Earlier this month, the NFL had a frightening moment when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after making a routine tackle against the Cincinnati Bengals. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillation (AED) were both administrated to Hamlin before he was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.
Fortunately, Hamlin is now back home rehabbing from his life-threatening injury, but the fact that he survived shouldn’t make us forget the horrifying image of him lying on the field motionless without knowing if he was going to make it or not. What happened to Damar Hamlin should be a wakeup call not only for the game of football but for all sports to do what they can to make their respective sports safer.
What happened to Hamlin specifically is called commotio cordis, which is a disruption of heart rhythm caused by an intense force or blow to the chest right above the heart at just the right time in the cardiac electrical cycle. It’s extremely rare because it can only happen within a window of about 40 milliseconds in the electrical cycle and the right amount of force also needs to be present.
In layman’s terms, your heart has a certain rhythm to it and if it gets disrupted by an intense force, the rhythm gets all out of whack and it stops working all together. If CPR and AED are not immediately applied to a person who has experienced commotio cordis as Hamlin did, they could die in a matter of minutes. That’s why it’s so important that medical personnel were present and able to attend to Hamlin so quickly.
It also needs to be understood that this freak injury is not something that can only happen in football. It can happen in basketball if a player sets a vicious screen or falls to the ground after attempting a dunk, it can happen in baseball and softball if a player is hit by a ball in the chest (this is why catchers and umpires wear a protective vest), it can happen in hockey if a player is hit by a puck in the chest (which is why goalies wear all their protective gear), and in truth, it could really happen in just about any other sport where a blow to the chest is possible: soccer, lacrosse, rugby, wrestling, cricket, field hockey, and even tennis. If one were to get hit by a flying tennis ball off an overhead going 90+ miles per hour, that could generate enough force to the chest to trigger commotio cordis.
After last year’s Big Game between Stanford and Cal in Berkeley, I wrote an article explaining why the officials should have been disciplined for not properly officiating a sequence that showed a lack of awareness on their part as it pertained to player safety.The main point of my article was that if we are going to have officials eject players for questionable targeting calls in the name of player safety, then they should be held to an even higher standard if they miss calls involving the safety of players as well. Even if no player was hurt in the end.
I should add, I’m not against the modern rules of targeting at all. I think it’s important that we do take player safety seriously and do all we can to eliminate head hunting from football. But, it is true that sometimes a player gets ejected for a play that wasn’t malicious or dirty in nature and I think that’s unfortunate. And as we saw in the case of Damar Hamlin, life-threatening injuries can happen on routine tackles and plays. There is no way to make the game of football or any sport perfectly safe.
One thing that should give us all comfort is that we live in an era where there are phenomenal breakthroughs in medicine happening every year. We know a lot more about the human body than we did 50 years ago and we are a lot more cognizant of the importance of keeping all athletes safe regardless of what sport they play.
Going off that, if there is one university that has an opportunity to really lead out in this department of player safety and athlete wellness, it’s Stanford. Stanford Medicine has a huge impact on the entire Stanford and global community. They recently partnered with Stanford Athletics to promote the importance of wearing a helmet when biking across campus. In 2016, Stanford also conducted a study on air bag bike helmets and how they can make bike riding even safer. That same year, Stanford was able to distribute free bike helmets to nearly 1,800 freshman.
Not every collegiate athletic department has a world renowned medical school at their fingertips like Stanford. As a result, Stanford Athletics along with Stanford Medicine should continue to be leaders in conducting experiments that have a chance to make athletic competition safer. They should also be among the first schools to implement changes as a result. And this doesn’t just apply to physical health. Stanford experienced a horrible tragedy last year that brought mental health to the forefront of the conversation as well.
One thing that does help is that a lot of student-athletes at Stanford want to make a positive impact in this department. A great example of this is the Stanford women's basketball team wearing shirts that read "Humans over Athletes" during their warmups against Utah. The team wanted to send a positive message about athlete well-being after Damar Hamlin's scary injury and show that athletes need to take care of themselves above all else.
"Could I say one thing real quick? I just wanna talk about the 'Humans over Athletes' shirts that we wore for warmups," Stanford senior Haley Jones said at the conclusion of the post-game press conference. "I think that it was something that was really special to our team, but I think it's important just across athletes, all athletes world-wide just to show that somebody like Damar Hamlin at this instant, it's more than just playing your sport. It's your health, it's your mental well-being, it's everything.
"So I think that wearing those shirts today as a team was very important for us to kinda show our stance that we are elite athletes and it's something that we all put a lot of passion into, but it's also something that we do and it's not who we are as whole people. So just showing that we are humans first. Yeah, that was it."
While Jones is the one who became the spokesperson for the cause, it came about as a result of team collaboration. The team wanted to do something and came together, feeling like a shirt was the best way to get their message across.
"The team spear-headed. Team thing," Jones said. "We talked to our equipment manager and then she was able to put it together for this weekend...Yeah, I think just kinda in the locker room in the group chat. Just talking about what happened and just how it can all be taken away in an instance and so we wanted to do something and then you brainstorm ideas if it wants to be a video or something. But I think a shirt is something tangible that we can wear. People can see it during warmups, pictures of it, sharing it. So yeah, that's kinda how it came about."
Stanford men’s basketball head coach Jerod Haase echoed Jones’ words and was very happy that the women’s basketball team put out the message that they did. He recognizes the influence that Stanford can have in the sphere of athlete well-being and tries to instill that same philosophy and approach in his coaching.
“I think it’s a wonderful message,” Haase said. “It really is and I think at Stanford and I can speak on behalf of my team, the idea that we have an unbelievable group of guys that are not only complete players, but complete people that have a lot of dreams and goals; a lot of passion for what they do; and it’s one reason I wanted to be at Stanford and want to be at Stanford is the idea that you’re not just coaching athletes, you’re coaching great students, you’re coaching great people that are gonna do great things. And the athletic piece is simply a part of it. So, I certainly agree with the sentiment and from the men’s basketball side, I think I can speak wholeheartedly saying it’s a strong message and an appropriate message.”
Whether it be about improving the health of players physically or mentally, Stanford should be leading the way given their resources and platform. It's nice to see the women's basketball team making such an important statement since their words reach a lot of people. While Stanford Athletics is known for all the national championships they win, hopefully they’ll be even more known for all the lives they’ve helped and the awareness that they bring to important issues like wellness of student-athletes.
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