At least nine high school football players, three in the span of four days, have died this year of complications resulting from on-field play. As of the publication of this article, two additional non-contact, football-related injuries bring the 2014 high school football player death toll to eleven.
The victims:
Peyton Flowers, 18- Died in Jackson, Mississippi on November 6th from a brain injury suffered during an in-game collision.
Isaiah Langston, 17- Died in Rolesville, North Carolina on September 29th from a suspected blood clot in the brain following a previous in-game collision.
Demario Harris, 17- Died in Troy, Alabama on September 28th following a seizure suffered after an in-game tackle.
Tom Cutinella, 16- Died in Shoreham, New York on October 1st after suffering a brain injury from an in-game tackle.
DeAntre Turman, 16- Died in Fulton County, Georgia on August 18th after breaking his neck on a routine tackle during a preseason scrimmage.
Jamond Salley, 16- Died in Brunswick County, Virginia on October 17th after suffering seizures caused by in-game head trauma.
Noah Cornuet, 16- Died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6th after collapsing while running during football practice. The autopsy revealed a rare heart tumor as the cause of his collapse.
Walker Wilbanks, 17- Died in Jackson, Mississippi on August 25th as a result of hyponatremia, a sodium deficiency.
Zyrees Oliver, 17- Died in Marietta, Georgia on August 12th as a result of hyponatremia.
William Shogran Jr., 14- Died during training camp in Green Gove Springs, Florida on August 13th for undisclosed reasons.
Miles Kirkland-Thomas, 16- Died in Staten Island, New York for undisclosed reasons after collapsing during practice.
The Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina attributed seventeen deaths to football-related injuries from 2003-2012. Another seventeen football-related deaths have occurred in the last two years alone. The nine on-field deaths suffered so far in 2014 has been the highest total in a single year since 1986, when 11 high school players reportedly died of football-related injuries.
As a website that focuses on technology in sports, it’s our job to inform you what technological advances can be used to prevent these sorts of tragedies. As of today, however, nothing modern technology offers can prevent these sorts of accidents. Some of these boys, like Wilbanks and Oliver, died of fluke and entirely unpreventable circumstances. Most of these boys, however, died of on-field injuries, where the only effective prevention is not to play football at all.
The National Football League has partnered with GE and Under Armour in offering $500,000 grants to seven institutions as part of their second annual Head Health Challenge. Some of the innovations, like the University of Washington’s revolutionary football helmet, aim to disperse the force that causes the brain to accelerate. The University of New Hampshire is implementing a helmet-less training regimen, instructing its players how to tackle without helmets or shoulder pads, and will soon report if the new preventative technique decreased the amount of head trauma on the field.
As promising as all the research looks, none of the seven innovations promise to prevent the blunt force trauma that lead to traumatic brain injuries. If the goal is to resolve the concussion crisis, the NFL probably won’t find the answer anytime soon.
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Two weeks before Langston’s death, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell visited Langston’s town of Wake County, North Carolina to promote “Heads Up Football,” the NFL’s traveling campaign to encourage proper tackling techniques amongst high school football players. That Langston died from head trauma from helmet-to-helmet contact emphasizes the sad irony of the NFL’s half-hearted campaign; and that proper technique in the game of football can be the difference between life and death.
Goodell, a man who makes tens of millions of dollars a year exploiting the safety of young men, should be ashamed in assuring the American public that football is a safe sport for anyone, much less our kids, to play. That we allow and encourage our boys to participate in such an activity hoping that proper technique will cushion them from death is reckless, irresponsible, and shameful.
High school football is a pervasive American institution, saddled with these tragic realities: we cannot decelerate our brains, and we cannot protect our spines. Football, as it is played today, threatens the health and safety of those who play it; and as long as players get bigger and faster while the rules stay the same, kids will continue to die on the field. Helmets, pads, and x-rays can only go so far; the only foolproof way to prevent football players from suffering fatal injuries is to stop them from playing football.