Sports world unites around Bills' Damar Hamlin
DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Tributes continue to pour in Tuesday across the sports world for Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin.
He was honored at the Washington Capitals game against the Buffalo Sabres in DC. Sabres players also wore "Love for 3" T-shirts coming into the arena.
Dozens also united in Orchard Park, New York, outside Highmark Stadium. Other football teams including the Los Angeles Chargers and Green Bay Packers also dedicated Instagram posts of support on Tuesday.
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Those "Prayers for 3" reached his family, too.
"We appreciate the prayers and support we've been getting from people all over the country and from people all over the world," said Dorrian Glenn, Hamlin's uncle, who spoke to ESPN in Cincinnati. "He's still here, he's still fighting and he gets a chance to see this tremendous support he's gotten for him."
Orin Starn is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University who believes in the power of sports to unite people.
But he also said he believes we need to talk seriously about the ramifications of the game.
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"Sports really do have the capacity to unite us in a way that nothing else does," Starn said. "But football by its very nature is about brutal collisions, the violence is part of the appeal and it's never going to be made safe. Americans don't want to watch touch football on Sundays. What happened Monday is tragic, and we need to keep Damar Hamlin in our prayers and in our thoughts, but we also need a reckoning."
Kayla Owens, whose dad was a high school coach in Pennsylvania, was watching the game Monday.
"We know that everybody that goes out there, they're entertaining us and something to watch but at the end of the day," she said, "they're human, so when this happens it really tugs on your human side."
