The autopsy determined that Thomas Herrion’s death was caused by a heart attack. His former coach and all of his teammates all thought that he was in great shape, but apparently his large size of 310 pounds at only 6 foot 3 inches caught up to him. That is the best guess of the autopsy, at any rate.
The article talks about Joyce Harp‘s study on the body/mass index of NFL players where she determined that most of them are fat. The NFL argued against the study’s relevance, as BMI does not consider muscle and fat ratios.
On the one side, many NFL players are fat, and nobody can say anything otherwise. On the other side, somebody who is not that size would most likely be unable to do their job as well. I tend to side more with the NFL on that particular issue, because muscle does weigh more than fat does, and while I do not doubt that there are many players that are grossly overweight, they are at the right weight for what they do for a living and they are most likely to have a lot more muscle than the average American. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that an offensive lineman has more muscle mass than I do, despite my having an extremely low body fat percentage and being in great shape. Granted, they probably all weight 2 to 2 1/2 times what I do…
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