NEW YORK — The Free World got to know Damar Hamlin under the worst possible circumstances.
It took an on-field catastrophe, the Bills safety suffering cardiac arrest in the middle of a nationally televised game with the Bengals, to find out what Hamlin is about.
To find out he is a giving person, a guy who cares about the less fortunate. A young man who never forgot where he came from while trying to make it in the world of professional football.
Yet as he fought for his life in a Cincinnati hospital room, it was reasonable to wonder how many other good guys, with compelling backstories, are working anonymously in the National Football League, reduced to faceless pawns on a violent chess board?
Will their only spotlight come in the aftermath of a serious injury?
This was not given much consideration in the wake of the Hamlin situation. While it might try, the NFL fails to humanize its players. And we mean all season long, not just the stuff served up around Christmas or Thanksgiving.
The NFL can’t count on its network TV partners, or even on its owned and operated NFL Network, to find the Hamlin’s of the league. Instead, the stories those outlets trumpet have singular commonality. They are designed to help fuel the NFL’s ratings/money machine. Or continue emphasizing and glamorizing the violence, which is used to sell the game.
Also, week after week all the billboards, promos and features are about the five or six elite quarterbacks who drive the league’s Star Making Machinery. The story about a backup defensive lineman who goes above and beyond to serve his community, is either downplayed or not-even-played.
A consensus has apparently been reached in NFL TV Land that the public doesn’t — or shouldn’t — care about the forgotten guys: Players whose only publicity comes from a last name stenciled on their jersey.
In the minds of NFL marketers, “obscure” players with “feel good” tales, or unusual back-stories, don’t help juice the ratings.
Instead, the public is fed a steady diet of Aaron Rodgers latest pronouncements (why else are the Packers playing the Lions on Sunday Night Football in what could be a meaningless game?) or another story about an NFL star who already is overexposed.
Like the viewing public really needs another Tom Brady spot, right?
And allowing a human-interest story to get in the way of a Fantasy Football report is out of the question. The same holds true for a pregame show “picks” segment, sponsored by a legalized gambling operation.
But the public embraced the story of Damar Hamlin — the whole story. Will that overwhelming positive sentiment provide an opportunity to alter the way NFL players are covered?
Could it really inspire change?
