“Fatalities in high school and college football players”
-see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23477766/
From the article:
Conclusion: High school and college football have approximately 12 fatalities annually with indirect systemic causes being twice as common as direct blunt trauma. The most common causes are cardiac failure, brain injury, and heat illness. The incidence of fatalities is much higher at the college level for most injuries other than brain injuries, which were only slightly more common at the college level. The risk of SCT [sickle cell trait], heat-related, and cardiac deaths increased during the second decade of the study, indicating these conditions require a greater emphasis on diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.The article seems to suggest that direct hits were not the main cause of young athlete deaths, something else was.
First, I think we can take "heat illness" as a systemic cause off the table from last night's game.
More...
Most indirect events occurred in practice sessions; preseason practices and intense conditioning sessions were vulnerable periods for athletes to develop heat illness or SCT [sickle cell trait] fatalities, respectively. In contrast, most brain fatalities occurred during games.This would suggest late summer or early fall as the high school and college training season where summer heat during practice is a serious issue. To the extent that this taints the applicability of your citation to last night's game is unclear.
And finally, in your citation commotio cordis accounted for only 2.9% of the study population.
-PJ
The article he cited here was published in 2013...
It DOES NOT apply currently or justify the frequency of the recent sudden deaths in all the other sports.