A Skeptic in Football Paradise

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PHOENIX — It hasn’t been straightforward being a skeptic this previous week, in this desert metropolis, forward of the largest sporting occasion on the American calendar.

Consider Damar Hamlin. The National Football League wasn’t about to let anybody overlook him, particularly not in the course of the glitz-and-glam run-up to the Super Bowl.

The younger Buffalo Bills defensive again almost died earlier than our collective eyes on a chilly Cincinnati evening simply six weeks in the past. Who amongst us wasn’t pulling and praying for him? Who hasn’t seen the glimpses of his restoration and felt deep aid and pleasure?

The N.F.L. by no means misses a possibility to gild its picture, even when meaning selling the lucky final result of a close to tragedy. The league made certain Hamlin confirmed up in Phoenix. Sure sufficient, there he was on Wednesday, accepting a group service award from the gamers’ union, dressed in a crimson swimsuit, trying assured and certain.

And there he was once more on Thursday, at a crimson carpet N.F.L. gala, standing in entrance of the trainers and medical doctors who saved his life. He thanked them, and spoke of continuous his quest to be a beacon of hope.

“I have a long journey ahead,” he mentioned, “a journey full of unknowns and a journey full of milestones, but it’s a lot easier to face your fears when you know your purpose.”

I’m calloused concerning the N.F.L. But watching Hamlin in individual on Wednesday, I felt goose bumps. I might see a girl close by shedding a tear.

What a story arc.

The N.F.L. is greater than a sports activities league. It is a narrative-spinning manufacturing facility churning out gift-wrapped tales that drive its recognition and obscure its faults. Hamlin’s look in Phoenix was the proper, made-for-streaming N.F.L. plot level: a tragedy-turned-miracle wrapped in a bow and beamed to the world throughout Super Bowl media week.

The ugly violence that leaves most of the league’s gamers with debilitating harm? Hey, look over right here on this stage — a fallen hero in the flesh, sending his appreciation and love.

All of the league’s different nettlesome issues? Well, why speak about all that when there’s one other corporate-sponsored jubilee to attend.

So, sure, I’m doubtful about soccer — and never simply because I’m a reporter whose job requires skepticism.

I’m the daddy of a 12-year-old. I’ll by no means let him play the sport, not given what is understood about mind trauma. I’m an African American disgusted by the league’s failure to rent Black head coaches and stung by the truth that it took till 2023 for 2 Black quarterbacks to steer their groups in the Super Bowl. The league’s penchant for brushing misogyny below the rug is a stain I can’t abide.

That mentioned, I’m no completely different than many different skeptics. I like the sport, detest the sport and am conflicted by the sport. The N.F.L. has a means of pulling me in. It’s the spectacle — the choreographed magnificence and drama, the marvel of groups looking for management amid utter chaos.

I do know I’m hardly alone, even when, strolling among the many crowds on the multitude of fan occasions in sun-scorched Phoenix, being a doubter felt greater than somewhat lonely.

The league provides to its attain and self-serving mythology by establishing camp at annually’s Super Bowl. It makes every host metropolis its personal: a touring soccer highway present that clamps down on a metropolis like an occupying military.

Phoenix and its flat maze of suburbs noticed all of it this week. Fan fests. Mixers. Photo ops. Award exhibits. Flag soccer. School visits sponsored by the N.F.L. and “farm-to-table” meals sponsored by the Super Bowl host committee. Entire blocks felt like they have been sponsored by Tostitos.

The mild and ethereal temper of celebration works to cover the N.F.L.’s woes.

My cynical aspect says this season needs to be ceaselessly remembered for the way it made us take into consideration the hurt gamers face on the sector, generally with horrible results which are instantly apparent, at different occasions with horrible results which may not present up for years.

In my view, irrespective of how Sunday’s recreation seems, this may at all times be the season of Hamlin and Tua Tagovailoa, the Miami Dolphins quarterback who sustained a number of concussions and have become the newest instance of the sport’s threat to the mind. The picture of Tagovailoa taking a success so onerous that his complete physique appeared to convulse in a extreme spasm ought to stay scorched into our collective reminiscence.

The horror of these accidents, particularly Hamlin’s close to dying, compelled us to step again and take one other take a look at the sport and its prices.

But not so quick. Super Bowl week, because it does yearly, received in the best way, pushing the narrative in one other course.

It wasn’t solely Hamlin’s look together with his caregivers in tow. The league positioned itself as above the fray by providing free classes to the general public in CPR. The N.F.L. commissioner gushed concerning the readiness of the league’s coaching employees for treating catastrophic damage.

As I walked the streets and talked to followers on the sprawling football-themed carnivals in downtown Phoenix, Hamlin and Tagovailoa have been not often talked about. When I prodded, I used to be typically advised concerning the energy of prayer and the importance of miracles, that Hamlin’s brush with dying was merely a freak factor, that quarterbacks like Tagovailoa know the dangers, so, hey, what to do?

“I know it’s a dangerous game,” one fan advised me. “It’s probably more dangerous than I know or want to see. And I don’t ever plan to stop watching.”