No More Football

The injury Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin sustained in tackling an opponent in the aborted NFL game with the Cincinnati Bengals did not appear to be the most egregious injury in football history  when it first happened.  Worse situations have happened in the league's history, such as the death of a player in 1971 during a game, but that game went on.  But when Hamlin collapsed after getting up from the play, everything stopped.  The injury occurred in just the exact part of Hamlin's body to stop his heart and cause him to lose consciousness.  Both teams were shocked into sorrow.  The game is unlikely to resume after having even called with six minutes to play in the first quarter.

Hamlin is still in critical condition in a hospital in Cincinnati, and though he was revived twice after his heart stopped, he has a long way to go before he can recover.

The tackle he executed in Monday's game displayed once again the insatiable appetite of NFL fans for more violence, more roughness, more blunt attacks, and more of a killer instinct - and the players' apparent willingness to provide it.  This isn't a game, it's, as Robert Downey, Jr.'s character Derek Lutz said in the movie Back To School, a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.   

American football need not go on.  It should be abandoned before one more athlete gets seriously hurt or killed.  But then, SUVs are known to kill pedestrians and assault weapons are used to kill lots of people . . . and they remain popular.

Just like football will. 😢