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That Saturday night, during a typically raucous season-opening football game at Foster High School, DeShawn Smith, a sophomore running back at Tyee High, gathered a pass, turned upfield, and was hit helmet-to-helmet by an opposing player. He staggered to his feet, walked to the sideline, sat down and collapsed. He died three days later of acute subdural hematoma, or blood that accumulated between the brain and its outer lining, caused by a ruptured blood vessel. They were twin reminders, in the span of one football day, of the terrible cost that the game can bear. Of the 22 known deaths in the United States to have occurred as a direct result of a football injury since 2000, two have taken players from Washington state - Williams, who died in 2002 after suffering a spinal injury in a 2000 game at Stanford, and Smith. And inevitably, such tragedies raise questions. Are the risks inherent in playing football worth it? Is there anything that can be done to make the sport safer? Just how dangerous is football, anyway? "It's probably safer than kids getting in a car and driving on the highway," said Dr. Frederick Mueller, who heads the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina. Statistically, anyway, there's no comparison. According to numbers compiled by Mueller's center, the death rate for football players at the high-school level last year was 0.13 per 100,000 (there were no deaths last year in college football). The death rate for male drivers between the ages of 15 and 24 years old, meanwhile, is 48.2 per 100,000, according to numbers published in 2001 by the University of Maryland Medical Center. "What I don't want people to do
is all of a sudden stop playing football," said Dr. Richard
Ellenbogen, the chief of neurosurgery at Harborview Medical Center
and the University of Washington. "It's dangerous, but so
is riding a bike, driving a car and simply living." Ellenbogen's 11-year-old son plays football and the doctor says he ``worries much more about kids riding bikes without helmets'' than his son's safety during a football game. Mueller's numbers indicate, in fact, that per 100,000 participants, football has a lower death rate than hockey, gymnastics, lacrosse and baseball, and much lower than competitive skiing. "In every sport that's out there, they (deaths) happen," Mueller said. "I don't think you can make the sport totally safe. It would be nice if we could eradicate them all, but I don't know if we will ever do that." There have been continued efforts through
the years to make football safer, efforts that Mueller, Ellenbogen
and others say have saved many lives. Another watershed moment came in the mid-1970s. From 1966 to 1972, there was an average of 25 deaths directly related to football at the junior-high, high-school and college levels each year, with a high of 36 in 1968. Concern over those numbers led to rules in 1976 outlawing leading with the helmet while blocking or tackling. Most deaths were the result of either brain or spinal-cord injuries suffered during helmet-to-helmet contact. Throughout the country, coaches began teaching tackling with the shoulder and keeping the head up. The decline in football deaths was almost immediate - from 18 in 1976 to four in 1979. Since the introduction of that rule, there have never been more than 12 deaths directly related to playing football at all levels nationwide since 1986. Since 1986, the high has been eight, including zero in 1990 and one in 1994. There were three deaths at all levels
of football last year, two among the more than 1.5 million who
play high-school and junior-high football. (It's estimated that
1.8 million play football at some level each year, including pros
and college.) Equipment has also undergone a evolution that most observers say has also led to a safer game. Helmets, for instance, have been constantly updated and there has been little evidence that headgear problems have been a factor in recent deaths. (The Highline School District, of which Tyee is a member, continues to investigate Smith's death and has not released information on his helmet.) Most schools in this state have their helmets certified at least once every other year - meaning they are inspected by the manufacturer for wear and tear. Helmets that don't pass the test are thrown out. Most schools also inspect helmets at least once a week to make sure they are still fitting properly. (A representative for Riddell, a leading maker of helmets used in this state, declined to comment). As equipment and rules have changed to improve safety, however, players have continued to get bigger and stronger - thanks to similar improvements in weight training and nutrition and year-round workouts - throwing another complicating factor into the equation. "Really, the question you should be asking is why there aren't more deaths because of how big and strong these kids are," Ellenbogen said. "It shows that the coaches are doing things right in teaching tackling correctly and that the helmets work." Ellenbogen said he doesn't think there is any way to create a helmet that would eliminate every risk. "Unless you completely encircle
the head with Kevlar (a fiber used in a variety of sports equipment),
there's no way to fully protect anybody, really," he said. Josh Richard, a junior at Ferndale High
School who fell unconscious during a game last season and had
life-saving surgery to repair a blood clot in his brain, has returned
to the field this season thanks in part to a new helmet designed
by Schutt. The helmet, which according to the company's Web site
is being tried by colleges such as UCLA and Colorado, has air
bladders on the sides and the top of the helmet - rather than
just the top - to get what the company says is a truer fit. It
also uses a new material called Skydex instead of the traditional
foam. Richard played in his team's opening game last week without
incident. The cause of Richard's injury, for instance, is still unclear. "We looked through the film several times, and we could not find one particular hit that was the cause," said Vic Randall, the longtime football coach at Ferndale who is now the Whatcom County school's athletic director. "There was nothing at all where everybody goes, 'Wow.' " Justin Goe, a sophomore at Rex Putnam High School outside Portland, suffered a similar injury during a junior-varsity game in 2000. He came off the field after making a seemingly routine tackle on the opening kickoff complaining that his head hurt. After taking himself out of the game, he collapsed on the sideline and was rushed to the hospital, where he was in a coma for two weeks, having suffered a torn blood vessel in the brain. Goe endured months of rehabilitation, but eventually recovered well enough to make his high-school baseball team and now attends a local community college. His father, Ken, is a sportswriter, making
much of his living covering football. His wife, Goe said, doesn't
look at football the same as she did before the injury. "There's an element of danger to
football, but there's a lot more dangerous things that teenagers
do all the time," said Ken Goe. "Giving them the keys
to your car, to me, that's a lot scarier. There were some really
tangible things he got out of football that enriched him as a
person. He could have gotten that same head injury in a car accident,
or skateboarding or falling down a mountain." 
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