I went down to my local bar last night to watch the first 30 minutes of the last Monday Night Football game of the year which was between the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills, which would also help decide who will be the top playoff seed in the AFC. The reason I was only going to stay for 30 minutes is that this isn’t a sports bar. It’s a taco bar. Mmm, tacos.
A friend, Chaz, who is from Cincinnati, showed up and suggested we finish watching the game at a sports bar, but I declined because I really wasn’t feeling staying out that late though I found the idea of chicken wings very appealing. We never would have made it.
During the first quarter, Bills safety Damar Hamlin went down with an injury. It quickly went from a typical-football injury to something very serious. I knew there was real trouble from looking at the players’ faces. Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest after taking a hit to his chest while making a tackle. He’s currently in critical but stable condition.
It took the NFL about 35 minutes to decide to postpone the game, but word is that this decision is the result of pressure from the players and coaches of the Bills and Bengals. They weren’t going back out there. Would the NFL have still played the game if the coaches and players hadn’t pressured it to stop?
The conversation at the bar during this was about how a team can collect itself to continue playing this game. Olivia, who was working the bar threw out the idea that the game would be postponed. I thought there was no way the NFL would suspend a game during the first quarter. Chaz, who was once an EMT trainee, wasn’t giving us a positive diagnosis of Hamlin’s condition after we heard he had to receive CPR twice.
When I got back to my apartment and turned the game on, I saw that the teams still had not re-taken the field. The analysts on TV didn’t really know what to say and they seemed lost for words. I would have been the same way. The game was postponed shortly after.
I like football, but maybe I shouldn’t. It’s a very violent game and one I didn’t want my kid to play. I would have been fine with my son playing baseball or tennis, but not football. Football is a game where the object is for grown men to run into each other at full speed. Human bodies were not made to do that. It’s a very violent game. Fortunately, my son was and still is not into sports. He probably doesn’t even know who won last year’s Super Bowl. I can live with that.
A 24-year-old athlete shouldn’t be suffering from cardiac arrest… or multiple concussions in one year.
Our first thoughts should be with Damar Hamlin and his family. We should all be wishing him a full recovery. A lot of us will still watch football when the games resume later this week. A lot of people are wondering if there will be a make-up game, or about their fantasy teams, or about who gets the top seed in the playoffs.
Our last thoughts should be on football…and we shouldn’t be having any thoughts on conspiracy theories, but this is America.
Right-wing MAGAts have already started conspiracy theories blaming the vaccines for Covid 19 for Damar Hamlin suffering a cardiac arrest, like that hit to the center of his chest didn’t have anything to do with it. The same goons who don’t want politics in football are using a young man’s life-threatening injury to push their propaganda and hate.
America isn’t just violent. It’s vile.
Music note: I listened to The Doors.
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The NFL seems to have a penchant for insensitive fuck-ups. IIRC, the insisted on playing a full schedule the Sunday after the Kennedy assassination.
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Caring coaches and players, but probably very frustrated fans. Hockey is almost as violent. Both sports, which I do love to watch, really should be banned. My nephew had his teeth knocked out by a guy with a stick because he was a flashy player and the opposing coach told his player to take him out. My nephew never played the game he loved again. The player was suspended for a year but the coach went scot free.
And now it has been made public that junior pkayers have been protected against gang rape charges for over 30 years now, but no names have ever been revealed. Stanley Cup MVP of 2022, Cale Makar was on a team with a gang rape charge against it. Was he involved? Will we ever know? At the very least he should be questioned for what he knows! RAPE IS A SERIOUS, LIFE-CHANGING CRIME! But the criminals are protected and the victims are paid off with NDAs attached!
When a hit can cause a cardiac arrest, the game is too violent. When a player has nis teeth knocked out on purpose, the game is too violent. And when yound men can be protected from rape charges because they might become household names for playing a sport, our whole society must be condemned for allowing this to happen!
And no one speaks out! Human beings are sick individuals!
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Well done, Clay. Thank you.
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
The football machine … male bodies leased for the purpose of entertainment!! … “Our last thoughts should be on football…and we shouldn’t be having any thoughts on conspiracy theories, but this is America.”
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