Damar Hamlin and the Existential Crisis of ESPN ‘Monday Night Football’

The business breaks have been a combined blessing — a respite for the broadcasters, whose personal feelings understandably saved tumbling out, however a awful time to hawk gentle beer, and an inconvenient reminder that in the absence of information about Hamlin’s situation (which might not be forthcoming anytime quickly), and in the absence of an precise soccer recreation (which no respectable particular person was in the temper to renew), this promoting cash was the solely purpose the cameras have been nonetheless rolling. We have been, in different phrases, watching a younger man’s near-death be commodified in actual time. The second time Buck repeated some variation on the phrase “there’s nothing left to say at this point,” it sounded much less like a directive to the manufacturing truck — let another person flail for some time — and extra like a reproof to the viewers. Why are you continue to watching? Why haven’t you modified the channel? What sort of particular person nonetheless cares a couple of soccer recreation now?

This was uncharted territory, the man on the tv kind of telling us to show off the tv. The very program itself was having an existential disaster. There was no recreation to indicate, no replace on Hamlin’s situation to share, no slicing to black. The second Joe Buck mentioned “CPR,” “Monday Night Football” was over. Only it couldn’t finish.

Just 250 miles throughout Ohio, in a distinct sports activities universe separated solely by a couple of TV channels, Donovan Mitchell of the N.B.A.’s Cleveland Cavaliers was pouring in 71 factors towards the Chicago Bulls. It was the highest single-game complete in 17 years, and it makes Mitchell one of solely seven gamers in N.B.A. historical past to high 70. Mitchell is highly effective and balletic, with a 6-foot-10 wingspan that has earned him the nickname Spida; the Cavaliers, thanks largely to him, will almost certainly attain the playoffs for the first time since 1998 with out LeBron James on the roster. On the emotional spectrum of sports activities fandom, Mitchell’s evening was the polar reverse of the tableau in Cincinnati: jubilation in the stands, gobsmacked teammates on the bench, escalating delirium in the announcers’ voices. When the Cavaliers gained, in extra time, Mitchell’s teammates saved drenching him with water bottles, as if to place out flames, and then all of them posed collectively for a photograph with the evening’s hero.

This was all of the causes we watch sports activities. But it didn’t merely occur on the similar evening as Hamlin’s harm; the two occasions unfolded in lock step, over the similar hour of actual time. On social media, many followers skilled each dramas directly. As I traded texts with buddies about Mitchell’s swelling level complete — 58! 66! 69! 70! — I saved toggling apps and scrolling by way of Twitter, the place stats about the basketball recreation sat alongside uninformed hypothesis about blunt-impact cardiac arrhythmias and ghouls blaming Covid vaccinations for Hamlin’s collapse. This wasn’t simply any regular-season N.F.L. recreation both: The Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals are Super Bowl contenders, and their matchup had main playoff implications, and it was “Monday Night Football,” a multibillion-dollar American establishment. Then, abruptly, by swift consensus, the recreation didn’t matter in any respect. It was nearly beneficiant of Skip Bayless, the Elon Musk of sports activities trolls, to step up and tweet a take about not suspending the recreation abominable sufficient to present the total platform somebody to unite towards in disgust. (He even managed to offend Shannon Sharpe, the ex-N.F.L. tight finish with whom Bayless hosts Fox Sports 1’s “Undisputed,” sufficient for Sharpe to face him up for his or her broadcast the subsequent morning.)

But social media additionally created avenues for catharsis. Hamlin was an unheralded sixth-round decide popping out of the University of Pittsburgh, close to his hometown, McKees Rocks, Pa. He cracked the Bills’ beginning lineup solely in September, after the first-string security Micah Hyde suffered a neck harm and needed to depart the stadium in an ambulance. In 2020, Hamlin arrange a GoFundMe to assist a toy drive again residence in McKees Rocks, and as of that Monday afternoon, simply earlier than the recreation, he’d raised about $2,500. By Friday, the helplessness all of us gave the impression to be feeling on Hamlin’s behalf had poured greater than $8 million into his toy drive.