I am a Maryland resident who once prevented a young football player from dying by heat stroke. My actions were not valiant. I simply knew the symptoms and when I observed them, I did what the University of Maryland football staff did not do for Jordan McNair—immediately called for an ambulance.
The headline news is that the football coach at the University of Maryland is fired, the chair of the Board of Regents quit, and the president of the university will retire over the death by heat illness of McNair, a 19-year-old Maryland football player. The school’s sizable, highly paid staff of coaches and athletic trainers either did not know the basic symptoms of heat stroke or did not care—they waited far too long to call for help. Then there was an elaborate cover-up that last week collapsed of its own weight.
