OT - football tragedy
August 18th, 2013 at 9:48 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 10:09 AM ^
Probably not a good time to call out people who are concerned that football might be too dangerous. Just sayin'...
August 18th, 2013 at 11:14 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 12:32 PM ^
Sure, "CreedenceTapes:" it's always better to use the "ostrich approach" and stick one's head in the sand.
August 18th, 2013 at 1:11 PM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 2:34 PM ^
stop sticking your head in the sand about the truth of ostriches sticking their heads in the sand
August 18th, 2013 at 10:20 AM ^
had bad enough technique to die from a tackle, then you'd expect a tragedy like this to happen more often, with all the worse players with worse techniques dropping like flies.
So I think that regardless of seeing the film (which, the idea of wanting to see the film so you can determine who to blame sounds pretty bad if you think about what you're saying), we can safely conclude this was a freak accident, and an unimaginable loss.
August 18th, 2013 at 11:02 AM ^
Wow. You're a dick.
August 18th, 2013 at 11:24 AM ^
Major-league dick thing to say.
August 18th, 2013 at 12:04 PM ^
you are sick. Lets worry about the game now...blame the kid who died...sick
August 18th, 2013 at 1:37 PM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 7:37 PM ^
Does it really matter, honestly? A high-schooler died playing football. I seriously doubt that knowing the exact cause will change anyone's approach to making an inherently dangerous sport safer.
August 18th, 2013 at 10:02 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 10:03 AM ^
give peace to his family.
August 18th, 2013 at 10:10 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 10:11 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 10:16 AM ^
Sigh... so sad. But at least he died doing something he loved. If we let fear rule what we did, life would be depressing.
August 18th, 2013 at 11:17 AM ^
to make the whole "live without fear" argument.
There are lots of things to love in life. If football didn't exist, he could have chosen from an infinite number of other things to love, and probably wouldn't have been at risk of dying.
I'm not saying football shouldn't exist, I'm just saying that doing what you love doesn't have to come with the risk of death or serious injury...
August 18th, 2013 at 12:07 PM ^
I would prefer to die while doing something I love, however dangerous. A greater tragedy would be dying buried under a pile of paperwork.
August 18th, 2013 at 5:41 PM ^
Here's a different argument that I'm having a hard time articulating my thought, but I'll try:
Since it's such a freak, one-time, instantaneous accident, it's irrelevant how it happened. Even though it happened playing football, it's so rare and isolated that it really doesn't have anything to do with the controversy currently surrounding football.
To me, saying "he died doing something he loved" in regards to football would be more like playing football for years and years, until the concussions bring on all those nasty dementia diseases and you die. An analogy would be smoking cigarettes and eventually dying from lung cancer.
In this case, an analogy to me would be more like someone went to light a cigarette and the lighter blew up in their face and killed them. It wouldn't have happened if that person didn't want that cigarette, and fire and flames and all that are a danger of cigarettes, but it would be so rare that it doesn't really have anything to do with smoking.
August 18th, 2013 at 12:37 PM ^
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2013/07/18/indiana-boy-dylan-willi…
Look, we live in a gigantic country with millions of people. Every physical activity has a risk of serious injury, from hiking to running, to baseball and football. Put the two together and you'll get a tragic story once in awhile.
Does that mean we shouldn't feel bad when it happens? No, of course not. This is a sad thing that happened. It also doesn't mean we need to reevaluate it. Over a million kids play high school football.
August 18th, 2013 at 5:28 PM ^
Upfront, as a parent of a football player, I want to say I am sorry to hear this tragedy has ocurred, and completely respect what the family, both teams, and freinds of the player must be going through.
WSJ article here says:
Between 2002 and 2012, according to the University of North Carolina Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, there were an average of 3.8 fatalities a year directly attributable to football, fewer than for weight lifting (an average of 6.3 fatalities a year) or even amusement park rides (4.4 fatalities a year). Mountain climbing produces more fatalities—an average of 25 a year. So does horseback riding, with more than 100 deaths a year, to say nothing of bicycle riding, which killed 677 people in 2011 alone, and swimming, which kills more than 3,500 people a year.
Later it says the players are way more likely to die driving to and from the game or practice.
The one thing I wish the article had included was soccer, baseball and hockey statistics. I found in the UNC Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury data here mentioned by the WSJ article, playing football in high school makes you 3x more likely to die than baseball or soccer / 100000 players. Hockey is about the same, LAX a little less, and gymnastics is 3.3x more than football or hockey. Serious Injury rates are highest for hockey and gymnastics. Football is a close third. Soccer and baseball way lower.
Other articles I have read have said soccer is one of the leading causes of ACL injury for women, and overall the concussion rate in soccer is as high as any other sport.
So I guess the bottom line is they should ban mens gymnastics - it is such a barbarian blood sport.
August 18th, 2013 at 10:19 PM ^
Click the link.
August 18th, 2013 at 5:29 PM ^
FWIW - the WSJ says football players live on average longer than non-football players too, with the exception that the largest players tend to be likely to have heart conditions later in life.
August 18th, 2013 at 10:34 AM ^
There wouldn't be enough ambulances and EMTs to go around if every school for every game or scrimmage had to have them on the premises waiting for the possibility that a serious injury might take place.
August 18th, 2013 at 11:51 AM ^
In those cases, probably the best you can hope for is that there's a doctor in the stands somewhere. At least until an ambulance arrives.
August 18th, 2013 at 11:51 AM ^
That used to be the case until about five or six years ago. The cost of having the ambulance there now just cost some school districts more than they can afford. I've seen a kid with a neck injury lay on the field for an hour and another for about 45 minutes after breaking his ankle (was very similar to Fitz's injury last year). Some towns don't even have an ambulane or EMT any more because it has all become privatized. Last year our booster club paid to have an ambulance at our games.
August 18th, 2013 at 10:14 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 10:45 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 11:16 AM ^
Your diaphragm is innervated by nerves originally located in your 3rd 4th and 5th vertebrae in your neck. Severing your spinal cord above this level essentially paralyzes every muscle in your body.
It is also possible that he fractured higher than C2, which causes disruption of the brain stem and almost instantaneous death.
August 18th, 2013 at 11:53 AM ^
I would guess that a lot of schools have EMT/ambulances at football games not just because of possible player injuries but also they tend to attrack bigger crowds.
3 older members of the audience were taken away in ambulances from my son's high school graduation this past June. The students were fine.
August 18th, 2013 at 12:17 PM ^
Thoughts with the family, I don't think there is anything harder than losing a child on this earth. If people are blamming bad technique for his death, that is no excuse for the sport being safe. There shouldn't be the kind of risk. I love football, but something in the game has to change.
August 18th, 2013 at 12:30 PM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 1:20 PM ^
So does baseball. DO recall that third base coach who was killed by a line drive a couple of years ago.
People die during marathans, Lancer. Physical activity has an element of risk to it no matter what you do. Granted, there is far more risk to football than any sport save hockey, but there is risk in every sport nonetheless.
August 18th, 2013 at 2:57 PM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 12:55 PM ^
As a football coach, I'm afraid that something bad is going to happen to one of my players before my career ends. The worst thing to happen on the field so far is a broken leg (and it was nasty, but still just a leg and he's recovered now). Every time one of our players tackles with his head low, our staff gangs up on him and lets him know that it's the wrong way to tackle. That's one thing I appreciate about the guys I work with. If a guy misses a block or doesn't hustle or runs the wrong route, one or two coaches will get on his case. If a guy tackles in a dangerous manner, every coach in the vicinity will let him know. Still, accidents happen, and it's tragic what happened to the kid in the OP.
August 19th, 2013 at 8:24 AM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 3:48 PM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 4:28 PM ^
Very tragic indeed. Thoughts and condolences to his family, friends and teammates as well as a community where it sounds like he was well-known and well-liked.
August 18th, 2013 at 4:59 PM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 5:24 PM ^