rants that “players who are arrested for domestic abuse are often given a slap on the wrist,” which he attributes to the “NFL [not appearing] to care about the morality, accountability, and responsibility of its players.” Guess what race the majority of those offenders are? 

There is plenty of legitimate criticism of the NFL and its half-hearted efforts to protect the short- and long-term health of its players. But Hamlin’s injury, assuming it was commodio cordis, was more bad luck than anything else. If that hit happens a split-second earlier or later, Hamlin simply bounces up from the ground, and the game continues. So we can’t blame the NFL for that. And what, other than a little self-conscious symbolism would have been different if the game had been called immediately? 

Finally, there’s the standard ex-jock bloviation from Ryan Clark: “The next time I think that we get upset about our favorite fantasy player or the guy on our team who doesn't make the play or we're saying he’s worthless and we’re saying you get to make all this money, we should remember they’re putting their lives on the line to live their dream…” OK, the fact that a 24-year-old is making more money on a four-year contract than the average person will see in a lifetime does matter, at least to the extent that it makes the job (despite the accompanying risks) all the more attractive, and the fact that he’s “living his dream” couldn’t be less relevant. 

As for “putting his life on the line”: really? For all the fact that the NFL does not have a great safety record especially in terms of the cumulative effects of all that violence, you know how many NFL players have died on the field, ever? One. Oh, and one who died from heat stroke sustained during a practice. 

You know who really do put their lives on the line? Law enforcement officers. Soldiers. Marines. You get the picture. Curmie need hardly mention that he’s often been critical of individuals within those demographics, but there are a host of good people in those groups, too. And they actually do risk their lives on a daily basis. Ever so curiously, when one of these folks faces a life-threatening situation, there are no “Love for...” t-shirts, there aren’t constant updates on their conditions, and life does not grind to a halt. 

All of this leads Curmie to a bit of nostalgia. In one of the first handful of posts on this blog, a defense of Sarah Palin (yes, really), Curmie wrote “I, for one, am tired of hearing athletes described as ‘warriors’ who ‘go into battle,’ ‘guns blazing,’ and similar nonsense. There’s a difference between war and a football game.” 

Curmie is reasonably confident that Damar Hamlin and/or his teammates have been described in these terms. But they are not warriors. Warriors face an enemy determined to kill them; football players face an opponent who may accidentally cause serious injury. Warriors do not cease what they’re doing when one of their comrades goes down. They fight on. 

Imagine what the world would look like if the soldiers landing on Omaha Beach took a knee after the first casualty. I’ll give you a hint: it wouldn’t matter if there really was a swastika in the New York Times crossword puzzle a couple of weeks ago, because the damned things would be everywhere. Again, Curmie is not saying the cancellation of the game was necessarily wrong, but if it’s right, it’s because sporting events are just sporting events, and not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Curmie certainly hopes Damar Hamlin has a complete recovery. That is, indeed, the most important part of this whole business. But it’s not the only part. Context matters. Perspective matters.  The game matters. Words matter. And, dare I say it, nuance matters. Or at least it should.