Open Letter To Sunday Night Football: Why Do This To Damar Hamlin?

The NBC Sunday Night Football broadcast of the Bills-Giants game “averaged 14.1 million total viewers,” but if you asked them what they thought about this, most of them will likely agree that Sunday Night Football crossed the line.   

It was less than a year ago when Damar Hamlin required cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) following a routine tackle while in Cincinnati for the Bills game against the Bengals. After being listed in critical condition, Damar Hamlin spent two days in a medically induced coma before waking up and beginning his recovery. 

The medical incident that occurred on the field that day led the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals to cancel the game “due to extraordinary circumstances,” according to the New York Times.  

It was a scary thing to watch, not only just as players and coaches for each team – but as fans and as people, nations were driven to support Damar Hamlin somehow in any way that they could.  

That’s a big reason why his GoFundMe, The Chasing M’s Foundation Community Toy Drive, received hundreds of monetary donations, years after it was created. Now, the amount sits at $9,143,130, proving that people all over the world had empathy for what happened and were moved by what they saw on the football field. 

And that’s why it absolutely blew my mind when Sunday Night Football decided to cut to Damar Hamlin crying after seeing his teammate go down against the New York Giants. 

I’m not going to show the photo or the video of Damar from this past Sunday, because it’s just so unnecessary. 

Although none of us will be able to understand what Damar has been through, from the day of the medical emergency to now, becoming *the* face of CPR training and cardiac arrest around the world, you can at least try to have some empathy when it comes to his situation. 

Think about how much he has been through in the last 10 months. So much has changed. He woke up from that medically induced coma in January to a changed reality. His first question to the doctors when he woke up was “Did we win?”

This all happened when he was just 24 years old. Do you remember what you were doing when you were 24? Probably not waking up in a hospital bed after the whole world just saw you stop breathing….

It was totally unnecessary to flash to Damar Hamlin when Damien Harris went down with a neck injury in the 2nd quarter. 

You can say that the camera panned to other players on the field to see their reaction, but give Damar a break, man. Even if the live feed did cut to Damar at first, you should have saw him with his head down and figured he could use some privacy. He should be able to have emotions without it becoming a whole side story of the game. 

Sure, everyone got flashbacks to January when they saw Harris on the ground…and if you didn’t, I’m sure the ambulance with the “HAMLIN 3” on the back of it was able to trigger your memory. 

So did you really have to put Hamlin in the spotlight yet again? He has done so much to make the best out of his experience, only for Sunday Night Football to bring up Hamlin’s medical emergency or put the camera right on him whenever something similar occurs on the football field. 

Is this going to happen for any injury? Can we give the kid a break?