Hamlin showed the nation the cost of violence

No one wants to see a young man collapse on a football field during a game. No one wants to watch, aghast, as he lies on his back not moving while medical professionals work frantically to save his life. “Get up, get up, get up,” we murmur to ourselves.

Teammates and coaches of Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old defensive back for the Buffalo Bills, witnessed the unthinkable Monday night, immediately after the second-year player made a tackle on a routine play in a pivotal game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Also watching were the Bills’ opponents, brothers in arms, so to speak, in a sport where dreams of fame and fabulous wealth are matched by the inevitable reality of pain and potentially debilitating injury. Thousands of fans in Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium also witnessed, as did millions tuned in on TV. Stadium security guards escorted Hamlin’s mother, Nina, down to the field to be with her son as medical personnel sought to get his heart beating again. Tears streaming down the faces of strong young men in football armor and their hugs and spontaneous group prayers on the field were tangible expressions of their anguish. An hour or so after an ambulance rushed their teammate to the hospital, the NFL, a league whose “show must go on” mantra keeps the games going through extreme weather and global pandemics, postponed this one.

All week, American sports fans and non-sports fans alike kept vigil over news coverage of Hamlin’s recovery, which in recent days, can be described as miraculous. Now breathing on his own and FaceTiming his teammates from his hospital bed, Hamlin reportedly asked doctor Timothy Pritts upon regaining consciousness Thursday, “Did we win?” Yes, Pritts told him: “You’ve won the game of life.”

Even as we breathe a sigh of relief, this nation must be careful not to move on too quickly.

The distressing prospect of an athlete dying young — on national TV — not only prompted expressions of hope for his recovery but also ruminations about the nature of a potentially lethal sports-andentertainment spectacle, a game that millions of Americans love with a passion, in part because it is violent. His injury prompts thoughts, as well, about our general acceptance of violence. Remember how civil rights activist H. Rap Brown put it decades ago? “Violence,” he observed, “is as American as cherry pie” (yes, cherry, not apple). Despite paeans to peace, love and respect for our fellows, violence is — and always has been — endemic to our culture. It’s not just the games we play and watch. No one, for example, should ever have to switch on a TV or a car radio and hear that 19 schoolkids and two of their teachers in a small Southwest Texas town have been slaughtered in their classrooms by a troubled teenager wielding a deadly weapon, a gun he was able to purchase about as easily as if he were buying a bag of Cheetos at the local Stop & Go. No parent should ever have to attend the funeral of their child, knowing that the beloved little person lying in the miniature coffin at the front of the chapel bled to death on the floor of an elementary-school classroom, dying because guns in this nation are ubiquitous and minimally controlled. Such agony is inconceivable, and yet we tolerate mass shootings that happen with distressing regularity in communities across the country — including, last year, in a supermarket in Buffalo, home of the Bills.

Football players at every level of a brutal game suffer injuries that can cause lifelong disability. Texas Longhorns and Oilers legend Earl Campbell is confined to a wheelchair in part, he believes, from the punishment he took bouncing off defenders. Dallas Cowboys great Tony Dorsett took so many blows to the head that he suffers from memory loss and fits of unexplained anger. Future Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady has described the game as “getting into a car crash every Sunday — a scheduled car crash.” Mark Leibovich, author of a book about the NFL, asked the pertinent question last week, writing in The Atlantic about Hamlin’s injury: “Can a game played by men of such size and speed ever be safe?” The very nature of the game — linemen banging into each other on every play, defensive backs like Hamlin throwing their bodies into the path of swift and powerful running backs — fuels the risk of brain trauma even if no concussion occurs. An unsettling percentage of NFL veterans, such as Dorsett, experience depression, insomnia, memory loss, mood swings and other signs of a brain beset by a type of dementia called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Every season, football players die — 20 at all levels in 2021, according to data compiled by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury and Research.

At the pinnacle of the game, big, strong, exquisitely trained athletes collide like speeding Mack trucks on gridirons across the country, thrilling fans, TV and techstreaming execs, NFL brass and team owners ensconced in their Caesar suites high above the gripping action on the field. Our modern-day gladiators inspire pint-sized playground imitators. They nurture the bittersweet nostalgia of yesterday’s high-school heroes. Schoolkids under the gun and athletes risking life and limb have become, we hate to say, collateral damage to our obsession with, our acceptance of, violence. Listen to the politicians urging “thoughts and prayers” — and nothing else — after the latest mass shooting. What they’re saying, in essence, is that the loss of a kid here, a kid there, every few months — even the loss of whole classrooms of kids now and then — is acceptable ritual sacrifice to our obeisance to the sacred Second Amendment. Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.

Listen to the sports fan rejecting suggestions to reform “America’s game,” faux combat with very real casualties. Meaningful reform, they argue, would undermine the glorious game, despite the old and not-so-old veterans whose bodies are broken, whose brains are addled. Sorry, there’s nothing we can do beyond tweaking the rules, engineering supposedly better helmets and refining concussion protocols.

Actually, you can change the game, for the better. It’s been done before. More than a century ago, the old “Rough Rider” himself, President Theodore Roosevelt, summoned coaches and university administrators to two White House conferences in an effort to save a game so brutal that young athletes died or were seriously injured almost weekly. In 1905, for example, in what the Chicago Tribune called a “death harvest,” 19 players lost their lives; 137 suffered serious injuries.

A president’s involvement encouraged the creation of the forerunner to the NCAA, radical rule changes, legalization of the forward pass and abolition of dangerous mass formations like the flying wedge. Although reform in the name of safety continued long after Roosevelt’s efforts, helmets were not compulsory until 1943. Defensive linemen, determined to knock the opposing team’s quarterback out of the game, were allowed to pummel him until the whistle was blown, even after he had thrown a pass.

Although the NFL has sought to minimize the long-term risk of the game, the league has gotten more serious about reform in recent years, as has the NCAA. Ironically, the most effective reform might be one that’s counter-intuitive (and unlikely): Eliminate protection. A football player sans helmet and pads — as in rugby —- is less likely to take chances with his body than today’s gridiron warrior outfitted for combat in layers of body armor that give the illusion of invincibility. He’s more likely to end his playing career with brain and body intact.

When it comes to football, youthful dreams may not die, but parents steering their sons into soccer and other less dangerous sports may have a profound, longterm effect on the game’s popularity.

You can stop the gun carnage, as well. It’s been done before — in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other developed countries. We know what to do: Ban military-style assault weapons, rely on red-flag laws, raise the age of purchase to 21, require training in gun usage and gun safety. Of course, gun-law reform — and football reform, for that matter — requires something even more basic: The will to get it done.

Anyone who’s watched a passer throw a tight spiral that ends up in the sure hands of a gazelle-like receiver in full stride 40 yards downfield knows that football can be a beautiful game. Anyone who’s cheered for a team — their team — whether they’re inside a climate-controlled Jerry Jones-style football palace or sitting on the splintery wooden bleachers of a small-town field under dim Fridaynight lights knows the thrill, the camaraderie and the community spirit that the game engenders.

Guns, too, have their place in our society — for sport and recreation, for hunting, for personal safety. Guns precisely engineered to kill human beings with combat speed and efficiency do not.

With guns and with football, we’re asking for reason and a sense of proportion. “Reverence for life,” a phrase associated with the esteemed philosopher, theologian and medical missionary Albert Schweitzer comes to mind. We seek early in this new year a renewed reverence for life in this nation — Damar Hamlin’s life, to be sure, but also the lives of so many others who fall victim to violence that’s both senseless and preventable.