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
On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 07:06:55 AM PST, PGage <pga...@gmail.com>
wrote:
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
On Tue, 3 Jan 2023 at 8:34 AM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
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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