High School player dies after helmet-to-helmet hit.

How this has not happened at a college or professional level yet is beyond me. Really beginning to ponder what ramifications things like this will have on the game's future. Very tragic, sad news.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1776 ... &hpt=hp_t2

Sadly I feel like its an inevitability that this happens in the NFL, and relatively soon.

But I'm not sure it will slow the game down. I know that football is struggling at the youth level, and have gone to flag football versions in many communities. But there is just no way to avoid sudden and tragic injuries in youth sports. they are more "freak" than anything one would consider a norm. We have had a couple tragic paralyzations here in MN over the last couple years in hockey, and while there is an immediate call to take contact from the game, it typically fades away.

sad for the boys family.

I went to my nephew's game on Saturday. They are doing a good job at coaching to not lead with their head; I saw a lot of good tackling form. That said, there were some pretty hard hits for only being 5th graders.

I think the game would actually be safer if they took helmets away.

I wonder if Rugby has the same problem. I kind of doubt it.

Fox0r":3793um42 said:

How this has not happened at a college or professional level yet is beyond me.

Click to expand...

It's all about chance. I read somewhere that over a million high school students play football a year. Compare that to approximately 67,000 college and pro players combined, and you can see that the odds of a single high school football player dying in a given a year is approximately 15 times higher than seeing somebody die in college or pro. Of course that's all else being equal such as number of games played, etc which they're not, but that's the main reason why we are more likely to read about a high school football player's death.

Don't forget to take into account, the pads and helmets are not usually made specifically for that child and aren't usually brand new. This could also be adding to things similar to this happening. The schools don't get new equipment every year.