Did you know people used to watch train wrecks for fun? I'm serious. From the late 1800s to the 1930s,

there were railroad equipment salesmen who would stage collisions all over the country,

setting up steam locomotives at two ends of track, fire them up, and then let them ram into each other.

Now the trains were empty, except for the engineers who would jump from the front cabs at the last minute.

And, of course, sometimes people still got hurt.

But thousands of people paid money to see this.

So it kind of made sense to me when I learned that American football was born during the same era.

Newspaper writers at the time criticized the brutality of this new sport,

and even its earliest boosters wondered if it would survive public opinion.

Even now, every few years there's this cycle of outrage and news columns about the effects of violence on the players on and off the field.

And when Buffalo Bills player, DeMar Hamlin, went into cardiac arrest during a game last month, the shock was palpable.

Like, there was this small moment that got me.

Here's Hamlin's teammate Tredavius White in the days after it happened.

Just something that I can't get, I can't unsee.

Every time I close my eyes, it replays.

I try watching TV, and every time the TV going commercial, that's the only

thing that comes in the line, just the vision of that. The players were obviously shaken, and the NFL

had to beat back widespread reports that it would have continued the game. One league executive

called that claim ridiculous and said that it, quote,

never crossed our mind to resume play. But it was the latest in a series of stories fueling an

argument against the value of watching the sport. McMahon, famous for his toughness and durability,

says in the lawsuit he played with a broken neck and ankle during his career without being told by team doctors and trainers.

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