It didn’t feel like a Victory Monday, and it sure as hell didn’t feel like a divisional Victory Monday this week.
There’s a dark cloud hovering over Allen Park these days, and as we continue to await actual, tangible good news on the health of Detroit Lions linebacker Jack Campbell, I’ve officially moved into the anger stage of grief.
Lions vs. Vikings Song of the Game: Soldier’s Poem by Muse
Jack Campbell has given everything to this team. He’s given nearly his entire life to football.
And, yes, that has resulted in wonderful, amazing opportunities only few
of us could dream of. He got a college education, got drafted in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft. In May, he signed a contract worth more money that most of us will see in 10 lifetimes.
But on Sunday, we got a terrible reminder that football can take nearly all of that back in an innocent-looking instant.
No amount of money or fame can prepare you for that kind of physical and emotional trauma. We justify the violence and terrible, long-term impacts this game has on its players, because we give them fame and fortune. Then we convince ourselves that they know the implicit danger they are heading into, and it’s not our fault they made that decision.
But do they really know the risk? Is an NFL-prospect who’s not even old enough to buy beer really capable of understanding just how life-altering even a short career in football can be? At that age, you feel invincible. And showing any sort of vulnerability or doubt will cost you your roster spot. Do you think most college players even saw the study a couple months ago that found of the 235 former NFL players who donated their brain posthumously from 2016 to 2021, 91.5% of them had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)?
As someone who has not only paid thousands of dollars to watch this bloodsport, but now actively profits off of it—while putting zero of my life at risk—it forces me to rethink a lot of things. Jarring reminders like Sunday provide a glimpse into how ugly this whole operation is, and it’s hard not to feel complicit.
When you know damn well that this is wrong?
I would still lay down my life for you
And yet, despite all of that, I’m confident that a fully informed Jack Campbell would change very little in his life up until this point. The man loves football, and more importantly, he loves the process. He loves putting in a full day of work, and throwing everything into the task in front of him.
One of Campbell’s most remarkable quotes came in his press conference after signing an $81 million deal. In a moment in which he became one of the highest-paid linebackers in NFL history, he, instead, admired the work, not the profits.
“I’ve just got a deep appreciation for people who show up to work every single day, even if no one notices, even if no one writes stories about them,” Campbell. “(They) get to work, do their job and take care of their families and keep their families first. Just a great appreciation. It’s literally what the city of Detroit epitomizes, so that’s what I’m going to try to epitomize.”
Campbell followed through on that promise. He sacrificed so much of his time, effort, and now his body to this game that he loves, and there’s something tragically beautiful about that.
But in this moment, nothing feels beautiful about it. His sacrifices feel fruitless.
In an outstanding story for The Athletic, Campbell talked about his ultimate goal to give back to the people who awarded him financial stability for the rest of his life.
“How can I bring a Super Bowl to Detroit? How can I do everything in my power, with every waking second inside and outside of the building, to do that?”
Now, despite putting more into that goal than arguably any other player on the team, he may never get that opportunity. His days of putting in that work he so admires may be over forever in Allen Park.
It may be callous to compare Campbell’s plight to that of a soldier. He gets paid millions for our entertainment, while a soldier barely gets paid enough to eat in exchange (in theory) for our safety. But it sucks all the same that the people who give up so much of their own life for us rarely seem to get the kind of recompense they’re deserved.
There’s no justice in this world,
and there never was.
If you want to relive previous Lions seasons, you can find the playlists we curated below: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. And if you want to read previous versions of our Song of the Game columns, you can find those here.
