Dobie: We can't allow a sport to kill kids
Shoreham-Wading River football player Tom Cutinella, 16, died after colliding with an opponent from John Glenn High School and collapsing during a game in Elwood on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014. Credit: Twitter
I stared at the computer Wednesday night, digesting the news. A Long Island high school football player had died from a suspected head injury.
The sadness only deepened as accolades poured in for Tom Cutinella, a 16-year-old junior from Shoreham-Wading River and an outstanding young man by any measure.
I grieved, but I can't say I was stunned. I wasn't. I just kept thinking: not again.
Officials labeled Cutinella's death a "freak accident" and it's true that the last death of a local high school football player in a game came nearly 30 years ago. But focusing only on Long Island incidents misses the larger context: Cutinella's death did not happen in a vacuum.
He was the third high school football player in the nation to die in less than a week; family members of the other players, from Alabama and North Carolina, said brain injuries were the cause in each case. Two other young football players in the metropolitan area died during practices last month, for reasons yet to be determined.
High school football has made progress in dealing with its long history of carnage. Rules changes targeting concussions and better equipment helped reduce the number of deaths directly related to high school football from 119 in the 1970s to 33 in the 1990s. But then progress stopped. There were 35 deaths in 2000-09, and 12 so far this decade. The numbers do not include indirect deaths, like collapsing from heat stroke during practice.
Last year alone, eight young men died participating in high school football. The total number of deaths for all other high school sports? Zero.
Fatalities aren't the only concern. As many as 70 percent of high school football players will sustain a concussion, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The picture isn't pretty at the older end of the age spectrum, either. The NFL admits that nearly 30 percent of its former players will suffer debilitating brain conditions such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases -- and that these diseases will strike earlier and more than twice as often as in the general population.
I'm not advocating a rush to judgment on football in the wake of Tom Cutinella's death. But I am pushing for answers.
Here's what we know: The most common cause of high school football-related deaths is brain injury. A teen's body is different from an adult's. Their necks are not as strong and brains not as developed, so teens are more susceptible to brain injuries. Doctors say that, for starters, players need better helmets -- headgear, for example, that keeps the neck stable during hits.
But is that enough? Would further rules changes help? Can different techniques be taught?
Football is so embedded in our national fiber that resistance to changing it is strong. But debating whether it should be improved is not an option. It must be made safer. And if we can't change the awful calculus, then we need to talk about whether our kids should play football.
That conversation already has started.
We all know parents who hope their sons don't go into football. And participation has been dropping in high school and Pop Warner youth leagues. One state lawmaker wants to ban kids younger than 14 from playing organized tackle football. You might scoff, but consider this: More than 40 percent of Americans support a ban on kids playing contact football before high school and 48 percent support a ban before middle school, according to a recent nationwide survey.
It's past time we solve this problem. We can't keep putting our kids at risk like this.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
