Football can wait for Damar Hamlin

These are the essential ways to describe Damar Hamlin, currently fighting for his life in a Cincinnati hospital. Football is a brutal game camouflaged under heavy padding and helmets with darkened visors, but it got very human Monday night, after Hamlin, a second-year safety for the Buffalo Bills, collapsed on the field early in a game at Cincinnati.

The scenes were chilling: Hamlin’s teammates urgently summoning medical attention; an ambulance driven onto the field; CPR administered right then and there. Players knelt in prayer.

The Bills said early Tuesday that Hamlin, 24, suffered cardiac arrest, and his heartbeat was restored on the field. His condition remains critical.

In the hours since, an undone national audience has learned more about Hamlin, a rising young talent, but not a household name until Monday’s terrible turn.

They have learned how Hamlin was a high-school football sensation in his native Pittsburgh who stayed to play at the University of Pittsburgh because he wanted to be a role model for his younger brother. How he started a charitable toy fund that has now soared past $3 million as of early Tuesday morning after donations from people who saw Monday’s agonizing scene, and wanted to do something—anything—to recognize the life of the young man in distress.

Hamlin is an entrepreneur. He launched his own fashion line in college after a series of injuries in his freshman year made him think he needed a backup plan—in case a football career didn’t wind up happening for him.

Football wound up happening. But Hamlin kept the fashion line, Chasing Millions, which now sells a sweatshirt stitched with the auspicious phrase: LOVE ME B4 THEY ALL DO.

I watched a recent interview with Hamlin in which he talked about his family, how they are the priority of his life.

“My mom, my dad, my little brother, that’s pretty much my whole world," he said. “I don’t really do too much without my mom and dad’s opinion. Whether I take it or I don’t—I just want to hear it. That’s how I was raised."

These are the important things right now. These are really the only things now. ESPN reported that Hamlin’s mother rode in the ambulance to the hospital with her son. Football can wait.

It took some time for football to sort that out Monday night. After Hamlin’s collapse, there was a perplexing delay as officials in charge sorted out what to do. There was a bizarre moment in which it appeared the game would be resumed. It felt like hubris. Social media roiled. How could they play?

Wisdom prevailed. Players—many of them clearly overcome—retreated to the locker room. Eventually the game was suspended for the night. Before the decision was announced to the public, the Bills made their intentions clear as staffers began to pack up team equipment on the visitor’s sideline.

No more. Not tonight.

Football is such an enthusiastic behemoth we’re not accustomed to anything stopping it. It routinely plays through serious injuries and ferocious elements. When more serious weather threatens, it packs up and finds another stadium to get it done. It rarely taps the brakes for anything.

It will be hard to forget the scene of that Cincinnati stadium, thousands of fans gazing out at a suddenly barren field.

And it’s another urgent reminder of the game’s human side, and the sizable risks incurred. Football is a high-speed, often violent sport but all that padding and bravado creates an aura of invincibility—the NFL is nicknamed “The Shield," as if it’s protected by supernatural forces. Media coverage largely focuses on the happy talk—the stars, the rivalries, who’s up and down—and seldom drills down into the omnipresent pain.

We all know it, deep down: Football is far from invincible. Players are vulnerable. They look at Hamlin and see themselves. It snaps all that excitement and ritual back to reality.

A son, a big brother, a friend, a neighbor, a teammate. That’s the reality. That’s who Damar Hamlin is.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text