The NFL Must Prioritize Players’ Safety and Humanity

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where football overshadowed all else. I spent every fall Friday evening at high school football games, every Saturday afternoon at college games, and every Sunday watching my father and brothers anguish over their long-suffering Bengals.

Last January, I watched in awe as my hometown came alive with excitement over the Bengals’ surprising transformation into a competitive team, making it to the 2022 Super Bowl. Cincinnati suddenly buzzed with hope and energy, and its national perception as a past-its-prime Rust Belt city transformed in real time. The Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber estimated that the region spent an extra $40 million during the weekend of the Super Bowl alone, and local tourism officials reported a 46% increase in inquiries about Cincinnati as a weekend destination throughout the 2022 playoffs. The Bengals’ newfound success had a real and measurable impact on the region’s economy and psyche.

On January 2, the Bengals hoped to continue that success in a highly anticipated “Monday Night Football” game against the Buffalo Bills. In an unprecedented move, the National Football League (NFL) cancelled the game nine minutes into the first quarter after Bills Safety Damar Hamlin collapsed and entered cardiac arrest on the field after a routine tackle. The ensuing emergency response was watched on television by 23.8 million alarmed viewers, while 65,000 people anxiously stood waiting in Cincinnati’s stadium.

Hamlin’s health crisis moved even casual sports fans, inspiring an overwhelming response focused on his humanity rather than his skills on the field. A toy drive Hamlin started has raised over $8.6 million dollars from donors around the world. Bills head coach Sean McDermott admitted that this crisis has changed the way he views his players, saying, “they’re real people dealing with real life issues and challenges . . . when you have to go to the hospital with a player’s family, it’s another reminder this player comes from a mom and his dad.”

And yet, the NFL’s business model and football’s “next man up” ethos treats these players as interchangeable. Two days after Hamlin’s hospitalization, the Bills announced roster moves replacing Hamlin, resulting in the release of cornerback Xavier Rhodes. This roster juggling breaks the NFL’s carefully-crafted illusion that each team is a family, that the players are a band of brothers. The league knows that its fans are more likely to pay the ever-increasing ticket prices if franchises are viewed as families with deep roots in the local community, rather than calculating businesses that discard employees when their bodies give out.

The NFL advertises its players as human gladiators while protecting the viewers from witnessing any of the consequences of the violence. Football destroys players’ bodies. One study by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers found that NFL players died much earlier than Major League Baseball players (59.6 years versus 66.7 years). Brain disease killed professional football players at a rate 3 times higher than professional baseball players, and the rate of heart disease was 2.4 times higher. A player’s health outcome from playing in the NFL compared to another professional sports league is measurably worse.

The economics of contract negotiations and endorsements incentivize NFL players to make decisions that endanger their own health. Players make critical medical decisions under pressure from teammates, agents, and fans, often with limited expertise and information provided by potentially conflicted team medical personnel. Recent studies have shown significant evidence that NFL players underestimate their personal risk of injury or concussion and that players underreport injuries, particularly concussions.

The teams and fans expect the players to tough it out when they get hurt and applaud the players when they play through the pain. In their desire to win, help their teammates, or just remain employed, players routinely play with injuries despite clear risk of permanent injury. Playing through the pain extends beyond the NFL to the millions of youth league football players in the United States, a minuscule fraction of whom will ever earn a penny playing the game.

The televised broadcasts of NFL games further sanitize the public perception of the brutal sport. Broadcasts frequently cut to commercial when a player is injured and repeatedly replay the tackle that caused the injury while avoiding showing the injured player. The NFL whisks injured players to blue medical tents for screening, in the name of “player privacy,” further hiding the sport’s violent repercussions from the TV audience. The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) has collectively bargained for fully equipped medical staff and ambulances at the ready during every game, a move which likely saved Damar Hamlin’s life, but telecasts intentionally hide visual evidence of this necessary precaution out of sight and thus out of mind for most viewers.

Fans must recognize their ability to bring about change concerning player health. The lives of NFL players are worth more than the entertainment provided on the field—players are human beings who risk suffering injuries that can adversely affect their long-term health.

To contribute to that recognition, the NFL must be transparent about the health risks associated with the game to both players and fans. The paramedics and ambulances should stand on the side of the field, visible and ready for the entirety of each game. We now know that the fast actions of the Bills and University of Cincinnati Medical Center physicians following the NFLPA-mandated Emergency Action Plan saved Hamlin’s life and quality of life. Policymakers and fans alike should demand visible medical personnel not only to save vital seconds, but to remind fans of the grave risks of the sport.

The media must engage appropriate experts, including doctors, scientists, and lawyers, to ensure that its reporting on player health matters is accurate, balanced, and comprehensive. Fans should scrutinize the NFL’s deals with Amazon and YouTube to stream live games. The newsrooms and journalists provided accurate information and important context in the immediate aftermath of Hamlin’s collapse—it’s frightening to imagine what information the millions of television viewers that night would have turned to in the absence of a newsroom.

And lastly, policymakers must pressure the NFL to provide greater player safety and injury transparency. Football is deeply integrated into many regional economies. Municipalities and states continue cutting deals with NFL franchises to fund stadium construction with taxpayer dollars. These deals, which the public often oppose, may provide policymakers a point of leverage in scrutinizing the league’s handling of player safety. Political pressure can impact the NFL’s choices: a similar point of leverage drove the league to surrender its tax-exempt status in 2015. Local leaders must also organize dialogues around the realities of player safety in youth football.

I still believe in the transformational power of football. I heard it in the cheers of my fellow Cincinnatians last January. I saw it on my father’s expression during the Super Bowl pre-game show. But the game cannot exist without players. If we expect these gladiators to continue to play, structural shifts must occur so that their humanity is prioritized over their actions on the field.