Bomani Jones has become a somewhat regular presence on CNN This Morning. On Tuesday, the Game Theory host joined Don Lemon and Poppy Harlow to talk about Damar Hamlin collapsing on the field during the first quarter of the previous night’s Monday Night Football game.
Jones noted that he did not see the event happen live. It was the social media discourse that made him tune in to check out what was going on.
“My thought was that it was like a spinal injury. That’s something you see happen in football,” he said. “After they came back from a couple of commercial breaks and said they were administering CPR, I called one of my colleagues and said ‘did we watch somebody die?’ because that was like, it was so clear from the way they were treating it that it was that clear and that dire.”
It was undeniably a serious situation. While many had the luxury of being able to take their time and figure out what to say on social media or in blogs, Bomani Jones put a spotlight on Joe Buck. He noted that the play-by-play man was in a position no one in this business would envy.
“Joe Buck couldn’t even figure out what to say and then it’s ten minutes later and they’re talking about CPR, that was for me, the moment it became really terrifying about what exactly was going on.”
When asked about next steps for the NFL, Jones dismissed the idea that football could be made safer. He said that asking how to make the sport less dangerous to the players was akin to “trying to make a safe cigarette.”
Violence is an inherent part of football. According to Bomani Jones, the media’s reaction to moments like this tend to be about making everyone feel better about loving the sport.
“That’s an element to the drama of all this is the element of sacrifice that people have to put in is part of what draws people into this, so we feel guilty when we see things like, so we always try to come around to find a way like ‘Man, do you think they can ever make this safe?’ No. That’s just not what this game is or what it is ever going to be.”
