PBS Frontline looks at high school football

The remarkable thing about the sports concussions epidemic is that just when you think you could not be more alarmed about it, you get more alarmed.

Tonight, the reporting that stirs the concern is on Frontline and a documentary called Football High.

The show deals with many health risks in youth football - not just head trauma but heat stroke, obesity and the mindset that hitting a kid isn't as good as hitting a kid hard enough to crack his helmet.

The school profiled is Euless Trinity High School in Texas where these issues seem to be either chronically under appreciated or ignored.

One kid tells Frontline, “You’re only 17 once. I mean, I have the rest of my life to worry about pain and stuff like that. I can only, you know, play football for so long. I might as well use the time I have and worry about the effects later.”

That's the kind of thing that 17-year-olds are supposed to say. They're 17, after all. The adults are supposed to protect them from themselves. We don't do a very good job of that in sports.

Kids' concussions and Lou Gehrig's Disease

I meant to comment on this a few months back - but didn't. Lou Gehrig lives on as a sports icon in part because of his legendary tolerance for pain; he refused to leave games despite injuries that would have sidelined others for weeks.

Now researchers are asking whether Gehrig's refusal to acknowledge injury - and not Lou Gehrig's Disease - might have contributed to his death.

Youth football coaches, take note.