High School Football Deaths

[Temo]

Interesting article in ******** today, about high school football and the handful of deaths that seem to happen every year about this time.

Here's the gist of the article:

Or maybe it'll be the most foreseeable thing in the world: out-of-shape teenagers push themselves to the limit in 100-degree heat.

Football's a cold-weather sport for a reason: the temperatures are more conducive to human bodies doing things they weren't designed to do. But just as chilly autumn Fridays and snowy January fields are iconic settings for the game, sweltering August practices are inextricable from the football calendar. But does it have to be this way? If you wouldn't want kids playing in dangerous conditions, why is it OK to make them practice in it, going longer and harder than in real games? Just so they can finish the season before winter break?

The South's football calendar needs to shift (and it's almost always the South, for obvious reasons). But it won't. Because just as everyone gets up in arms over these deaths and make grand proclamations about how things need to change, the weather turns cooler and players stop dying and we forget all about it. That's as sure a thing as more kids dying next year.

Thoughts? Make football practices start in September rather than late July/early August, and the season end after winter break?

 

[trickblue]

I know a couple of schools in Texas have called off practice because of the heat and others are only practicing in the mornings...

It was 107 here a couple of days ago and the kids were practicing out there...

It really is scary, but football is such a religion in the South that I don't foresee any changes in the near future...

 

[peplaw06]

There was a coach in Plano who died the other day at practice.

 

[Temo]

I know a couple of schools in Texas have called off practice because of the heat and others are only practicing in the mornings...

It was 107 here a couple of days ago and the kids were practicing out there...

It really is scary, but football is such a religion in the South that I don't foresee any changes in the near future...

Would it really hurt to push practices back to the cooler months though? I'm honestly asking, because it almost makes too much sense not to do that I figure there must be something stopping it.

 

[Cowboy Brian]

Solution start high school football a month late, practices start in late august/early september which is cooler, or a month and a half later, mid sept.

My brother is the starting Quick Tackle, similar to left tackle for my school's varsity team this year, he's only a sophomore so i'm really proud of him but my mother is always scared something will happen to him.

 

[trickblue]

Would it really hurt to push practices back to the cooler months though? I'm honestly asking, because it almost makes too much sense not to do that I figure there must be something stopping it.

The only way you can do that is, as R2A suggested, moving the season by a month. The first football game is usually 2 weeks after school starts...

 

[Chocolate Lab]

Why do people act like this is something new?

People are already far more cautious about the heat than they used to be. It was only a few decades ago that players got no water breaks -- imagine that -- and they practiced even longer and harder. And guess what, it wasn't any less hot back then.

 

[Cowboy Brian]

The only way you can do that is, as R2A suggested, moving the season by a month. The first football game is usually 2 weeks after school starts...

& I don't think anyone would complain moving it back a month, only thing is hell week would be difficult because of school being in session, but i'm sure there would be a way to work around that.

I see it as a win/win situation. Plus i'm sure the kids would prefer to play in cooler weather, its now late/august/early sept. A month ago when FB started it was always over 90 degrees up in NY, now it is around 70-75.