Matt Schaub got hurt last week. Knocked out of the game.
And the fans cheered.
Vile.
Heard a lot of discussion about this from football and sports talking heads. Most people agreed that the fans' response was hideous. Although I heard one guy pad his answer with the fact that Houston fans are disappointed because they have had good teams over the last few years that have underachieved.
I couldn't believe it. This guy is a former player, which makes it even worse.
One guy got it right. He said that in sports there are real fans and there are pretend fans.
Real fans love the sport, they love the team, they respect the players. They might criticize the team or a player for not doing well, they might question game time decisions or management decisions, but ultimately they watch the sport because they love it.
They would never applaud a player getting hurt. Never.
Pretend fans use the sport as an excuse to act like idiots. They are wildly enthusiastic if the team is doing well. They get vicious if the team is not doing well.
They are happy to see a guy get hurt.
Matt Schaub does not deserve what he has had to endure.
And in a related incident: Danny Amendola got knocked out in last week's PATS game. He took a vicious hit and fell to the ground unconscious. When he got up he had to be supported as he staggered off the field.
He suffered a concussion.
I recently watched a documentary titled League Of Denial. It chronicles the NFL's relentless fight to disprove any relationship between repeated head shots as football players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Loosely translated, horrible conditions like dementia and Alzheimer's.
Of course there is overwhelming evidence to prove otherwise.
The documentary repulsed me but did not surprise me. The NFL is just another huge corporation. They do not care about the welfare of their players.
I saw the handwriting on the wall decades ago when I started to hear team owners and league officials refer to the game as product.
I was watching the NFL network and saw a replay of Amendola's hit. Two former players, regular commentators on the show, started making a joke out of the hit. Laughing about how he got his bell rung, making ding dong noises, and just generally yukking it up. Of course as Amendola was being escorted off the field they made the obligatory "I'm was glad to see him walk off the field" comment.
These are former players. Guys who are intimately acquainted with the risks of the game. Guys who know full well that getting your bell rung repeatedly leads to a short life and brain damage. Guys who probably fully support the law suit brought against the NFL by former players.
You can tell me that this is their way of dealing with the situation.
I think it goes deeper than that. There is a mentality around football that is diseased. It starts with some players and bleeds into the psyche of pretend fans.
Football, my favorite sport for 49 years, has me dazed and confused.
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