Recently I posted a blog about the relative nature of spectator sports. It was primarily focused on football, since that is the neighborhood in which I find myself more often than not when it comes to sitting on a couch and staring at others exerting themselves. I kid myself, a little, that I am connecting to the exertions and challenges that I once experienced as a player.
No I'm not. I am staring awestruck at the talents and abilities of these young men who are putting their bodies to test after test, week in and week out. The cynic in me would like to announce that every single one of those professional football players are making more money per year than I have made in a decade of teaching. That noise is quickly drowned out by the reality of the average length of an NFL career: Three point three years.
Is it worth it?
Anyone who was watching Monday Night Football on January 2, 2023 will be wrestling with that question for some time to come. Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed after getting back to his feet once he had completed a tackle on what could best be described as a "routine" in the first quarter of the gwill ame. Anyone who was watching as the broadcast cut to a commercial, then back to the field where medical staff, trainers and paramedics worked to revive the twenty-four year old. Then they cut away again as the players, coaches, fans and a world waited for the thumbs up gesture that so often accompanies this kind of injury.
It never came. After nearly an hour the powers that be surrendered to the power that was and suspended the game. Damar Hamlin's teammates, family and friends were left in a news vacuum that left them on the outside with the rest of us, looking in.
Spectating.
At the moment that things were at their most frightening and difficult, the voices from the screen reminded us of something that they don't often say: This is not entertainment. That stopped at the moment Damar Hamlin fell to the ground. It suddenly turned to a matter of life and death. Back in 1971, before professional football was the corporate phenomenon it has become, Chuck Hughes died on the field. The Detroit Lions wide receiver was returning to the huddle after a play when he clutched at this chest and collapsed. He was rushed to a hospital near the stadium where he was pronounced dead. The most likely explanation for his death was that a blood clot was knocked loose after a hit a few plays before and it found its way into into his heart to keep it from beating. After he was taken from the field in an ambulance, play continued.
Perhaps the best news to come out of Monday Night's tragedy was that play was suspended. The young man's life was more important than the game. I cannot speak for any other fan of football or any other spectator sport, but it will be a long time before I forget the way things stopped being any kind of fun that night. All the praying for touchdowns and field goals, even referring to long passes as "Hail Marys" will now come with a question mark in my world. A game should not be a matter of life and death, no matter how many dollars are involved. Not now. Not fifty years ago.
Not ever.
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