BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The scholarship doesn't say you might die.

There was no fine print warning Florida freshman Eraste Autin or Florida State linebacker Devaughn Darling that when they bought into their school's glory, they were buying into some college athletics secrets.

There is no research presented to blue-chip recruits that there used to be almost 20 helmet manufacturers. Now there are three. Litigation costs, or the threat of them, has taken care of the rest.

Eraste Autin's death from heatstroke is a glaring example of the evils of 'voluntary' summer practice. (AP)

Freshmen don't walk into that first meeting of fall practice armed with the numbers compiled by Dr. Fred Mueller of North Carolina's sports medicine department. Mueller will tell anyone who calls that Autin is one of 18 high school and college athletes who have died since 1995 because of heatstroke.

Then came the news Wednesday that Minnesota Vikings All-Pro offensive tackle Korey Stringer died from heatstroke, six days after Autin's death. The only other NFL training camp fatality is believed to be J.V. Cain, a tight end for the St. Louis Cardinals, who died of a heart attack on July 22, 1979, his 28th birthday.

"Many people say these shouldn't happen at all, they're preventable," said Mueller, who tracks such numbers for the NCAA. "It's a concern that we've had that many in the last six years."

The heatstroke deaths reached a high of eight in 1970, Mueller said. For many years, he said, there were no deaths at all. In recent years the figures "have begun to creep back up."

Don't limit the conversation to heatstroke. Expand it to all football-related deaths in recent years.

"The numbers have been pretty steady," Mueller said, "after a major-drop a few years ago."

Pretty steady. That is what they probably won't be telling college football players when several fall camps open this week. You might win the national championship. You might die. The odds against either happening are huge. Players know the former. They need to know the latter.

Mueller's analysis was stark, clinical and frightening.

In this heart and soul of Deep South football each summer -- the SEC football media days -- death was the topic of the day on Tuesday. Alabama might be under NCAA investigation. Tennessee might have slipped through the NCAA noose. Florida might be a preseason No. 1, but Gators coach Steve Spurrier arrives here for interviews on Wednesday with a heavy heart, four days removed from Autin's funeral.

There won't be much different he can say from last week.

"This is by far the saddest day of my career," Spurrier said after Autin died, six days after lapsing into a coma.

And no one knows exactly why players keep dying or how to prevent it.

"It's a tragedy," LSU quarterback Rohan Davey said. "I feel sorry for the people it happened to. But at the same time I don't really know what anybody could really do to prevent you from having heat stroke. Who knows what may have been going on before that happened to the kid? God forbid, (he) might have been doing something the night before that carried over."

It should be pointed out that upon Autin's death, Florida immediately provided copies of its offseason workout routine and a list of Autin's activities this summer. Four Florida trainers were present when Autin went down.

Like most, if not all, schools, they made water readily available.

"I used to practice when it was 105 degrees and we didn't drink water," said SEC commissioner Roy Kramer who played at Maryville (Tenn.) College. "We've had that problem since the beginning. Football always starts when the weather is hot. It's a wonder we all didn't die in my day. We had sat there with no water, coaches thought you were tough if you didn't drink water for 2 1/2 or 3 hours.

"Now we know that's the worst thing you can do."

But what else don't we know today? What are trainers or coaches missing that keep the heatstroke deaths spiking and overall football deaths "pretty steady?"

The ominous numbers, and the stories that go with them, are too glaring to ignore.

Two hours from here, two high school players from Stevenson, Ala., died within five weeks of each other this spring and summer. Fourteen-year-old Nick Allen died after hyperventilating during a morning practice. In May, Drew Privette, 16, died after complaining of a headache at the end of practice.

Paul Reyna was a defensive lineman for Boise State in two-a-days two years ago. Practice film shows him being blocked by a couple of offensive linemen and falling backward. He left the field under his own power but later died of a brain injury.

A couple of California lawyers handling the family's suit against Boise State and the helmet manufacturer have gathered information that, they say, shows the helmet was unsafe. The lawsuit alleges "inadequate insulation." If they are right, then that means thousands of helmets are unsafe.

Then again, if the lawsuit never comes to trial -- it is scheduled for September 2002 -- the public might never know.

"There's kids out there in high school and college, they're ignorant with regard to helmet designs," one of the lawyers representing Reyna's family told SportsLine.com. "They use whatever they grow up using, not realizing that they do have options and there are better designs out there. From that standpoint, I'd like to save some kids.

"There are a handful of kids dying every year. The best analogy I can give is the Ford/Firestone thing. They said, 'There are hundreds of thousands of cars out there but we only have a hundred deaths, why recall them?'"

The answer is unsafe is unsafe and one death for any reason is too many.

Penn State's Adam Taliaferro got lucky. The former Nittany Lions defensive back was paralyzed making a tackle against Ohio State. He has recovered sufficiently to be able to lead the team onto the field against Miami for the opener Sept. 1.

Washington's Curtis Williams wasn't as lucky. He remains a quadriplegic after making a tackle against Stanford last season.

This is not an indictment of Florida, Florida State or any other school. It is important that players know the numbers, the research and the risk. Start with the fact that football has become a year-round game the past decade with offseason conditioning. There are serious liability and insurance concerns for schools and the NCAA, particularly in the summer.

"All sports have gone to year-round 12-month long seasons. With college scholarships at stake the pressure on kids to specialize is greater than ever."

That wasn't even a comment on college sports. That was Pat Laing, athletic director in the Fairfax, Va., area schools, speaking to the Washington Post last week.

This doesn't help kids like Autin and Darling who keep dropping while whipping their bodies into shape. Darling died in February while performing offseason "mat drills" at Florida State. It is frightening but so is the reaction from some college football participants. Read through their comments and it almost seems as if death should be an accepted part of the game.

"Things like that happen," Oklahoma All-America linebacker Rocky Calmus said last week. "Nowadays they give you enough water and rest. I think you have people that die of heat stroke (outside of football). It's going to happen."

Peer pressure and a coach's demand will make a player show up for the summer volunteer workouts. The only levity during those sessions is use of the adjective "volunteer."

"It's not an option," Davey said. "You can't say, 'Coach, it's too hot.'"

"How," Bobby Bowden said when asked about summer conditioning, "can you report to practice without working out?"

Ban it. Stop it. Have the NCAA legislate against it. Let the summer be for summer vacation. Let August be for getting in shape. That's the way it used to be. It wouldn't, of course, stop kids from dying.

It would, perhaps, make kids listen to their bodies instead of their peers or a workout schedule. Mueller says that, for one, if players stayed home during the summer they would be less likely to die from heat stroke "if they're working out on their own."

It's a start. If nothing else, it beats talking about the end.