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Waterguy

(278 posts)
Sat Jan 7, 2023, 10:11 PM Jan 2023

Football Fan - who questions the humanity the morality

As a kid you play football
It's a great sport but it's very physical and at times very physically violent

So, I was watching last Monday Nights NFL game with the Bills and Bengals -
for my money at least two of the best three teams playing in a highly anticipated
contest.

And then when in the first quarter the safety for the Bills, Damar Hamlin made
a bigtime tackle - and yes it was a big hit he took the full force of, with nothing
out of line in the play, he pops up like the great young athlete he is and, then
abruptly drops unconscious to the ground -
you knew something was wrong.

Before they went to the first commercial - I don't know what to think, I know it's
bad, don't we all know these days about some of the horrible injuries this sport

can create and all, and yes, I was a kid when the Detroit Lions WR died of heart failure
back in 1971 - I grew up not too far from Detroit, I remember that moment when I heard
about it on the radio just after it happened

It is unbelievably tough especially because this is a game people love to play, and watch
--- I know there's a lot of money involved, but people, fans don't think about money so
much when they watch, that's the nature of sports.

But still.
On the positive side - medical experts were on the scene and Damar Hamlin is, we all hope and pray
going to fully recuperate

One thing that is imperative with the sport now
We must have educated medical teams on staff at all games

But more than this

we must continue to look at the game differently as fans
As must Team owners, the NFL, the players union

and even in little league through college

Otherwise, there will always be this failure of moral imperative
which makes me think about war
and a whole lot of
not necessarily danger, but failures to try to do the right thing

badminton is fun, but it's kind of boring - perhaps it could somehow
be amplified - you know, put more on the line, some hint of danger
is spelled out from the server to the receiver

would that make badminton more fun to watch, even it was more of a
team sport?
- well see, that's the complicated part about creating sport you see.
it's a human dynamic - you could base a whole university education on that
premise,
you could specialize in an offshoot of that dynamic specializing in
animal sport, diagraming how the young hippopotamus play

And even animals have a code, a degree of moral imperative, as strange to some
that may seem.

There's a degree of familiarity, even wild animals keep within the group

If you study things such as this, you start to ask critical questions

but it's not hierarchical - it's just about trying to figure out your world

where it's not so easy to learn as we had all hoped it could be
when we were young

- maybe that's why we keep the old people around
- not necessarily for guidance, but to learn how not to do things sometimes

My dad played high school football in Toledo Ohio in the late 1930's - I have pictures
of him playing, he was a halfback and he's wearing an old leather football hat

of course, he was young and boney
I guess it was more of a wrestling match back then than the super high impact
we see now, but they still got their brains rattled from time to time

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Football Fan - who questions the humanity the morality (Original Post) Waterguy Jan 2023 OP
One thing I'd like to see/hear is every time the NFL or the broadcasters bring up Hamlin and RockRaven Jan 2023 #1

RockRaven

(16,512 posts)
1. One thing I'd like to see/hear is every time the NFL or the broadcasters bring up Hamlin and
Sat Jan 7, 2023, 10:47 PM
Jan 2023

praise the Bills/Bengals medical staff (justly deserved praise) they should encourage the viewer to take a CPR class, learn how to use an AED, etc. There are different levels of such courses/training of course, and nobody is expecting everyone to learn everything, but the more people who have the most basic level the better. Cardiac arrests happen all the time all over the place.

A tiny bit of knowledge, and the surprising calmness and confidence that bit of knowledge can provide to you during an emergency, and you too could save a life (or at least marginally help before EMS arrive).

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