“At this point, to unapologetically support the National Football League is to be woefully complicit in the harm it has caused its players.” ⁠ ⁠ That’s according to columnist Ernest Owens, who is referring to Monday evening’s traumatic moment. ⁠ ⁠ Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during a game between Buffalo and the Cincinnati Bengals. The 24-year-old athlete needed CPR and was eventually taken out of the stadium in an ambulance to a Cincinnati hospital, where he remains in critical condition. ⁠ ⁠ “It was devastating. America watched as a stadium of thousands of fans went silent, with players seen on camera crying and Hamlin’s entire team kneeling in prayer,” writes Owens. ⁠ ⁠ But the NFL didn’t postpone the game immediately. It took the league an hour to officially postpone the game after first attempting to suspend it. ⁠ ⁠ “Even more concerning, there’s already reported speculation that the NFL didn’t even lead the charge in canceling the game. The shaken coaches, captain, and players from both teams apparently called it quits,” Owens writes. ⁠ ⁠ And Owens also says that this isn’t an isolated incident. ⁠ ⁠ “It's another reminder of how incompetent this multibillion-dollar institution has been to its players, who are mostly Black.”⁠ ⁠ According to a recent report in The New York Times, the NFL is still falling short in his handling of players’ potential concussions and the severity of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)⁠ ⁠ And then there is Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL player who was blackballed after he decided to take a knee in protest of police injustice. ⁠ ⁠ Also, a May 2022 peer-reviewed study published in the academic journal Violence Against Women, says players who are arrested for domestic abuse are often given a slap on the wrist.⁠ ⁠ “Again, it’s hard to stand by and act like all of this is normal. It shouldn’t be ignored that a league whose teams are predominantly owned by old white men are tolerating the mismanagement, negligence, and mistreatment of its predominantly young Black male players,” writes Owens. ⁠ ⁠ “Enough is enough.”⁠ ⁠ Read the full column with the link in our bio. ⁠ #damarhamlin #nfl #buffalobills