Fox Sports 1 personality Skip Bayless was blasted by fans and former athletes after talking about the difficulties of postponing the Bengals-Bills game after Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin collapsed after making a hit on the field.
Hamlin made a tackle on Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins on the Bengals second drive of the game. Hamlin appeared to stand up, then promptly collapsed. Players, coaches, and referees, gathered around Hamlin as medical staff provided CPR. Around 8:25 EST, an ambulance took Hamlin to a local hospital.
The NFL soon announced that Hamlin was listed in critical condition.
The game was eventually postponed. But, before it was, Bayless took to Twitter to question how the NFL could consider postponing a game that was so “crucial to the regular-season outcome…which suddenly seems so irrelevant.”
Bayless was savaged online for the comment, specifically by former athletes.
Bayless eventually wrote a tweet attempting to clarify his position.
Clearly, the part of the tweet that bothered people was the part that read, “crucial to the regular-season outcome…” This gave everyone a chance to shout about how the “regular-season outcome” doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter when we’re talking about someone’s life. Though Bayless did close by saying that the regular-season outcome “suddenly seems so irrelevant.” This suggests that Bayless was not trying to draw an equivalency or make the seriousness of Hamlin’s situation subservient to playing a football game.
But this is also why it’s dangerous to tweet right after traumatic events.
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