Top > Sport > 2005 > August > 2005-08-24

Are NFL players too big?

Common sense and science have been warning for some time that we",re pushing athletes toward the limits of size, speed and toughness without regard for how they get there, or stay there. Even so, there remains no shortage of kids willing to risk everything for the opportunity. By most accounts, 23-year-old Thomas Herrion was one of those.

He hung on with the Dallas Cowboys until the final cuts of training camp last fall, played in NFL Europe earlier this year and spent much of the summer working out in the sweltering East Texas heat. He was chasing a spot on San Francisco`s roster when he collapsed and died just a few minutes after walking off the field after a preseason game in Denver late Saturday night. The reason Herrion worked so hard to stick with the 49ers, he told pals, was so he could buy a house for his mother.

The cause of Herrion`s death won`t be determined until toxicology tests are completed, usually in about three to six weeks. He was listed as a 6-foot-3, 310-pound guard, but estimates of his playing weight by teammates and coaches at some of Herrion`s stops often added between 10 and 30 pounds. That sounds big -- too big to be healthy, according to some medical experts. But it`s just about average for NFL lineman these days. Two decades ago, some of those same experts were warning that super-sizing pro football was a recipe for disaster, and explaining how so many NFL players got so big was easier. Before baseball was outed by Jose Canseco, football had Lyle Alzado. He played a different sport in an earlier era.

As unsettled as we should be by what happened to Herrion -- "a sad thing," Cowboys coach Bill Parcells called it, "He kind of came in as one of those underdog kind of kids and hung in there," -- it`s a little late in the game to be surprised.