"I can tell you this much: Arkansas has never lost a football player in December because he was too cold or developed frostbite."

--Billy Elmore, football coach at West Memphis High

Embarrassment has its place--and uses. It seems nobody wants to take credit for the proposal to start high school football season a week earlier in this humid state. Which doesn't surprise. That's because such a decision would be a monumental mistake--a monumentally dumb mistake, a New Coke dumb mistake. (Except for the minor detail that New Coke didn't kill anything but a few marketing careers.)

You might have missed the item in the paper if you're not a careful reader of the Sports Section, so here goes: Early next month, the Arkansas Activities Association is to convene for its annual meeting, and one idea that could actually make it to a vote is giving football coaches heartburn. It would move the beginning of the 2016 football season to the end of August from the beginning of September.

Now that's just dumb, with a capital D--and dangerous.

Young football players in Arkansas already have to deal with practicing in the August heat. Why start the regular season in August, too? That would mean full-contact games in the hottest month of the year. The mastermind who came up with this brilliant idea can't ever have got up a running start in full pads to plunge past struggling linemen only to take on a bulldog of a fullback face-first. Thirty times in the course of a game.

Sure, schools start practices in August even now, and two-a-days can be brutally hot. But it's practice. A kid can tap his helmet and come out for a few plays, and get a nice gulp or eight of some cool water. And some ice. And a cold towel. Hey, coach, I need to sit out a minute.

But games are different. Ask any football player.

Imagine a kid playing, say, center, wearing full gear, playing for two hours against a traditional rival with a nose tackle who outweighs him by 30 pounds. He's not coming out of the game for a break because he's the center, who calls pass protections and has the quarterback's cadence down pat. To picture that kid sweating-and-panting-and-pushing in early September is bad enough. Let's not even think of him playing that game in August.

Word around the campfire is that last year's bad weather in December might have spawned this proposed change in the schedule. Winter weather hit early that month, which caused some playoff games to be rescheduled.

But some of us think that the kids, their parents, their families, their friends--and anybody else who's at all concerned about the safety and general well-being of high school students--would gladly take a chance on some snowed-out games in December instead of taking a helluva chance with heat stroke in August.

To their credit, many a coach has come out against moving up the season. One report in Northwest Arkansas Media said coaches were caught off-guard by the very idea.

"I can tell you this much," said West Memphis' new football coach, Billy Elmore, "Arkansas has never lost a football player in December because he was too cold or developed frostbite. We might not know what the weather is going to be like in December, but I can guarantee you what it's going to be like if we have to play those early games in August. It's going to be hot."

Yes, coach. Deadly hot.

Football games in August?

For heaven's sake, and to keep high-school football games in Arkansas from getting as hot as The Other Place, let's punt this idea right out of the end zone.

Editorial on 07/21/2014