I have spent a lot of time in this space trying to understand the nature of fandom, the magnetism of sports, and where it all fit in our lives. I came up with the best idea I could think of, which is that sports distracts people from feeling part of a group, while fans feel part of a group. It can feel like that for three hours on any day.
There are a lot of things going on with Hamlin. We created a bubble around those small groups to get that sense of belonging, and now it is shattered. We spend most of our lives trying to ignore or defy the fact that life is fragile and even harder to come to terms with.
Football is not what it is. It wasn't soccer when Christian Eriksen collapsed. It wasn't hockey when Jiri Fischer or Rich Peverley collapsed or basketball when Hank Gathers died. Football has stretchers and ambulances on the field, so it is easy to link it to the game. We have become accustomed to it and I wonder if that is why the officials wanted to restart the game. Even if this all felt very, very different, they would still do that.
A football field is not a setting we are prepared to see a young man or woman in, and one must be in the peak of health if they want to be a professional athlete. Outside of a hospital, we are not likely to be prepared for such an event. If you aren't a medical professional, you won't be prepared to see it. It's not something we're built to do, to remind ourselves of how fragile it is and how quickly it can disappear. It's not just football players ignoring injury and the threat to their health on Sundays, which we all do, and maybe Monday was a reminder of how mentally strong those players are. In our daily life, we all do this. It would be a lot harder if you spent the entire time wondering what would happen to you.
It's hard to imagine that there is good on display. The EMTs and staff are calm and determined. His teammates and opponents loved him. There was a lot of donations to the toy drive. The professionalism of the broadcasters and analysts and reporters on the network, who handled it as well as they could, is lower down the scale. Relaying the information they had was unafraid to convey emotion without being morbid.
The bad side of the world and humanity is also present. I'm not going to give him the benefit of saying his name, because that's what he wants, but he was out there who decided that someone's life hanging in the balance by a thread wasn't as important as making himself the story It's been his only job for a long time. Farther down the scumbag scale are those who use this to advance their agenda that is unrelated. If you wanted to find it, there was a lot of that around last night.
The nature of employment and employers was also present in the initial stages when it seemed like the game would be restart over everyone's objection, seeing all of these players as automatons without emotion to carry out the wishes of those with far more power and influence than them For the first time sanity was able to win out.
It was all there, and it was overwhelming. We do our best to separate it as best we can, because we don't want to take all that in at once. It feels bigger when it happens on national TV than it does when it is just one of us.
We have to stop. Both the Bills and theBengals had to stop. They will get something even though they won't get long enough. Life must restart because it has to. It is just that we prefer not to think about it.
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