11/21/24
January 09, 2012
Gatorade Showers Fun for Coaches (with One Exception): The Washington Post's otherwise light-hearted feature on the history of dousing winning football coaches in Gatorade includes this sad factoid: "From time to time, [Darren] Rovell says, doctors have warned about the potential harm of pouring frigid liquid over the heads of old men in subfreezing temperatures. In 1990, Long Beach State's coach, George Allen (formerly of the Redskins), received a dousing. Allen, then 72, died six weeks later. He had said he hadn't felt healthy since the Gatorade shower -- which, incidentally, was not Gatorade at all: His cash-strapped team had used ice water."
As Chris Rock once said "when you are old everything is that kills you is natural causes" even if you get hit by a car, you probably would have been able to get out of the way if you were younger, quicker, could hear it coming better etc.....
posted by Atheist at 03:13 PM on January 09, 2012
Good thing I'll never be on the sidelines of a championship team. It's just one more thing I'm too old for.
posted by Howard_T at 04:57 PM on January 09, 2012
Allen died of ventricular fibrillation, which is a heart condition. I don't think the Gatorade bath did it.