One of the most interesting things about the history of the NHL is the Guardian Project, when the late comic book legend Stan Lee partnered with the NHL to create a superhero based on each team. A lot of people didn’t like the Guardian Project, but I did. The thing that makes the Guardian project relevant is that Lee was originally going to partner with the NFL. The reason Lee’s partnership with the NFL fell through is because they had two different vision. The NFL wanted Lee’s superheroes to be based on players rather than teams, essentially portraying players as superheroes. Lee’s problem with this was that players are people who could do really reprehensible things, so it is better to not glorify a player who may or may not be a terrible human being. This brings us to the Tyreek Hill story, which shows us that Lee was right, why Lee was right, and the importance of the stand that Lee took.
Tyreek Hill is a (former?) wide receiver for the Kansa City Chiefs. Over the weekend, an audio surfaced of Hill, who had already been convicted of choking his fiancée in 2015, being asked by the same fiancée about their son’s broken arm, telling Hill that the three-year-old boy was “terrified” of him, telling Hill that his son said that it was his father who broke his arm. Hill then essentially threatened violence against his fiancée, saying it in such a way that he essentially admitted to breaking his son’s arm. His three-year-old son. He broke his arm. To be fair to Hill, they are still sort of determining whether he was the person in the audio, which is why he has not been charged with a crime yet. However, it is assumed that Hill did this. Think about it. Based on these tapes, he broke his three-year-old son’s arm. On purpose. If this is true, I can’t even properly convey how heinous that is. It is an evil act. Assuming that this is true, the only football team Hill should be on for the rest of his life is the prison one like in The Longest Yard. Luckily, the Chiefs seem to understand this and have banned him from all team activities. This is exactly the type of person who Lee was referring to when he said that the NFL’s vision of the Guardian project was a bad idea. He was exactly right, and his stand teaches us a lesson on how we should look at athletes. They are not heroes, at least not all of them. Some professional athletes are great people. Some of them are Tyreek Hill, but this shows that an athlete should not be made into a hero, especially a superhero, due to athletic prowess.
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