Thousands of fans packed the stadium to watch the January football game. Just before the first break, with one team enjoying a one-score lead, a hush fell over the crowd. A player had suddenly collapsed on the field. Trainers and emergency medical technicians rushed out and performed CPR for several minutes trying to revive him. The cameras turned away from the incident and instead focused on the player and fan reactions. The game was cancelled. The player was rushed to the hospital with cardiac arrest.
And you never heard about him. His name is Ousmane Coulibaly.
But maybe you thought I was talking about the other football player who collapsed after making a play in the biggest game of the year. His teammates immediately gestured for help and medics rushed onto the field. Players from both teams stood around him; some prayed, some cried as he was given CPR for about 10 minutes, languishing in cardiac arrest. He was taken away in an ambulance. The game was suspended.
His name is Christian Eriksen, and he was once the biggest sports star in Denmark. And you probably never heard about him, either.
Fans of the National Football League may be surprised to learn about Coulibaly or Ericksen since their first experience with sudden unexplainable heart issues among professional athletes was on Monday Night Football when Damar Hamlin suffered the exact same fate. They didn’t know this has been happening for two years, in every sport, all across the globe. The sports world doesn’t like to talk about it (not the science of the matter anyway, or the frequency).
They want you to pray for Hamlin and write it off as a freak incident, but it’s not. Since 2021 it’s become common and they don’t want anyone asking why. Coulibaly, Ericksen, and Hamlin are hardly alone. Hundreds of prominent cases have documented otherwise healthy athletes suddenly taken out with heart, blood, or neurological issues – runners, gymnasts, hockey players, equestrians, soccer players of all ages are developing these sudden maladies. This was unheard of just two years ago. Professional athletes have the strongest bodies (especially hearts) of anyone in the population. Athletic youth were once the healthiest kids in school. But now these athletes are dropping on the field in such frequency it’s perplexing sports medicine. What’s the cause of this turnaround? What happened in 2021 that caused heart attacks among young healthy people to skyrocket?
Do you know of anyone in the sports world asking that question? The NFL certainly isn’t.
The NFL has spent the past week focusing on the human-interest angle of Hamlin’s health and recovery. They’re running hours of programming showing leaguewide solidarity in praying for the young man and his family, and even setting aside almost all discussion of the myriad playoff implications that game’s cancelation caused. How thoughtful. Teams are sending condolences. The league is sending grief-counselors far and wide to deal with the emotional trauma of players affected by the incident.
All of this is rather curious behavior for a league whose players are often carted off the field, and often on stretchers from neck or back injuries. The games continue. No grief counselors were mustered to deal with the fallout of Dolphins Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa getting carted off unconscious back in week 3. The NFL modus operandi is that players either recover or are placed on waivers and never heard of again. This is different. This was a heart attack, with supposedly no underlying reason for it. So why the media kumbaya blitz? It’s to keep you from asking about the medicine. It’s to keep you from wondering why healthy athletic hearts and veins are suddenly failing like cheap Chinese aftermarket car parts.
Many will say it was a vicious hit that caused the injury. But anyone who’s played or watched football for any amount of time will – if they’re honest – point out that it was a rather routine tackle. And even if the hit was the cause of the heart attack, what about all the others? What in Hamlin’s, or Erickson’s, or Coulibaly’s extensive medical history indicates their hearts just weren’t up to snuff? Was there an underlying warning? Is there another player out there who’s got a ticking time bomb in his chest just waiting to fire off under the big lights of national and international television? These injuries are unique to post-2020 sports and consistent with this new phenomenon the NFL (and the rest of the sports world, amateur and professional) is going at great lengths to ignore. Worse, they’re trying to bury the stories. Some other athletes you’ve never heard of:
Nikoloz Basilashvil
Jordan Glynn
Miroslav Strbak
Soufian Lokar
Thottiyanda Somanna
Marin Cacic
Omani Al Raqadi
Kevin Gourdon
Kyle Warner
Cienna Knowles
Oscar Cabrera
Héctor Vilellas
Martin Terrier
Meghan Roth
Jeremy Chardy
Richard Harward
David Jenkins
Piotr Zielinski
Josh Archibald
Dimitri Lienard
and around four hundred more…all athletes in prime physical condition in 2021, all suddenly saddled with medical ailments akin to 70-year-old overweight men.
But maybe you’re only focused on the NFL players, like Damar Hamlin. Well, how about Parys Haralson, Vinny Curry, or Uche Nwaneri? All current or former NFL players falling in the same two-year span. What’s the cause? Perhaps if the sports world cares as much as the candlelight vigils would suggest, they might begin examining the factors that lead to sudden cardiac arrest in 24-year-old athletes. Maybe run an exposé on what all of these young men, women, and children who have suddenly collapsed, been rushed to the hospital, or died with such frequency in the last two years had in common.
Coulibaly and Ericksen lived through their ordeals, and we pray Hamlin recovers as well. Perhaps he will be able to shed some light on the matter and spare another young man or woman from suffering a similar fate. The data indicates it’s only a matter of time, and judging by the utter indifference of the NFL and sports world toward addressing the root cause of these injuries it’s clear they’d rather just print up a few solidarity stickers, color a few stadium lights, and give a few rushed prayers to unnamed deities before moving on to the playoffs.
Remaining unsaid is whether Hamlin’s example will wake up fans, team trainers, and stadium level medical personnel to the larger issue. If Hamlin’s case won’t suffice, what will it take for the sports world to start connecting the thousands of available dots? Perhaps a better question to ask is whether the NFL or any of the other sports leagues – youth or professional – care about what caused these injuries. Judging from the sports media this week they don’t. Unfortunately, the fans don’t seem all that interested, either. I guess it will take something more dramatic than Hamlin, or Erickson, or Coulibaly collapsing in prime time. Hopefully it won’t take a quarterback falling dead in the Super Bowl.
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