Is football safe? That was a question everyone was asking themselves in the first week of October in 2014. In that week, three high school football players collapsed and died on the field according to CNN reporter Marina Carver. Tom Cutinella, Demario Harris, and Isaiah Langston were the three who lost their lives. Cutinella was a linebacker for Shoreham Wading River High School. After Cutinella and another opponent collided he initially stood up, then quickly fell. He was escorted to a hospital where he later died from a head injury. Friday nights game Demario Harris collapsed on the field, then died in the hospital on Sunday. Cause of death was a brain aneurysm, stated by Harris’s high school at a press conference according to an article written by Steve Helling. Isaiah Langston collapsed during warmups on a Friday night game, then later died the following Monday. Those three deaths were just in one week, that clearly states that football is dangerous. Besides deaths there are many minor cases of injuries in football compared to death, such as concussions.

In the football season of 2012-13 there were a little more than one million high school football athletes according to Cyber News Service. Out of every 100,000 of those athletes, at least 64 or more of them will end with a concussion every year. Should high school parents worry about their children doing something they love? Gina Kremer from Head Case Company states that the sport of football has the most recorded concussions per year than any other sport. After a great rookie season, NFL player Chris Borland retired because of the long term risks of concussions. Borland lead the San Francisco 49er’s in tackles. He had so much potential in the NFL but he is more focused on his health. Also, he said that his end game is wanting to live a full healthy life, and football has a risk of taking 10-15 years off of his life, he said in an interview with ESPN.

I knew someone who had a horrible concussion this past football season of 2014. At first he was saying he couldn’t feel his legs, and everyone was frightened. The ambulance came and took him to the hospital. Even though I didn’t know him that well at the time, it still gave me butterflies in my stomach hearing about it. When everyone found out that it was a concussion, they were all relieved and thankful that he was going to get better. But, in the long run, it might come back to him someday. I know that he still sometimes gets headaches out of the blue sometimes, but I don’t know if they are caused by his concussion or it’s just a casual headache that everybody gets. But are concussions what we should really worry about?

Kris Tyacke idolized the game of football, he loved the playing it even more. A 17-year old quarterback at Beaverton High in Oregon. Not being able to stand is about the worst thing for a young active athlete like Kris Tyacke. Today, Tyacke can’t do anything on his own. He is paralyzed from the shoulders down according to ESPN. Not only never being able to walk again, he now can’t throw a football five yards or even pick a lucky penny off the ground. That all happened in a blink of an eye, just one tackle. In all the games he had played before that night, he never saw this one coming. Getting paralyzed in football is a slim chance, but it definitely happens, sometimes to the innocent and sometimes to the guilty. But it’s not fair to either.

Some athletes might say it’s worth the risk. But if these athletes look at it from Kris Tyacke’s point of view, I think all of them would change their minds. Like it changed mine. Kris now has to sit in a chair the rest of his life and have random nurses take care of him every day and probably never have a love life. Also, he will watch all of his friends move on with their lives, by going off to college and starting a family. Or have them look at it from Tom’s, Demario’s, and Isaiah’s perspective. Only living a short life, maybe a happy life, but they left so many loved ones behind. They never were able to say goodbye, and not being able to say something they never got the chance to say. So it comes down to this, is football safe?