Now, I agree, absolutely, that life is more important than the outcome of the contest. If calling off the game would have increased the chances of Hamlin surviving, or making a full recovery, by even 1%, then sure. Blow it up. Whatever it takes.

But what I saw last night was an event that tens of thousands of people spent a large amount of money, and made special efforts to attend. Most of them ordinary people, who work hard, at real jobs, for whom the chance to attend a major sporting even is a rare treat. It's not a casual thing like going to the movies. They often have to make plans to work it into their schedules. Even if they somehow got the tickets for free from an acquaintance, or through work or whatever, there are almost always transportation costs of some kind, even if you are lucky enough to get a free parking pass as well. The NFL is a very successful and very profitable business, and very good at extracting maximum revenue from those who attend their contests.

And what did those people get for their time and money? Nothing. MAYBE the team or the NFL promised to redeem the ticket at a later date. But were they going to reimburse people for public transportation? What about the people who won't be able to go to the makeup game? Will they be able to recoup their loss?

And why did all these working class people get stiffed? Because a bunch of millionaires had their feelings hurt. A bunch of rich, physically fit, young men were confronted with their own mortality and were rendered emotionally unable to do their job for only the sixteenth of seventeen workdays each year. Because they were too upset to give another couple of hours' effort, they told the people whose support and patronage made their wealth possible, hell, created a market for their rather specialized and otherwise inapplicable skills, to shove off.

Like I said, it would be a different story if calling off the game made ANY difference. But it did or would not. Damar Hamlin had a cardiac episode. Josh Allen did not. Stephon Diggs did not. Nor did the rest of their teammates. Nor Joe Burrows and his. Acting like they are incapable of playing is appropriating their teammate and competitor's personal misfortune to wallow in their own self-indulgent sentimentality. Both teams should forfeit the game, both should have another loss added to their records, all the players should forfeit their paychecks, as well as the coaches who indulged them. I would not be adverse to both franchises forfeiting their playoff berths in favor of teams who have not demonstrated the potential capacity for failing to do their jobs under pressure.

Yes, football is not important, but it is a thing that has meaning to many people. This is why it is a multi-million dollar business. It's something that can bring them relief from the problems in their life. There are lots of people out there with worse health than even Damar Hamlin was revealed to have, for whom football is something they can enjoy, and even obtain the vicarious thrill of competition in doing so. The NFL players above all should know this, since they are constantly feted and celebrated for briefly visiting such people and passing out trinkets to them. I would love for Joe Mixon to walk into a hospital room in the near future to have the patient say something like "I was up late on Monday night before the surgery to remove my leg, but I could not even watch a game. Please tell me how you were in no condition to play and how hard that was for you that night. I am ALL ears."

Even outside of an extreme hypothetical like that, how many people don't have the time to wallow in their feels over a loved one's health problems, because they have to go out and do what they need to to keep body and soul together, and lack the resources to stave off their problems, unlike every player who slunk off to a locker room to feel sorry for themselves, nearly every one of whom could afford to pay for Hamlin's current hospital stay out of their own pocket without an appreciable decrease in quality of life.

Maybe I'm way out of touch, but I'd like to think that if I lost the physical ability to do something I love, I would be encouraging and supportive of those who still could, doing so, instead of wanting them to share my invalid state like some sort of real life Harrison Bergeron nonsense. I'm pretty sure Knute Rockne didn't rally his players by telling them that George Gipp, on his deathbed, asked Coach Rockne to tell his teammates to lay down and die, because if the Gipper couldn't play, why should they get to?

What I saw on the field Monday night and in the studio afterward, where Ryan Clark got verbally felated by Scott Van Pelt for showing respect for Damar Hamlin but what sounded to me like talking about himself and his medical history and his feelings about having heart problems while playing football, what I saw was victim culture exploding all over people who make hyperbolic comparisons of football players to warriors and players who revel in, and make those comparisons themselves, the first time they were ever actually called upon to do what warriors REALLY do, and serve their communities, despite seeing a man dressed like themselves go down. A call that over one hundred men failed to answer Monday night, despite all the rewards they have collected to date.

P.S.
Just the fact that American football players are being compared to European soccer players in this event should be a clear signal of how far below their standard they are behaving.