It's Only a Game

With the NFL season at its conclusion, I find myself in a reflective mood. I naturally think about the missed opportunities of my beloved Jets, some of the most spectacular plays of the year, and the biggest off-the-field fiascos. This season, however, I find myself thinking of Kevin Everett, the Buffalo Bills’ tight end who was severely injured on the second half kickoff of their week 1 game versus the Denver Broncos. All year long, sportswriters and analysts wanted to call Brett Favre’s resurgence the biggest storyline of the 2007 campaign. Others wanted to dub the Patriots’ pursuit of perfection as the ultimate subplot to the season. I, however, cannot think of a bigger story, a more compelling tale of human triumph, than that of Everett.

I’ve grown up with football being Sunday afternoon entertainment my whole life. But with the near-death injury of Kevin Everett, I was suddenly reminded that our entertainment comes at a price; the price being the very safety and well-being of the athletes on the field. It’s easy to be desensitized to what a sports injury really is. We hear about them all the time, and for us fans who have never played sports at the professional level, injuries are intangible entities that keep our favorite players off the field for a game or two. I will be the first to admit that I rarely think about the players’ physical well-being before, during, or after a game. Even when my favorite player misses a game due to injury, the camera cuts to them briefly on the sideline and they look so normal, that I subconsciously dismiss the reality: they are in enormous pain.

Make no mistake; I am not advocating that as a public we start to shed tears for these individuals who have chosen to make professional sports their lifestyle. They know the dangers associated with their respective sports, and are all paid adequately to exorbitantly to participate. In fact, one could argue that a police officer or firefighter or soldier puts his or her safety on the line to a far greater degree than professional athletes and for a far greater good, but is compensated with a disparaging difference. My mother-in-law has long professed that athletes, rock stars, and actors should switch salaries with teachers, farmers, and other public servants. She makes a wonderful point and I agree with the sentiment wholeheartedly. But that said, and assuming for the sake of argument, that such a salary-swap is impossible, athletes who sacrifice their bodies for our entertainment deserve to be rewarded fairly. Every play could be their last. Many of them have little to no fallback profession in the case of a career-ending injury. And in recent months we’ve been reminded, thanks to Mike Ditka’s relentless pursuit for justice, how much money it can cost to rehabilitate one’s body years after retiring, due to the extensive punishment doled out and received during a typical playing career. These millionaire athletes exhaust their nest egg on post-career medical bills, rendering many of them broke and desperate for their Players’ Association to help bankroll some of the required health care.

I seek not to elicit pity or sympathy from my readers for any athletes. They are grown adults who willingly signed contracts and more-than-willingly cashed paychecks. What I do seek is a communal catharsis for fans of American sports. While we may envy their lavish lifestyles or criticize their inflated pay days, we must remember how much of themselves they give us every week. All we have to do is turn on the tv and we have the luxury of turning it off if the game isn’t going as we’d like it to. But professional athletes with enormous pride, competitive desire, and legally binding contracts, don’t have that option. They must continue to take hit after hit in the name of a team that has no shot of winning their current game or making the playoffs that current season. They can’t quit. They are programmed at an early age not to. And while it’s easy for us to make fun of a hapless team like the Miami Heat or Miami Dolphins, we must remember what goes into each game from their side of the fence. Intense preparation and a burning desire, sometimes confident belief, that they can win.

Thankfully Kevin Everett is making miraculous progress. He is walking now, and that is something no doctor or physical therapist could have hoped for, much less predicted. I know he now has incredible perspective on his life about what seems important and what doesn’t. Football has probably been knocked down a couple pegs on his list of priorities now that his playing days are over and he has been given a second chance at life. I hope we as fans, can gain some of that perspective for ourselves, and when any game of any sport ends our first thought will be of the players’ welfare. Sure, it was a boring game. Sure, our favorite team lost. Sure, the referee blew that easy call. But at least nobody got hurt. That way, there will always be a next week.