The date may only have been Jan. 2, but Monday Night Football may turn out to be the most excruciating hour of broadcast television Americans will see all year.
The fault did not lie with the ESPN broadcasters, who did their best to harness their own emotions and fill an hour of airtime following the on-field collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin whose heart reportedly stopped, and who received CPR on the field, following a tackle during a game with the Cincinnati Bengals.
They tried to talk on, even saying the same things over and over again with no new information, without unduly exploiting the situation at hand. The issue was the absurd delay in the NFL postponing the game, even while players agonized at a fellow athlete facing a life-or-death situation. The pain on players’ faces was all too visible to the television audience.
