Club Random Podcast/YouTube
Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast — in which the 68-year-old wears graphic tees with OJ Simpson’s face on it while drinking liquor and blowing pot smoke in the guest’s face — recently had UFC CEO Dana White on the program, leading Maher to touch on another contact sport — the NFL.
Specifically, Maher discussed an excerpt from his new book in which he calls the United States “babyland” for canceling the Bills vs. Bengals game which saw safety Damar Hamlin clinically die on the field.
The below video has been cued up to begin at the point when Maher stares elaborating on his Damar Hamlin take.
“By the time night fell on this event, the one true opinion was this game could not have been played because that’s how America reacts to things,” Maher tells White.
“Now, I’m of the opinion that they should’ve played the game because I don’t think it would have hurt the person they cared about, and we cared about,” he continued. “But why cancel the game? All those fans who lived for that game all year long and the people who did whatever they could to get out to the stadium and just leave with a ticket stub. And they kept saying—and this is such bad logic—’The important thing is Damar.’””
Maher continues by saying he can’t wrap his head around how Hamlin being in the hospital “affects the game,” which indicates that he’s either never played a team sport or his personality is missing a key piece: empathy.
“Absolutely. Of course [Hamlin’s health is the most important thing]. How does that affect the game? He’s in the hospital. Unless the doctors are watching the game out of the corner of their eye while they’re operating on him, I don’t think it’s going to affect anything… When he woke up, you know, the first thing he said was? ‘Did we win?’ No, because you live in Babyland, Damar, so nobody played the game.”
What Maher fails to realize is that it was the players and coaches whom the NFL “relied upon” when making its decision whether or not the game should be canceled.
“Many times we were prepared to make that decision [to postpose/cancel the game], the players wanted to continue discussing it with their teams. And we had to give them that opportunity,” Goodell said in a radio interview in the days following the game.
There’s also a basic level of human empathy missing from Maher’s analysis, as it could be argued that an NFL field full of players whose minds are elsewhere after seeing a teammate and friend have a heart attack on the field could actually lead to more injury.
White’s response also revolves around that logic, as he says that in his experience with fighters, seeing a life-threatening injury occur becomes an instant reminder of how dangerous their profession actually is.
“A lot of the players, when you see something like that happen to someone you’re close to, whether you’re his teammates or on the opposing team, it’s sort of a dope slap of reality of what’s possible,” White says. “When you go out and play a game that you’ve played since you were a kid, maybe you tore your ACL or you had a broken finger. But when you see a guy that might be dead… ‘Holy s—.’ It gets in the players’ heads.”
Maher went on to try and compare Hamlin suffering cardiac arrest to playing in the mud and claimed there’s “no crying in football.”
On record, while there have been 20 recorded deaths that happened during sanctioned mixed martial arts contests, none of them have ever happened in White’s UFC. Were a death to ever, unfortunately, occur at a UFC event, it’s not difficult to imagine White deciding to call off the rest of the card.
Furthermore, anytime Maher’s Club Random is discussed on this website, we must remind you of the episode where he spent over an hour creeping out Bella Thorne.