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We don't feel their pain Fans should sympathize more with injured athletesPosted: Monday December 03, 2001 11:33 AM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours. Marcus Robinson is a Chicago Bears wide receiver who happens to be on my fantasy football team. He was having a nice year until he tore knee ligaments and had to have surgery. That was about six weeks ago, which happens to be the last time I gave much thought to Marcus Robinson. The only reason he comes to mind now is that I recently came across his name on an NFL injury report, and when I saw it, I didn't think much at all about how having a knee operation had affected his life. I didn't wonder whether Robinson has had trouble getting into a car without tweaking his injured knee, or whether he kept it elevated at night so it didn't throb, or if the operation left much of a scar. My first thought was, I sure wish Marcus Robinson was still giving me fantasy football points every week. This is not to say that I am an insensitive clod, although there are few who might say exactly that. It's not to say that people who play fantasy football are cold-hearted sickos, although, let's face it, none of us would exactly be the grand marshall of the mental health parade. It's an example of how I, and I'm guessing you, have a remarkable ability to take athletes' pain in stride. Almost every game, particularly in the NFL, we watch some player suffer the kind of injury that would make most of us cry for mommy, and our initial reaction usually is, "I hope they're not going to a commercial break while they get the guy off the field." On Sunday, Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair suffered an elbow injury when 266-pound Jamir Miller knocked him down and stepped on his arm. McNair was forced out of the game, but returned to throw two touchdown passes. Imagine for a moment a 266-pound man using your arm like a bath mat. The only thing you'd throw would be a fit if a big bottle of Vicodin wasn't by your bedside. Asked about where he felt sore after Sunday's game, Jerome Bettis of the Steelers said, "It's my groin, my hip, it goes all the way around." That's the kind of discomfort I'd rather not even imagine. Hot, searing pain radiates through the NFL every week, but to most of us, the injuries are abstract, little more than words on a page. Drew Bledsoe of the New England Patriots suffered a collapsed lung, a concussion and a sheared blood vessel all on the same play against the New York Jets earlier in the season. A sheared blood vessel. I don't know what that is, but I'm fairly certain that nothing in the human body was meant to be sheared. It's a sign of how much we see athletes as interchangeable parts, to be used for our amusement, that our sympathy for an injured player seems to end as soon as he's no longer visible on our TV screens. Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in the playoffs last year when the Ravens' Tony Siragusa landed on him like a redwood tree. Gannon returned for training camp in August fully healthy, but none of us saw the weeks of the offseason when he had trouble lifting his arm high enough to comb his hair. We don't have to go into mourning every time a player is carted from the field. After all, they don't exactly go without medical attention. Most athletes get MRI's more often than most of us get haircuts. But every now and then, before we yell at the TV screen for a key player from our favorite team to get up, it's a good idea to remember that getting up isn't always so easy. Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the
writer.
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