Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. Millions of NFL fans tuned into Monday Night Football for one of the most anticipated games of the season, with the Buffalo Bills visiting the Cincinnati Bengals on January 2nd, but just nine minutes into the game, Bills’ safety, Damar Hamlin, collapsed unconscious with apparent cardiac arrest, after tackling an opposing player. Hamlin received extensive CPR on the field, and was transported to a local hospital. The game was suspended for that evening, but the incident again commenced a national conversation about the National Football League as an organization and its handling of player safety issues. My guest this week is Mark Leibovich. He’s a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of the 2018 book, Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. Mark, welcome back to the show.

Mark Leibovich:

Preet, great to be with you.

Preet Bharara:

So, we should start at the outset by informing people that we are recording this in the four o’clock hour on Wednesday, January 4th, and at the time that we are having this conversation, Hamlin is still in intensive care at the hospital. By the time this drops on Monday, we don’t know what the situation will be. Can you describe for folks who may not have followed it as closely, what the best understanding is of what happened medically?

Mark Leibovich:

No one knows for sure, but essentially, Damar Hamlin, a player for the Buffalo Bills, he’s a defensive player, he tackled Tee Higgins, who’s an offensive player for the Cincinnati Bengals, who was carrying the ball. Now, usually, the tackler is in the aggressive position. Usually, the tackler inflicts greater sort of bodily harm, or there’s a higher kind of rate of velocity against the person with the ball. This was a case where the person with the ball, Tee Higgins, is a big, tall, muscular, wide receiver, kind of led with his shoulder pads and kind of knocked back Damar Hamlin, who fell somewhat hard, but he got right up, and then after about a second, took a step, and collapsed to the ground immediately, and-

Preet Bharara:

Collapsed backwards.

Mark Leibovich:

… collapsed backwards. It was a really bad fall.

Preet Bharara:

And his body went limp.

Mark Leibovich:

His head hit the turf pretty hard, and from what I could tell, he didn’t regain consciousness. I mean, from that point on, fairly quickly, there was some really aggressive medical intervention. An ambulance came out on the field. People seemed to know very, very quickly that this is a really serious situation, and several minutes later, he was taken off the field in an ambulance.

Preet Bharara:

So, we know that in fact, his heart stopped on the field, and it had to be resuscitated. This is something based on the information we have right now, which is preliminary. I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it correct, but the event is known as commotio cordis, or commotio cordis?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, that seems to be a recurring-

Preet Bharara:

Consensus?

Mark Leibovich:

Well, I don’t know if it’s consensus, but I’ve heard it from a lot of people who have seen this kind of thing before, and there have been cases that I’ve seen not actually in football, which is a little bit strange, but in baseball-

Preet Bharara:

Hockey and baseball, right?

Mark Leibovich:

… hockey, yeah. When the puck or the ball actually hits at the exact right or wrong place at the exact wrong second, split second, something like this has happened.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have an assessment of how the League and the professionals at that game, in the immediate aftermath of Hamlin’s collapse, how they handled the situation?

Mark Leibovich:

It sounds like, I mean, certainly from an EMT standpoint, they handled it quite well. I mean, if you go into cardiac arrest, and certainly no one wants to, a professional football game is a really good place to do it, because there’s all kinds of trained urgent care people around. There’s ambulances, presumably they can get you right to a hospital. So, it sounds like they did everything right. It sounds like they actually did revive him on the field, and they actually later had to do the same thing at University of Cincinnati Medical Center. So, the proximity was really, really fortuitous, and it does sound like all the protocols were followed, and that side of it was really, really good.

I mean, obviously it was a stunning situation. There were tons of decisions to make. The League had to figure out whether to play the game, how long to delay the game, whether to cancel the game, what to do with the two teams, how to handle the logistics of tens of thousands of people getting in and out of an arena, tens of millions of people watching at home, and it was a very, very precarious situation. I mean, obviously the League’s going to be second guessed, and they caught some heat for waiting maybe 45 minutes in an hour to cancel the game.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask you about that. I want to take that through, because the question here, for a lot of people, is does the NFL care appropriately about the safety of its players? And that’s been a controversy for a long time, particularly with concussion protocol. Do you believe there is any semblance of a plan about continuing a game, or suspending a game, or postponing a game in the event of a serious injury, or were they just making it up as they went along?

Mark Leibovich:

Well, first of all, the NFL, they have contingencies for everything. Anything catastrophic, I mean, you name it, they have planned for it. They’re sort of like The Pentagon, and they have scenario planning, they have all kinds of rehearsals for this kind of thing. Having said all that, a crisis moment like this is completely… I mean, it is not predictable, it’s improvisational. You don’t know exactly what kind of injury, you don’t exactly know what the health of the player is, and so forth. So, look, the NFL, I thought has done an abysmal job over the years protecting its players. They talk about how the game has never been safer. It is not a safe game to play. If you were worried about your brain health, your long-term health, I would not recommend that anyone plays football, and I would also not give the NFL terribly big points for actually helping out over the years, although they’ve actually-

Preet Bharara:

Can I interrupt you for a second?

Mark Leibovich:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

Are you a football fan?

Mark Leibovich:

I am.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have any problems squaring the thought you just articulated, with the fact that you’re an avid fan who watches?

Mark Leibovich:

Yep, absolutely. The cognitive dissonance, it’s something I keep in check, I certainly admit to it, and then things like what happened Monday happen, and it becomes instantly harder. The blockades of denial tend to lift in ways that are very uncomfortable. So yeah, I totally own that.

Preet Bharara:

So, there’s has been reporting in the moment, and since that there was an expectation on the part of some officials that the teams would go back to their locker rooms for a few minutes, and then resume play. That’s been denied by some people at the NFL. Do you have an understanding based on your sourcing and reporting, as to what really unfolded in decision making that evening?

Mark Leibovich:

I don’t. I mean, that’s a very much of a he said, she said, or he said, he said situation, and the most damning reports of the NFL were that they were going to be given five minutes to warm up on the sidelines, not even go back to the locker room, and resume play. The NFL vehemently denies that. ESPN, who was broadcasting the game, which is [inaudible 00:07:05] the game stands by that, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the bottom of that. But obviously, I mean, the NFL does not want to be associated, even if they have to lie about it with that decision, if in fact, it happened.

Preet Bharara:

And obviously, to the extent there was consideration of commencing play very quickly, is that about anything other than money?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah. I mean, it’s largely about money. I mean, look, it is not a small thing logistically to plan a game, to postpone a massive NFL game, a production, a television schedule. There are billions of dollars at stake. Having said that, yes, it’s not a small thing. It is a incredibly small thing next to the life and death situation that was on full display. So yeah, it does sound like even though the League was second guessed, I think they ultimately got the decision right, which is to postpone the game. Maybe it took a little longer than it should’ve, but I think in the scheme of things, that’s not going to affect the prognosis for Damar Hamlin. So, ultimately, yeah, I thought they did probably get the decision right. It’s a clunky situation that you’re never going to be perfect, you’re going to second guess it, but I think they were fine.

Preet Bharara:

So, on this particular issue, which is different from a concussion, concussions happen all the time, and there’s a controversy about a particular player on a different team and the concussion protocol with him, this does not seem to be based on what I understand right now, which is obviously incomplete. This is not a recurring thing. It’s in some ways, a very, very rare occurrence, as we’ve mentioned. It can happen in baseball where the heart is struck with blunt force at a particular moment, a fraction of a second with particular force, and it causes the heart to stop. Based on this thing and your understanding of the NFL and safety measures, should they change something or not?

Mark Leibovich:

No, I don’t think you can legislate a rule, at least easily, about whatever this very sort of narrow syndrome is. I mean, it sounds like if it’s going to happen, it’s going to be a fairly fluky unplanned [inaudible 00:09:16] situation no matter what. But look, yes, you’re right, something of an ambulance speeding off the field, and CPR being administered to someone who’s undergoing cardiac arrest, I mean, that obviously doesn’t happen that routinely, thank God. But the fact is, I mean, serious injury, catastrophic injury is a recurring feature of the NFL, and a lot of it does happen within the context of the game, concussions. Just because player X has had 30 concussions, and his 50 years old and can hardly walk, and no one thinks about him or knows about him, isn’t as dramatic as something that’s playing out on national television, doesn’t mean it’s any less catastrophic, right? And that’s a lot more common.

So yeah, look, I think there is a serious moral conversation to be had about football and whether it should continue, and again, I’ve struggled with the cognitive dissonance, I think a lot of people have, but it could be that the society at some point decides that, “This is not who we want to be,” and it goes the way of bull fighting, or cock fighting, or boxing, things that were very mainstream in various cultures.

Preet Bharara:

Well, boxing still goes forward, doesn’t it?

Mark Leibovich:

It does. It’s nowhere near as big as it used to be, and granted, there are other problems with boxing.

Preet Bharara:

So you’re saying, but that’s a market force?

Mark Leibovich:

It is a market force, yeah. Sure. I mean, look, cultures do change. I mean, American culture does change. I mean, when we were growing up, well, I don’t know how old you are, Preet, but when I was growing up-

Preet Bharara:

I’m 24,

Mark Leibovich:

Okay, so I’m 25. So, we’re basically the same generation. When our parents were growing up in the ’70s, litter was everywhere. People used to toss big garbage cans out of litter and dog poo.

Preet Bharara:

You and I, I think the better now, you and I think are similar enough in age that when we were kids, and it seems crazy to young folks, and we rode our bikes at high speeds-

Mark Leibovich:

Didn’t wear helmets.

Preet Bharara:

… on busy roads. We did not wear a helmet. There was not a helmet in sight anywhere.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, absolutely, and slides and swings at the playground were incredibly dangerous. People-

Preet Bharara:

You fell on asphalt,

Mark Leibovich:

You fell on asphalt.

Preet Bharara:

On asphalt.

Mark Leibovich:

You fell on asphalt, and you know what? It’s amazing we survived. We didn’t wear seat belts. I mean, my mother smoked when she was pregnant with me. Now, that explains a lot, right?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Well, I know. Yeah, but I’m-

Mark Leibovich:

My mother drank heavily. No, I won’t. No, no, just kidding, mom. No, but it’s true. I mean, cultures do evolve much slower than when we’d like them to sometimes, but it does happen.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that there’s something about this event, even though it’s a singular and rare syndrome, as you called it, that will cause officials to be better and more aggressive about safety in other areas?

Mark Leibovich:

Possibly. Yeah, I would hope so. I mean, I think any kind of awareness, especially on this incredibly wide and intense level, is going to help the cause of health and safety. I mean, one would think. And just because it seems like it’s a pretty rare circumstance, doesn’t mean that it can’t be a incredibly powerful teaching moment for everyone.

Preet Bharara:

And just to go back to close the loop on the question, if you know the answer as to why it took as long as it did to finally postpone the game, is that because it was in Roger Goodell’s hands and he was wringing his hands, or some other reason?

Mark Leibovich:

There are a lot of factors. I mean, I think one of the things… See, because I mean, I guess because they have game planned this so much, there are factors that they have thought about and had to think about that we are not aware of. For example, if they called the game after, say, 10 minutes, right? And they announce to the stadium, “We are calling this game,” or it gets word out in the stadium that they’re calling this game, you’re going to see a flood to the exits and you’re going to see a massive traffic gridlock around the stadium, which could affect the ability of the first responders and the ambulance to get the patient to the hospital. So-

Preet Bharara:

I hadn’t thought of that. That’s a good point.

Mark Leibovich:

Right. So, I mean, I was talking to somebody at the League yesterday. So, that alone was something, one, I didn’t know either, but two, it’s reason enough to make sure that the ambulance is out of the facility, which took about 40 minutes, from what I can tell, after all the initial work was done. About calling the game, I mean, your intent might’ve been immediately to call the game, but you don’t want to communicate this in a way that makes it more difficult to transport the player to the hospital. So, there are things like that.

Preet Bharara:

Short of ending football, which you mentioned a couple of times, which many people will not be happy about, you’re saying that, if you could wave your magic wand or you could become commissioner with great authority, what one or two things would you do to improve safety?

Mark Leibovich:

One, I would… Magic wand? I mean, I would fire a whole lot of the owners. I mean, you can’t really do that, but I have a magic wand. They have stadiums and they billions of dollars, but I have a magic wand. No, I think the NFL succeeds despite itself, and I think that despite itself, incorporates a basically clueless League office, and I don’t think Roger Goodell is a terribly bright or good commissioner, and I think the NFL owners that I got to know, and most of them are not an impressive group of people. These are not people that you would handpick for your board at Disney, or Federal Express. I mean, these are people who-

Preet Bharara:

And you think that has a direct effect on the safety question?

Mark Leibovich:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so I mean, one example is there used to be 12 games. There used to be 14 games a year, okay? That is a lot of full contact football, I mean, to be played by someone, Tom Brady, who’s been playing since he was like 14, 15, who’s now 45, that’s 30 years, compared playing football to being in a car crash every Sunday. So, basically, a high impact car crash, so he’s now done that for 30 years of his life. That not good. So, look, and now-

Preet Bharara:

It’s a trend. So, the trend has been to increase the number of games-

Mark Leibovich:

The trend has been to increase the number of games, and you know why?

Preet Bharara:

… even as realization of the safety issue goes up.

Mark Leibovich:

Correct.

Preet Bharara:

How do you explain that?

Mark Leibovich:

I explain it by greed. I think if you can go from 14, to 16, to 17, you were printing massive amounts of money just by one extra week, massive amounts of ticket revenue, luxury box revenue, TV revenue, concession revenue, go down the list. So, these are billionaires getting really, really rich, and the network contracts are making them richer, and so yeah, that’s what is driving it. I would fire them all.

Preet Bharara:

So, you would reduce the number of games also?

Mark Leibovich:

Yes, and I would reduce many of the owners and replace them with, again, executives of my magic wand allowed powerful choosing.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, just asking an alternative version of that question, because you took full advantage of the magic wand-

Mark Leibovich:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

… technique, what things would you do that are realistic and possible, if you had a position of power?

Mark Leibovich:

I would eliminate kickoffs. I think kickoffs are a waste of time now. I mean, I think for the right reasons, they moved, have deemphasized kickoff returns, it’s harder to recover onside kicks. I mean, kickoffs and punts are still where a lot of injuries take place because you have high speed, fairly balls to the wall players. Are you allowed to say that on this radio? Whatever, edit me.

Preet Bharara:

You can say it.

Mark Leibovich:

Sorry.

Preet Bharara:

You can say it.

Mark Leibovich:

I apologize. No, you have some very, very kind of abandoned players just sort of running up and down the field in high speeds that create injuries. So, I would eliminate that. I would eliminate the number of games, no question. I would certainly encourage youth football to be touch or flag football until maybe age 15, 16, until kids are more fully developed. I don’t think the NFL, they’re not advocating that because they’re eliminating football from the ranks of their youth, so that’s not good for business. So, I would start with that.

Preet Bharara:

Final question, just as somebody who very honestly talks about your cognitive dissonance with respect to caring about loving the game, and watching the game, and being a fan of the game, but also caring about the people who play the game and who get hurt, what was going through your mind as you were watching players from both teams openly agonized on the field after Hamlin went down, some of them crying?

Mark Leibovich:

It was an amazing, and horrifying, and sickening thing to watch. It was also… I’m of many minds about this. I mean, I thought there was quite a bit of humanity on display in ways that were surprising to me. I thought the ESPN announcers handled it pretty well. I thought it was, in some ways, a shared vigil of a moment that maybe we as a society, know that we are somewhat complicit in as consumers of this sport and the fans of this sport. I think the emphasis on Hamlin’s health, and hopefully getting him to safety, was absolutely appropriate, but mostly, I think it was an incredible spectacle. It was deeply emotional.

You also realized that we’re just never that close from that, as people watching football. I mean, I remember and I wrote about this in the book, during the Super Bowl in 2018, between the Patriots and the Eagles, the Patriots had a receiver named Brandin Cooks, who was tackled by Malcolm Jenkins in the first half, got a terrible concussion, and wasn’t moving for two or three minutes. And this was, I mean, a really bad, gruesome scenario, and the stadium in Minneapolis where the game was, whatever it’s called, whatever the stadium in Minneapolis was with a dome, went totally silent. And I remember saying to the guy next to me, Joe Drape, who covers horse racing for The New York Times where I was working, then I said, “Do you think they would cancel the Super Bowl if he didn’t get up?” And canceling the Super Bowl, not a small thing. And he said, “I don’t know, but I know that when I was covering the 2008 Kentucky Derby or something, and this filly died, it was a tragic and horrific event that horse racing never recovered from.”

Long story short, Brandon Cooks gets up after three minutes. He looks really woozy, he gives a thumbs up to the sidelines, which is kind of like what you do when you have a really scary injury, but then the player gets up, and that’s kind of a signal for everyone to sort of get revved up again, “Okay, let’s continue with the brutalizing of each other, the pulverizing, and let’s get on with our fun.” But look, this was a case where there was no thumbs up, there was no tap on the helmet as he was being wheeled off. He was not wheeled off, he was ambulanced off. It was unprecedented. It was hard to watch, and also, frankly, hard to turn away from. I didn’t want to go to bed without knowing more about his condition, and I think that was something that spoke to the power of the moment also.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. No, I think very well said. Let’s end by both hoping and praying that by the time people hear our conversation, Damar Hamlin is on the road to recovery. I really hope that that’s true.

Mark Leibovich:

That would be great. It’s a terrible situation. Hopefully there’s a good ending.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Mark Leibovich, thanks so much for joining.

Mark Leibovich:

Great. Great to be with you.

Preet Bharara:

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Executive Producer is Tamara Sepper. The Technical Director is David Tatasciore. The Senior Producer is Adam Waller. The editorial producers are Sam Ozer-Staton and Noa Azulai. The Audio Producer is Nat Wiener, and the CAFE Team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.