When the Bengals and Bills Bowed Their Heads
Only prophets and lunatics hear God's voice directly, but for the rest of us, there are what the late sociologist Peter Berger once described as "signals of transcendence" that erupt suddenly and unexpectedly in the course of human experience. They point us to a reality beyond what we know. Expressing a similar thought, the philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, "it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world – a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter."
No sports fan in the United States was expecting to receive a signal of transcendence in the first quarter of Monday night's football game, but on the ill-lit stairway of life, viewers caught glimpse, by means of a devastating injury, of a reality beyond what we know.
It was always going to be an electric game, played in front of a national television audience. The Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals are among the very best in the league, and just weeks before the playoff tournament that determines which teams will play in the Super Bowl, this game was seen as a possible preview of the conference championship. The first minutes did not disappoint. And then, in the normal course of play, the Bills' Damar Hamlin tackled the Bengals' Tee Higgins. After the play, Hamlin rose to his feet, and then collapsed, it seemed lifelessly, onto the earth. The game stopped. Medics raced onto the field. His teammates surrounded him. The human drama began to unfold on live television before a worried nation.
Professional football players are among the best athletes in the world. Hamlin is 24 years old, and at six feet tall, and 200 pounds, he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.6 seconds. Like all professional athletes, he has probably been dreaming and training to do this and nothing else since elementary school. To perform at such a high level, under the pressure and the lights, is no small thing and most people – most athletes – can't do it. There is a marvelous kind of human excellence that is manifest in sports.
The writers Eric Cohen and Leon Kass explain that excellence by comparing the Olympian runner to the cheetah. They notice that even the average cheetah is much faster than the fastest human, and yet we do not honor animals. That is because "the human runner, by contrast, must cultivate his gifts in order to achieve excellence."
A cheetah runs, but it does not run a race. Thought it senses and pursues its prey, it does not harbor ambitions to surpass previous performances. Though its motion is not externally compelled, it does not run by choice. ... It owes its beauty and its excellence to nature and instinct alone.
In contrast, the human runner chooses to run a race and sets before himself his goal. He measures the course and prepares himself for it. He surveys his rivals and plots his strategy. He disciplines his body and cultivates his natural gifts to pursue his goal. The end, the means, and the manner are all matters of conscious awareness and deliberate choice. The racer's running is a human act, humanly done, because it is done freely and knowingly.
What's true of athletes in general takes on a specific form in American football. It is, as everyone knows, a violent and dangerous sport. (Hamlin's safety position is especially so, asking those who assume it to run fast and tackle hard, leading with their shoulders and chest.) Broken bones and snapped tendons are part of football's bloodied residue. And so is the glory of victory.
And that is why men play it. Football satisfies the desire to command and to dominate. It is a tamer and more civilized substitute for war. Because of its risks and dangers, and because it is a team game that requires the orchestration of all its players, football is indeed often compared to battle. Players become comrades-in-arms, and they push one another to the limits in order to deserve honor and escape shame.
But the analogy to war has a limit. In football, the life of the player is not usually on the line, whereas in the actual field of battle, armed soldiers consciously attempt to take the very life of their adversaries. The players and the audience are used to seeing sprains and tears and even broken limbs, and to watching years later when retired players break down. But Hamlin's immobile body, furiously pumped by doctors attempting CPR, revealed where the sport's analogy to life and death ends, and how different it feels to be confronted with the real thing.
We read and hear much talk of how Americans are losing the religious impulse. But it was in that instantaneous transformation of a sporting event into a matter of life and death that America heard the whisper of angels. Religious people believe that the world we live in is englobed by a larger reality. Without knowing what else to do, or to say, and when confronted with the limitations of their own abilities to help a fallen comrade in arms, the Buffalo Bills, the Cincinnati Bengals, and millions of Americans all closed their eyes, and bent their heads in prayer.
