Heat Streak Recalls Vikings Stringer’s Death and then 9/11

Korey Stringer’s 2001 death changed how football confronts extreme heat, while the season that followed became inseparable from the shadow of 9/11.

The streak of unusually hot weather through much of this summer recalls an unpleasant milestone for the Minnesota Vikings. Earlier this month, Aug. 1 marked 25 years since the death of star offensive tackle Korey Stringer, as the squad conducts its preseason training at its facility in Eagan.

The club, which has had its share of memorable moments and forgettable ones in its 65-year history, experienced an unprecedented tragedy that blistering summer in 2001: Stringer became the only known National Football League (NFL) player to die from exertional heat stroke.

The 27-year-old Pro Bowl tackle collapsed after the team’s morning practice on July 31 at its training camp in Mankato. The heat index that day reached as high as 110 degrees.

The 335-pound former All-American, selected in the first round out of Ohio State University, was rushed by ambulance to Immanuel St. Joseph’s Hospital after becoming ill following practice at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His core body temperature was measured at 108.8 degrees, and his condition deteriorated as his organs began to fail. He died at 1:50 a.m. Aug. 1, about 15 hours after collapsing.

Buzz and Blame

Stringer’s death was the buzz of the NFL through the remainder of the preseason and into a regular season that started and ended badly for the Vikings.

Minnesota floundered in its Sept. 9 home opener against the lowly Carolina Panthers, losing 24-13. It turned out to be Carolina’s only victory during a woeful 1-15 season. The Vikings did little better, stumbling to a dismal 5-11 record.

That disheartening start preceded by two days an infinitely greater tragedy: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which also approach their somber 25th anniversary and took the lives of 2,977 people.

Among them was a notable Minnesotan, Thomas E. Burnett Jr., a Bloomington native and former Jefferson High School football standout. Burnett helped organize the passenger effort to retake United Airlines Flight 93 from its hijackers after learning that other aircraft had been used as weapons. The plane, believed to have been headed toward Washington, D.C., likely the U.S. Capitol, crashed in rural Pennsylvania before reaching its intended target.

Stringer’s heat-related death naturally sparked a great deal of finger-pointing and, of course, litigation.

Some criticism focused on the club’s medical response as well as the demanding practice regimen. Mike Tice, then the Vikings’ assistant head coach and offensive line coach, later became head coach after the departure of Dennis Green, who had guided the club for 10 seasons.

The ensuing litigation brought by Stringer’s widow, Kelci, produced mixed results.

Claims involving members of the Vikings organization ran into the formidable barrier of Minnesota workers’ compensation law. In Stringer v. Minnesota Vikings Football Club, LLC, the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for several team employees, concluding that they did not owe Stringer the type of personal duty necessary to overcome the immunity generally afforded co-employees for workplace injuries.

The medical-response claims fared no better. The Minnesota Court of Appeals had concluded that although two employees who personally assisted Stringer owed him a personal duty, the record did not establish the gross negligence necessary to impose liability. The state Supreme Court later affirmed dismissal on the separate ground that the requisite personal duty had not been established.

Productive Proceedings

Stringer’s untimely death was unnecessary, but not for naught.

Other legal proceedings were more successful and produced beneficial results. Kelci Stringer reached a settlement with the NFL in 2009 under which the league agreed to support her efforts to develop a program devoted to preventing heat-related illness.

A separate action against Riddell Inc., manufacturer of the helmet and shoulder pads Stringer wore, alleged that the company failed to warn players and coaches of the dangers of using the equipment in extreme heat. That case was confidentially settled in 2011, concluding the litigation stemming from Stringer’s death.

Most significantly, those proceedings and the advocacy that followed helped produce the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut in 2010. Working with exertional heat-stroke expert Dr. Douglas Casa and with support from the NFL and others, Kelci Stringer helped create an organization devoted to research, education, advocacy and prevention of sudden death among athletes and other people exposed to extreme physical conditions.

Football’s approach to heat also has changed substantially in the quarter-century since Stringer’s death.

Cold-water immersion tubs are now mandatory near NFL practice fields, hydration and recovery procedures are more deeply embedded in training protocols, and teams pay considerably greater attention to dangerous heat conditions. The lessons also have extended beyond professional football through research and advocacy aimed at youth, high school and college athletes.

Lasting Legacy

Stringer was posthumously inducted into the Vikings’ prestigious Ring of Honor, and his No. 77 jersey was retired during the 2001 season, lasting tributes to a tragedy that helped reshape football safety in Minnesota, throughout the NFL and across the country.

His passing was recalled again this summer with a measure of grief over the loss of a fine football player at only 27 years old, along with gratitude to his family for helping advance the health and safety of others following in his very large footsteps on the football fields of America.