As the nation grapples with Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s devastating injury and episode of cardiac arrest during Buffalo’s Monday Night Football game against the Bengals, President Joe Biden weighed in on the situation.
Biden was asked Wednesday afternoon whether he believed the NFL had become too dangerous.
“I don’t know how you avoid [dangerous hits],” Biden told reporters. “I think working like hell on the helmets and the concussion protocols, that all makes a lot of sense. But … it is dangerous. You’ve got to just acknowledge it.”
Biden also told journalists he spoke with Hamlin’s parents by phone “at length,” as Hamlin remains in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
The Bills’ game against Cincinnati, postponed after the injury, will not be made up this week, the NFL announced Tuesday.
Biden played football in high school for Archmere Academy in Claymont, Del., from which he graduated in 1961.
This is not the first time an American president has weighed in on violence in football. In October 1905, amid mounting concerns about the game’s safety, President Theodore Roosevelt pressed administrators from Harvard, Yale and Princeton to clean up the game. The resulting rule changes included the forward pass and the formation of what is now the NCAA.
