But what if Damar Hamlin had died?

Because of immediate consideration by workforce trainers and paramedics, Hamlin survived, and America loved a collective sigh of reduction final week when he was launched from the hospital.

An attention-grabbing nationwide dialog developed throughout Hamlin’s first few days within the hospital, when it wasn’t in any respect sure that he would survive. Some commentators talked about Hamlin’s injury when it comes to reassuring rationalizations: Soccer gamers are effectively conscious of the dangers that they take, they select to take them, and they’re very effectively compensated for accepting the hazards of a really tough sport.

Others tried to place Hamlin’s injury into perspective: All sports activities — certainly, all human actions — contain danger. They identified — precisely — that Hamlin’s cardiac arrest might have been induced by any blow to the chest at simply the incorrect second, by, for instance, a hard-hit baseball or a collision with one other soccer participant.

Some praised the way in which that Hamlin’s unlucky accident served to “convey us collectively.” Ideas and prayers from gamers, coaches and followers went out to the injured participant and his household. Hamlin’s GoFundMe charity marketing campaign was inundated with donations. Niagara Falls was illuminated in blue in help of Hamlin.

And a valuable few commentators gave the impression to be able to acknowledge and confront an inconvenient ingredient of recent American life: Soccer has change into so violent that we take pleasure in our nationwide recreation solely on the expense of the well being and security of its gamers.

However, buoyed by the information of Hamlin’s enchancment, gamers, homeowners, coaches and followers resumed the video games the next weekend as if nothing had occurred.

However what if Damar Hamlin had died? Would his demise have been the occasion that provokes us to reevaluate the price of our ardour for soccer?

I think that the reply is not any. We merely love soccer an excessive amount of. The pleasure we expertise from a really thrilling recreation makes it simple to just accept the rationalizations of soccer’s most passionate apologists, even when they ring hole underneath cautious examination.

In reality, whereas Hamlin’s injury was extraordinarily severe, it was atypical of the injury that soccer inflicts on its gamers, a lot of which is invisible.

Hamlin is on the prime of his career, he’s being effectively compensated and, at age 24, he’s sufficiently old to have some understanding of the dangers he’s taking.

However his state of affairs says virtually nothing in regards to the million highschool soccer gamers, of whom, in keeping with the Ohio State College Faculty of Public Health, solely .023% will attain the NFL.

The carnage is effectively documented. Yearly hundreds of gamers in highschool and school endure joint accidents — knees, shoulders, ankles — that may have a lifelong impression on their well being. A small proportion will probably be paralyzed for all times. And in keeping with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, three highschool and school gamers will die from mind and spinal cord accidents yearly.

However a lot of the injury from soccer is extra insidious. Rising analysis signifies that persistent traumatic encephalopathy begins early in gamers’ careers and is extra pervasive than beforehand understood. This merely confirms what’s already apparent: The mind is a fabulous, complicated and delicate organ that’s sure to endure if we hit it an excessive amount of.

This info would possibly make us uncomfortable, but it surely’s additionally simple to disregard. It’s like local weather change: We all know it’s taking place, we all know that we should always take motion to repair it however we’re having such a very good time with fossil fuels, it’s simply arduous to cease.

It’s the identical with soccer: It’s a lot enjoyable we will’t convey ourselves to offer it up. It’ll take much more than a mountain of accidents and few deaths to alter our minds, even when all of the carnage is in service of not more than the hassle to maneuver a ball from one finish of a area to the opposite.