How ESPN Covered MNF Medical Emergency

[PGage]

I am no cheerleader for the NFL, ESPN, or Joe Buck, but I give Buck, Aikman and ESPN generally positive marks for how they handled an unprecedented medical emergency during last night’s MNF telecast. 

As the severity of the incident became clear they were respectful and restrained, and avoided speculation. When there wasn’t anything to say, they noted that, and didn’t say anything. I thought it was smart to switch to the studio and let those people fill time, rather than than have the broadcasters on site do that. sideline reporter Lisa Salter really distinguished herself, reporting what she could observe, filtering out what must have been a flood of rumors and speculation, all while allowing her humanity and emotion to appropriately come through.

One problem with the restraint they showed is it created a vacuum into which anti-vax poison got injected over social media. Qualified physicians could tell what had likely happened, but I think ESPN was right not to put one of those on, and instead restrict themselves to what was actually known.

Hoping for the best for Damar Hamlin, and all the young people who had to experience that. Until you actually witness medical professions engage in life saving intervention, it is difficult to prepare yourself for what it is like, and the sense that you might be watching someone you care about die. I am often critical of cliched provision of mental health counselors to the scene of emergencies, but this is a case where some of those folks are going to need someone to talk to.

“The eerie and heartbreaking scene that unfolded on the field in the aftermath of Damar Hamlin’s collapse during Monday night’s Buffalo Bills-Cincinnati Bengals game presented a virtually unprecedented scenario for ESPN’s football broadcast. As the network toggled between the game broadcast crew in Cincinnati and a subdued studio set in New York, a news outlet that had prepared to cover one of the season’s biggest games suddenly found itself covering a medical calamity.


Viewers at home watched the developing story unfold slowly as commentators Joe Buck and Troy Aikman and sideline reporter Lisa Salters received information and relayed it in real time. Over the next three hours, the broadcast was measured, informative and emotional. Analysts, hosts and reporters tried to make sense of a lengthy delay and an initial report that play would resume; grappled with the obvious severity of the injury; and then finally made impassioned appeals for the game to be suspended for the night, a choice the NFL eventually made.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/01/02/espn-damar-hamlin-bengals-bills/

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[Kevin M.]

My brother is the biggest pro football fan I’ve ever encountered; he said the events of last night were the beginning of the end of football. I’d like to think he is correct, however we are a nation that experiences a mass shooting nearly every day, but does nothing to limit guns. America simply doesn’t care if football players live or die, as long as they have a game to watch. 

The only thing I saw that was potentially noteworthy was that the decision to end the game came from he coaches; the NFL allegedly wanted the game to resume shortly after the dying man was removed from the field. That’s very telling. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Jim Ellwanger]

To add to your opinion: during a game on August 16, 1920, Ray Chapman of the Cleveland baseball team was hit in the head by a pitch, collapsed, and died in the hospital 12 hours later -- and you may notice that professional baseball still exists. That said, that incident did prompt the major leagues to make a couple of rule changes, and that's pretty much the extent of what I expect to happen as a result of what happened in the NFL last night.

(True, the 1920 baseball game was not broadcast and wasn't even filmed, so comparatively few people actually saw the injury and its aftermath, unlike last night's NFL game... but conversely, there is a LOT more money involved in the NFL today than there was in the baseball major leagues in 1920.)

If you're curious about the baseball rule changes: because it was likely that a major contributor to Chapman's injury was the ball being discolored, the major leagues banned spitballs, and instructed umpires to start removing baseballs from play whenever they got dirty. (Batting helmets were not made mandatory until 1971.)

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[David Bruggeman]

There was also the effort in 1905-1906 to tamp down the number of deaths in college football (this was pre-NFL and pre-NCAA) by President Theodore Roosevelt facilitating negotiations between the major college programs.  19 people died in college games in 1905, compared to 45 in the five years previous.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1905-11-27/ed-1/seq-1/#words=NINETEEN+football

Rules were changed, outlawing so-called wedge formations and making the game more distinct from rugby by allowing the forward pass, establishing the 'neutral zone' at the line of scrimmage, and requiring 10 yards for a first down rather than five.

Schools also gathered together and formed what would eventually become the NCAA.

https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-ncaa-college-football-reform

This did not eliminate fatalities in college football, but they were reduced.  There were further reforms and (eventually) protective equipment, but it has been rare for a year to go by where someone doesn't die from playing the game, as evidenced by the 2021 Annual Survey of Football Injury Research (known as the Annual Survey of Football Fatalities until 1980).

https://nccsir.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5614/2022/05/Annual-Football-2021-Fatalities-FINAL-public-1.pdf

So, yeah, I don't expect much to change.  I even think there's a non-zero chance they will try to finish this game.

Best,

David

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[Mark Jeffries]

Correction to the Post article:  Not New York, Bristol. That should be a given by now.

And this wasn't the only incident like this yesterday on ESPN/ABC.  In the fourth quarter of yesterday's Cheese-Flavored Crackers Citrus Bowl, Purdue wide receiver Deion Burks was knocked unconscious late in the fourth quarter.  He did come to and is currently in the hospital, but the game continued, even though LSU was leading 56-7, a blowout:

https://saturdaytradition.com/purdue-football/deion-burks-purdue-wr-carted-off-the-field-following-scary-citrus-bowl-injury/

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[PGage]

I am on my lunch break from work, and tried to review any breaking news on this story, though may have missed something. I hope we can still say that referring to him as a “Dying man” is inaccurate. A lot depends on the specifics of his case, but we do know of athletes in similar situations who recovered, and even returned to play.

My understanding is that it is unclear if the NFL ever ordered teams to get ready to resume play; Troy Vincent, a former player who is now a ranking NFL official has strongly denied this, though Buck did say last night that League sources had told the announcers that the teams had been given a 5 min warning. We shall see how that plays out.

I think it is very unlikely that this event will end the NFL. While tragic, this was basically a freak accident, and not really related to the specific dangers of the game. OTOH, there are a number of serious and catastrophic outcomes associated with the unique characteristics and rules of the game, and policies of the League, and yet these have shown no sign of ending the league. There seems to be way too much money being generated by football to allow radical changes.

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[John Edwards]

On the return to play question, something fishy is going on. The NFL is trying to walk that back now, but the ESPN broadcast mentioned four times that teams had been told they had five minutes to warm up, and footage of Joe Burrow warming up was shown. I also saw indications that ESPN Deportes and Westwood One radio said the same thing. It's obvious to me that that message was sent to the teams and the broadcasters. By who, I don't know, but the NFL would do well to admit that it happened, and move on. 

I think ESPN had the right set of people working last night. Scott Van Pelt is the only one there, IMO, who can hold Bob Ley's microphone in terms of being the conscience of the network, and a serious voice when necessary. 

I just hope that the medical personnel got there quickly enough such that Hamlin is able to make a full recovery. Having been intubated twice, I can say that it sucks but it beats the hell out of the alternative.

John

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John Edwards
"You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell

[PGage]

From what I saw I would give major kudos to the medical team. They had him defibrillated on the field, and was at a first class trauma center within 10 minutes from leaving the field. Can’t imagine getting better or faster care.

My guess on the 5 minute warning is that some mid level league source was following some standard rule about giving teams 5 minutes to warm up following a prolonged injury once the player is removed from the field, not realizing that the League Office had taken over direct decision making. It’s. It that I think the league is not capable of caring more about the game than the players, it’s just that I doubt even Roger Goodell is dumb enough to even consider ordering those teams to play last night given what they went through and the live TV audience saw. The optics, aside from the morality, were just too bad. I think it’s possible both that the broadcasters were told by league officials that teams would be given 5 minutes to warm up, and that the top league officials making the decision never considered returning to play.

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[Tom Wolper]

You have to forget the idea that football is going to go away. No legislator, either federal or state, would risk their seat by proposing a bill. And football is like a pyramid with the NFL at the tippy-top and tons of college and high school programs and Pop Warner and youth leagues below that. Plus you have team owner oligarchs pulling their political levers and the gambling industry paying their own lobbyists.

In the CTE era it’s been speculated that parents will pull their kids from tackle football programs and the sport will become like boxing where young people from impoverished areas will decide to sacrifice their health for a chance at a better life. I haven’t seen any numbers to tell if that’s actually happening.

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[Kevin M.]

I suspect if it ever occurs, it will be a change from the bottom up as opposed to from the top down. The playground game of Dodge Ball has been almost entirely eliminated from schools over the last 20 years without any substantive legislation or even school board declaration. But local educators and school officials realized a game involving the deliberate targeting and knocking down of children might not be in the best interest of a child’s development. Of course, the game didn’t have a lot of televised competitions or marketing opportunities, so that made it easier. 

Football is a game where the object is to both inflict and endure physical abuse in order to gain yardage. There is no way to argue that it isn’t violent, aggressive, or harmful… but it is also fun for many who play it and fun for many more who watch it. In any sport or any situation where there is the potential for harm, humans assess risk vs reward. As a people, we have concluded that the risk to the players is insignificant compared to the rewards of the gameplay. My brother believes this week marks the pendulum swinging the other direction; I believe humanity in general is fine with young people being seriously injured and dying… especially if there are endorsement deals. Maybe my brother just has more faith in humanity than I do. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

I did not allow my son to play football in HS ten years ago, and several of my friends with kids that age were the same, but even so there were a couple hundred kids cut from the varsity football team. My brother in law let his two sons play football in HS, over my measured objections, and I cringed at every hit when we drove down to watch the games.

The evidence for the serious and potentially life threatening harm posed by football has been well known for years now, with only marginal impact. What happened Monday Night was dramatic, but substantively did not add anything to the argument against football, as that injury was not really a function of any unique violence in the sport.

One of the main papers yesterday had a story about the intimate relationship between football culture and Christianity, which goes way beyond the connection to any other sport, and probably contributes to the robust popularity of football. It’s not going anywhere.

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[Bob Jersey]

Associated Press NFL writer Rob Maaddi tweeted this afternoon (link) that the NFL has decided the Bills-Bengals game will be declared a "no contest"... league standings officially include each team's won-lost-tied percentages anyway (each tie is half a win and half a loss), and Cincinnati's would still give it a division title, but not the AFC top seed (and a week off)... there are also unconfirmed reports having the league moving the AFC championship game to a neutral stadium should either team reach it... and sports-related media was rife with speculation of the playoffs being temporarily expanded. I expect an official confirmation Friday (6) morning, given that two games are held Saturday.

B

PGage, Jan 5th:

[Bob Jersey]

And here's a league page where you can choose the long or short version, depending on whether you care about comments from the Commissioner and others:

https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-owners-approve-resolution-to-adjust-afc-postseason-including-potential-neutr (link)

B

[PGage]

I gave ESPN good marks for how they handled Damar Hamlin’s dramatic and life threatening injury last Monday Night. I give them much lower marks for how they handled Saturday’s games. With the very welcome news of positive developments for Hamlin (who still has a long way to go), ESPN switched from the restrained, minimalist journalistic stance they took Monday night to the full throated, sentimental, religiously transformative propaganda line that no doubt was set in the PR offices of the NFL. Joe Buck seemed to go as far as to suggest that the injury was actually a net good thing, as Hamlin’s recovery has been a unifying force for the nation, while Aikman proclaimed that Hamlin’s recovery was due to the power of prayer.

One of my concerns is that this incident almost certainly really was a freak accident, less a function of the inherent violence in football than unusual timing and location of the contact during that tackle, or perhaps some unrecognized heart defect (this seems less likely to me). As a result it will be easy to write off all the dangers associated with football as part of the random dangers inherent in any activity. What is needed is a renewed and sustained focus on the very real, very serious, very high health risks associated specifically with tackle football. Of course neither ESPN nor any of the League’s other broadcast partners (and here the genius of the NFL partnering with almost every major outlet) has any business interest in focusing on that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/business/espn-nfl-damar-hamlin.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[David Bruggeman]

A brief check of the NFL home page this morning echoes this approach.  A lot of organized celebration to make it look like the league isn't patting itself on the back for avoiding worse optics.  That the Bills are doing a lot to recognize Hamlin makes sense to me.  The league-wide celebrations push this into contrivance for me.

And today I learned that standard contracts (not sure if this is just for the first/rookie contract or not) are set up so a player on injured reserve doesn't get full salary.  If I didn't already wish ill of the NFL, I would now.

David

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[Doug Fields]

Where did you hear that about salaries while on IR?  That's not true, as I understand it.  The Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players' union and the NFL guarantees a player is paid their full contract if the player suffers a "football-related injury" (defined as any injury associated with game play or practice/workouts at the team's facilities) that puts them on the injured list.  Players who can't play due to non-football-related injuries can be denied their full pay at the team's discretion.

Hamlin's injury would definitely fall under the football-related definition, and he should be paid his full salary if he's placed on the Injured Reserve list (I'm not sure if his official roster status has been changed yet at this point).

Doug Fields

Tampa, FL

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Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] Re: How ESPN Covered MNF Medical Emergency

 

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[Tom Wolper]

I’ve seen that Hamlin is on IR and the Bills said they will pay his whole salary.

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[brugdr]

I made the statement based on my read of this NFL.com article.

https://www.nfl.com/news/bills-to-honor-damar-hamlin-medical-staff-patriots-game-pay-salary

Yes, the Bills are paying his salary in full, but the following text from the article suggests this is a special case.

"Though Hamlin's four-year, $3.64 million rookie contract contains a standard split to pay him at a lower rate if he lands on IR, Buffalo worked out an agreement with the NFL and NFLPA to pay his full rate for Week 18's games, Rapoport reported."

Presumably if Rapaport had it wrong, the league would say so on its own website.

This may be specific to rookie contracts, I don't know.

David

Sent on my Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G.

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[Tom Wolper]

There was a similar situation with Ryan Shazier of the Steelers a few years ago when he suffered a spinal injury also on a Monday night game in Cincinnati. The Steelers kept him on the payroll for a couple of years even when it was clear he would no longer be able to play football.

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[PGage]

My understanding is that most NFL contracts are not fully guaranteed. That is something that is negotiated on a case by case basis. Hamlin was not fully guaranteed, but due to the circumstances (and PR) the Bills will basically guarantee it anyway.

Doug writes that a player on IR does get full pay; this may be true, but most injured NFL players are not put on IR (which allows players to come back and play later in the season). 

This is a confusing area, and I would like to see an authoritative review. Based on my understanding though, a big part of what makes the NFL party line repeated on every pregame show this weekend that the NFL is a big family that cares for its own such bullshit is that most players have very short careers, do not make that much money, and leave the sport with serious and often lifelong disability, which the NFL only pays a small fraction of, and often delays payments that are required and forces these guys to sue them. I think the average career of an NFL player is like 3 seasons, but they have to okay at least 3 seasons to qualify for most disability and health insurance benefits; so almost half of all players, and this would be the least well paid half, get almost nothing.

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[Doug Fields]

No, reading that article, I think I agree with your interpretation, but as I said, that's news to me.  I suspect you may be right, and that it's related to the fact that he's still on his rookie deal, but I wasn't aware of that, if true.  I'm cautiously standing corrected, but I'll look into it and I'll follow up if I find any solid proof either way.

Doug Fields

Tampa, FL

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[David Bruggeman]

It was news to me as well, and if I wasn't so irritated when I read it, I might have thought to include the article with my initial post.  I also didn't think to include Rapaport's initial reporting (he's with the NFL Network), which appears to be this Tweet

https://twitter.com/rapsheet/status/1612053825484898306

(It's a bad idea to dive into Tweet responses, though a quick skim of them suggests we aren't the only ones surprised by this aspect of Hamlin's contract.)

I don't claim any particular authority on contracts, NFL or otherwise.  Before reading that article I would have assumed that things were pretty much as you described - no reduction in pay if injured in football activities.

Best,

David

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[Tom Wolper]

For all of the inequities in regard to the way players get paid, there is a collective bargaining agreement and the players agreed to it. I’m not putting it all on the NFLPA but they could go public with the issues before they go into negotiations. The pool of money seems large enough to end split contracts and overhaul the way health insurance is handled. When Hines Ward had a podcast a number of years ago he said when ex-players text each other or get together the main thing they talk about is health insurance. When players retire from the league they have to find insurance that will take them with all of their injuries and needs. If the player was vested he gets a lump sum to help (I remember it being $100,000 but it might have been more) and Ward said that amount doesn’t last long.

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[PGage]

Goodell tries to set record straight on whether teams were told to warm up to re-start the game, but really doesn’t.

Still seems to me that lower level league officials did give the 5 min warning, and tell ESPN they had done it, while upper level management was still trying to figure things out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/sports/football/damar-hamlin-injury-controversy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

On Tue, 3 Jan 2023 at 2:05 PM John Edwards <jedwa...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[JW]

> Goodell tries to set record straight on whether teams were told to warm up
> to re-start the game, but really doesn’t.
>
> Still seems to me that lower level league officials did give the 5 min
> warning, and tell ESPN they had done it, while upper level management was

> still trying to figure things out.

My guess, FWIW:

Everybody in the league hierarchy assumed that the game would resume, like it always does after an injury, and the five minute warmup after a delay is standard. So that's what the officiating center told John Parry, and when Joe Buck reported it, nobody thought it was erroneous. It wasn't until the players and coaches made clear that they didn't want to continue, and the Players Association told that to the commissioner, that the possibility of postponement or cancellation became a real option.

[PGage]

UPDATE:

NFL announced today Hamlin has been cleared by three different physicians to return to professional football. Each agreed his heart stopped due to commotio cordis, which is what most medical folks watching live thought.

Very happy for the young man, and while it might seem surprising and dangerous for a guy who basically lay dead on the field for some seconds a few months ago would return to the violent sport, I am not that surprised. Physicians I talked to expected that, if he recovered in the short term, he likely would be good to go next season.

https://apnews.com/article/cfa1cbd3adb2185dec5225db777c1017

[Bob Jersey]

And the Bills and Bengals will meet in said season, again in Cincinnati...

B

PGage, April 18th: