We were watching the football game Monday night when Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field. We saw the outpouring of love and support that followed. We all want him to get better. What doesn’t seem appropriate though, are the immediate talking head opinions about how what happened on the field then is an indictment of how violent the sport of football is. Tragic as that scene was, I don’t see it as a football injury. He seems to have suffered cardiac arrest as a result of a collision. Football is a violent sport, but that collision, by football standards, was not particularly violent. It was a tackle.
Apparently, that blow to the chest happened at precisely the moment that could interrupt the electrical flow of the heart and stop it. But a collision of that magnitude could have happened under so many other circumstances. It could have been the impact from colliding with the catcher while sliding in at home plate. A person could ski into a tree or fall off their bike. The twin brother of Judy’s grandfather got punched in the chest when he was a teenager messing around. His heart stopped and he dropped dead on the spot.
There are plenty of injuries to demonstrate the violence of football. This does not appear to be one of them. It looked like a life-threatening random event that happened during a football game.
