USA TODAY Sports
On Friday, Michigan linebacker David Ojabo suffered a draft flop when he suffered a torn Achilles tendon during the final round of a months-long “interview” known as the pre-draft process. As former NFL wide receiver Bucky Brooks of NFL Media noted, the reaction from those in attendance to Ojabo’s injury was troubling. And, in my opinion, it is significant.
“I know the NFL is a cold business, but watching lack of care or empathy From scouts, coaches and observers, my concern is David Ojabo’s injury,” Brooks tweeted. “Perhaps someone should have checked it, instead of grabbing the ball and moving on to the next exercise. Just a thought.”
The video attached to Brooks’ tweet speaks for itself. Ojabo falls and no reaction. Nothing. Instead, someone comes out to retrieve the ball that Ojabo dropped, like Paul Crewe at the end of “The Longest Yard” (both versions).
Nothing personal against Ojabo. Here’s how they relate to each perspective. The only difference between Ojabo and players who are currently on teams is that they are currently on teams. If Ojabo had been on the team when he passed out from apparent distress, someone would have rushed to him, not because they really care about the person, but because he is a tangible asset whose contractual rights belong to the franchise.
Whether on a team or not, players are interchangeable parts of a football machine. If one breaks, remove it and move on to the next one. And if a part breaks down in the process of choosing parts for various football machines, discard it and focus on the rest of the new parts.
This is not a comment about whether this is correct or not. You can and will come to your own conclusion about this. This is an assessment of how it is. And this is nothing new. Teams usually remove broken or non-working football machine parts and replace them with others. The teams annually check the parts that will be added to the 32 football cars in the process of selecting headstock for those parts, whether or not those particular parts want to be crammed into a particular football car.
Parts are conditioned to accept these realities. They don’t have a choice. This is the only way to play football in the NFL. This is the only way to get paid for it.
Of course, once that happens, fans will be outraged by what they see as some sort of lottery prize given to players for which nothing but a ticket has to be paid. The physical, mental and emotional toll is ignored by people who just want to have fun battling football cars.
This is normal, but at some point you need to show care and empathy for the players. For people who are players.
This is one of the main themes of Playmakers, from the introduction (which you can read for free on Amazon) onwards. Football machines and those who support them too often embellish the humanity of the players. When someone says “next person up”, it’s bound to mean “last person out!” That is exactly what happened to David Ojabo on Friday.
Scrape it, pull it out, and let’s get back to seeing new parts for our impressive football machines.
Football is family. They love to say it.
Football is not a family. Football is a business. They say “football is family” because it’s good for business to say “football is family”.
Maybe it would be even better for business if football really was a family.