Important issues brought up in the documentary was the dangers in football. Two players from an Arkansas high school passed out from heat stroke, both of them were hospitalized. One of the boys who was a 16 year old boy ended up dying due to his kidneys shutting down and going into renal failure. The other boy was lucky enough to make it to see another day, but even after the life threatening experience he continued to play football. They would have the players training in heat conditions as high as 112 degrees on the heat index. There was another case were four high school boys were hospitalized for the same reasons. The death rise in football in the last 10-20years is highly increasing. There is no policy about the kids practicing in such high conditions, only recommendations. If a child dies from heat stroke no one has any repercussions.
Football is becoming such a huge deal that in Shiloh high school, they train excessively and hire private couches to train with the kids and help them with speed, strength and agility, along with other things. They would have around 6 couches to train 40 kids. Parents would take their kids out of the school they are currently attending to put them in a school were the football teams are highly ranked. They would even move homes or rent apartments so their kids can be eligible to play for that specific school. The high school kids would be marketed so that more people would like them. High school American football is even beginning to get a lot of exposure, the kids are doing major press conferences, have to meet a specific fan base and ranked by scouts. The documentary also talked about how the size of footballers has changed over time, before being over 200 pounds was seen a bad thing, now they have players over 250 pounds and the bigger you are the more your cut out for the sport. The kids do weight training and nowadays it is so easy for kids to gain weight and work out to turn that into muscle.
Another issue that was brought up was kids playing football are often getting concussions, which could lead to brain damage. The high school kids are suffering from head trauma and one which was addressed was CTE. CTE was found in the brains of many football players, which was deterioration of the brain. A 21 year old who played football died from committing suicide, but never had any concussions, yet they found CTE in his brain. At least one child in every game is likely to get a concussion. There is no penalty for sending a child back on the field who already had a concussion during that game but there's one for telling him he can't get back in the game until he sees a doctor
The sad thing about this is people are aware of what playing football can do to them and how it can lower their life span. Football is so violent. You have couches telling the kids things like "I'm going to hurt you if you coward down, that not who you are". These boys aren't scared to get injured of hurt, they just want to play. They are told to get back up even if they are hurt, beat peoples brains out. People need to think about is a game more important than your childs life. Why are there helmets if they aren't used to protect them from concussions. Kids are dying every year from this game and again everyone knows what outcome could possibly happen, yet no one cares because its football and in football its okay to beat people down, this is how you prove your manhood, is it really worth it though? All this money being spent to build bigger fields, hire better couches, and get recognition. It's high school, most of these kids wont even live to play in college, let alone have a dream of going to the NFL.
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