Max Gilpin is dead.

It is most sad. That his parents are distraught, still grieving and hoping that somebody, anybody might provide an answer that will offer succor is totally understandable.

Why and how he actually died on that football field will never be answered. There are a few probabilities and many more possibilities. Making such determinations is not an exact science.

Thus it is very difficult to determine whether the death was due to simple negligence or criminal negligence or merely an accident?

The current brouhaha concerns the school system’s self serving report on the situation. I mean, really, what could anybody reasonably expect? That they’d bring in McNulty and the crack investigative squad from “The Wire” to find some definitive and exact determination?

It was never going to happen.

Young Max Gilpin — with the permission of his parents — bought into the football culture. Machismo reigns. Suck it up and go. Don’t be a wuss. No pain, no gain. Etc, etc. Unfortunately he paid the ultimate price.

Think about it. Kids in questionable shape exercising vigorously in 90+ degree heat wearing the heavy armor of the game. It’s astonishing to me that there aren’t more tragedies. I played high school football for one season. In an era when the misguided norm was to give us salt tablets, for heaven’s sake. It was a usual Louisville August that pre-season. Very hot. Abysmally humid. So we practiced at 6:00 in the morning to avoid the heat. What a simple idea to avoid some of the pitfalls of the weather.

PRP isn’t the only high school that chooses to practice in the heat of the day. Why?

Jason Stinson is charged criminally for Max Gilpin’s death. A jury will decide if he’s guilty or not. The public will, or already has, rendered its own verdict. Some say it’s a crime. Some say he’s a scapegoat.

How many high school, college and pro coaches on the same day Gilpin died issued similar challenges to their charges as Stinson is alleged to have to his? It is the nature of this game.

So this agonizing situation continues. The school system understandably went CYA. Which doesn’t excuse it, of course. Max Gilpin’s parents remain distraught. We pundits line up on one side or another. Resolution remains elusive.

Still, overweight kids are this very day jogging the track at Fairdale and Ballard and St. X, dreaming of being the next OL or DL star with a NFL career on the distant horizon. Or, at least a chance for a scholly to UK or, maybe even ‘Bama. Or, at the very least, a second look from the cheerleader, the cute one second from the right.

American football is a brutal endeavor. Stuff is going to happen. Even, say it ain’t so, death. No matter what we do to try to avoid it.

It’s the nature of the beast.

– Seedy K