Basketball is a contact sport. Soccer is a contact sport. Wrestling is a contact sport.
Football, played at the highest levels, is a violent sport.
The entire sports-watching country was reminded of that Monday night, even during a seemingly routine play.
Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin, 24, made a physical tackle against Cincinnati wide receiver Tee Higgins. There was no helmet-to-helmet contact. Higgins ran into Hamlin’s chest and the two went down.
Hamlin quickly stood up. He appeared wobbly. He collapsed and fell backwards, striking his head on the turf near midfield. He lay motionless. It was 8:55 p.m.
Medical personnel worked on Hamlin for several minutes on the field. CPR was administered. Players from both teams stood and watched in horror, many of them in shock and tears.
An automated external defibrillator was required. Oxygen was started. Nearly 20 minutes later, Hamlin was taken by ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, accompanied by family members at the game.
He was sedated and intubated. Hamlin, who suffered a cardiac arrest on the field, was listed in critical condition as of Tuesday at 2 a.m.
Jordon Rooney, who identified himself as Hamlin’s marketing representative, posted on Twitter saying Hamlin’s “vitals are back to normal and they have put him to sleep to put a breathing tube down his throat.”
It took the NFL about an hour after the play to recognize what the head coaches and players immediately knew. The game was over. Some things, hell, many things, are far more important than a football game.
Only idiot sports gasbags like Skip Bayless even contemplated on social media the impact of the game on the upcoming playoff picture.
I quickly felt connections to Hamlin in a few ways.
One, he played college football at the University of Pittsburgh, where my former high school teammate, Randy Bates, is the defensive coordinator. I messaged my friend and told him I was praying for his former star.
Two, Hamlin became a starting safety earlier this year when Buffalo star Micah Hyde suffered a season-ending neck injury. I recalled Hyde’s high school days in Fostoria, where he was one of the best I have ever seen.
Three, anyone who has ever played the game of football at any level felt a connection to the injured young man and simply prayed for him Monday night.
Football is a violent sport, even when the violence of Monday night’s hit seemed tame by comparison.
It always has been, dating back to the early 20th Century when President Teddy Roosevelt summoned football leaders of the premier collegiate powers — Harvard, Yale and Princeton — to the White House on Oct. 9, 1905.
His actions came at a time where there calls from around the country to ban the game of football.
According to a story in the Washington Post, at least 45 football players died between 1900 and 1905. Most died from internal injuries, broken necks, concussions, or broken backs. Football fields were becoming killing fields.
Roosevelt, who loved the game, urged the rules be changed to make it safer, even allowing the forward pass.
The game today is safer. Far safer. It’s amazing only one NFL player has ever died on the field — Detroit wide receiver Chuck Hughes collapsed and died from a heart attack in a game against the Chicago Bears in 1971.
But it’s never going to be safe.
I played in high school more than 40 years ago and I can recall suffering at least two concussions. We didn’t call them concussions then, the moments you saw “stars” and the world spun wildly around you.
It was called “getting your bell rung.” Afterward, you realize there were plays, even entire quarters, of the game that you could not recall.
I have covered high school and college football in one variety or another since 1979, many in north central Ohio. I have seen debilitating hits. Blows that knock players down and even out. Concussions. Blown-out knees. Broken bones.
But unless you have been on the sidelines of an NFL game, it’s hard to imagine just how dangerous the sport has become as players get bigger, stronger and faster.
Their power and speed has overcome the ability of equipment manufacturers and rules-makers to protect them. These are 300-plus pound men who move as fast as running backs and receivers did 50 years ago.
One of my favorite players as a boy was Jerry Kramer, a starting offensive guard for the Packers in the 1960s. He was 6-foot-3 and weighed 245 pounds — a big man by league standards then. He would be a running back by size in today’s NFL.
Human brains, limbs, muscles and ligaments are simply not designed to play the game of football.
I was taking photos on the sidelines of a game 20 years ago at Detroit, which was hosting Green Bay. A Packers receiver ran a slant pattern, just a few yards in front of me. A Lions defensive back arrived at the same time as the ball.
The ensuing helmet-to-helmet contact sounded like a thunderclap — an explosion of sound.
After the hit, the Green Bay receiver lay unconscious on the ground, 10 yards away from me. The Packers medical team rushed onto the field. He was breathing, but out cold. The medical staff put what appeared to be multiple ammonia capsules under — and even into — his nose.
Finally, after what seemed like eternity, the receiver woke up. I think he returned to the game several plays later.
Thankfully, those kinds of hits are far less common today. Penalties would be called. Players would be fined and even suspended. Players suffering that kind of blow, which had to have concussed the receiver, would not return to that game.
In many respects, the game is safer these days than it has ever been.
But it’s still violent. And it always has been.
If any doubt of that remained, one tackle on Monday night reminded us all.
(Richland Source City Editor Carl Hunnell grew up watching, loving and playing football. He has covered the sport in one variety or another since 1979.)
