On a blistering Saturday in early September, a University of Iowa band member collapsed before halftime at a home game at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.
That same day, Sept. 5, 2026, a Husker football player vomited on the field during the University of Nebraska’s home opener in Lincoln. The player, Jahsear Whittington, was referred to flippantly online as “another victim of week 1.”
And, in Topeka, Kansas, something almost unheard of in football occurred that same afternoon: Washburn University and Colorado School of Mines tied. The Ichabods and Orediggers were knotted at 16 when the fourth quarter ended. But instead of continuing to overtime, the game was stopped because a wet-bulb globe temperature reading exceeded 92.1 degrees, the limit set by the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association. The heat index was 108 degrees.
At all three universities, some fans needed medical help due to extreme heat that Saturday. At the University of Iowa, the number of people needing assistance set a record.
As late-summer heat waves become more common in the Midwest — and college football seasons start even earlier in 2027 — athletes are at greater risk for heat-related illness and even death. So is everyone adjacent to the game: fans, cheerleaders, band members, dance team members, vendors and even mascots.
There are solutions, but many are expensive. Some would fundamentally change the traditions and nostalgia around a game that decades ago eclipsed baseball as America’s most beloved sport.
The push to expand the Division I college football season to “Week Zero” means that in 2027, more universities will start their seasons the weekend before the traditional opening week of the college football season, with games as early as Aug. 21.
“As someone who enjoys college football, I enjoy more football. As someone who studies heat and health, I think it’s a very, very bad idea to extend the season further back in the summertime,” said Daniel Vecellio, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who studies climate change and health, biometeorology and extreme weather.
Derek Phillips, the University of Iowa band member who collapsed on Sept. 5 before halftime, experienced cardiac arrest. He died three days later at an Iowa City hospital after being removed from life support.
Phillips’ cause of death has not been released publicly. The University of Iowa did not answer emailed questions from The Midwest Newsroom at the time of publication.
That Sept. 5 game started at 3:16 p.m. in Kinnick Stadium. Phillips was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, along with the rest of the band.
Alex Gibbs, the lead meteorologist at the Quad Cities National Weather Service, said the heat index at the Iowa City airport reached 103 degrees by 10:10 a.m. on Sept. 5.
“The heat index remained above 100 degrees all the way through about 6:30 that evening,” Gibbs said.
The high temperature at the Iowa City airport on Sept. 5 was 94 degrees, which was a record, Gibbs said. Heat indices as high as 108 degrees occurred, he said.
The humidity remained the greater problem.
“The temperature was in the 90s, but our dew point was in the mid-70s and sometimes in the upper-70s. And I think that’s really what led to the higher heat indices, where there was that higher dew point,” Gibbs said.
Wet-bulb globe temperature uses a combination of weather data that indicates how conditions will affect the human body, including sunlight, humidity and wind speed. Not every football team has adopted wet-bulb temperature guidance, and limits vary.
“I stand on top of this hill or this soapbox all the time: The heat policies that exist in college athletics are largely suggestions, and it takes responsible adults to monitor and enforce them,” said Jessica Murfree, an assistant professor in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies the intersection of climate and sports.
At the college level, in most circumstances, host schools are responsible for game-day decision making. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, which is the governing organization for most college sports, responded to The Midwest Newsroom’s request to comment by noting its publications about protecting athletes, including a guideline in a sports medicine handbook about exertional heat illness.
Fans need medical help
The University of Iowa had released a set of guidelines called “Saturday’s plan to beat the heat,” which was published Sept. 2. The plan included 4,000 refillable water bottles distributed to fans, expanded first aid services, medical professionals on the ground ready to treat fans and more.
The number of people needing help set a record, said Dylan Reed, a field supervisor with the Johnson County Ambulance Service who worked the Sept. 5 game.
“We were able to only document about 110 calls through our dispatch, but we were pushing probably 130 calls, maybe even more, and that was before halftime,” Reed said. “So it was something that we have just never seen before — to almost double our previous high call volume.”
The previous high number of calls occurred at another season opener: the Sept. 2, 2017, game against the University of Wyoming, when the number of calls received was in the 70s over a six-hour period, he said.
Reed said paramedics helped all ages of people on Sept. 5, from infants to geriatric fans.
The first line of defense for heat illness is personal responsibility, Reed said. He recommended knowing your limits, especially if you fall into one of the groups the CDC identifies as more vulnerable to heat illness: adults ages 65-plus, infants and children, people with chronic conditions like diabetes, pregnant people and more.
He said fans sometimes bring infants who are “almost newborns” into Kinnick Stadium, including on Sept. 5.
“So really, it starts with the individual, right? Like, they need to know their body, they need to know their threshold, they need to know when it’s time to call it quits, right?” Reed said. “And so, kind of driving that message home to the fans is like the first line of protection for us on the medical side of things, because you’re going to become a patient if you don’t pay attention to yourself, if you don’t stay hydrated, if you don’t leave the situation before it progresses at that point.”
A public health crisis
Eight U.S. states, including Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, experienced their warmest September on record in 2026, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
Zachary Leasor, Missouri state climatologist and the director of the Missouri Climate Center in Columbia, said that as we see more increasing temperatures during the early football season, “Eventually, we’re going to have to do some kind of planning, and more so than what’s being done right now.”
That could mean starting games at the safest time of the day, likely at night, he said. In the future, that conversation might need to include a reevaluation of late August and Labor Day football.
“Is there a need to push the season back? I don’t think those conversations are being seriously had right now. But yeah, I could see that in 10 to 20 years,” Leasor said.
Murfree, the University of North Carolina professor, said extreme heat and exertional heat-related illnesses are recognized by the CDC and other government bodies as a public health crisis.
Murfree said this particular public health crisis is “100% preventable.”
“No one has to pass out. No one, certainly, has to die,” she said.
College football games, often played during the day, are uniquely dangerous, Murfree said.
High school games are typically played at night, although their daytime practices can be dangerous. NFL teams have the money for heat accommodations, such as domes, that many university stadiums lack.
The culture surrounding college football can also be problematic, she said. When you add in tailgating, pep rallies and other activities, it’s one of the few events that can get huge numbers of people gathered closely together outside, in direct sunlight, for an entire Saturday.
Some of the cultural aspects of football become normalized. That can lead to people taking unnecessary risks. The advice, “See something, say something,” doesn’t always seem to apply to college football and related activities, she said.
“But when it comes to climate change, oh yeah, that’s just part of it, right? Throwing up, that’s just part of it. Passing out, that’s just part of it. Another Saturday at the stadium,” Murfree said.
Hotter autumns, earlier openers
Kristan Todd, the head athletic trainer at Washburn University, where the tie occurred Sept. 5, said the heat question “has to be on everyone’s mind.”
“We are seeing warmer temperatures throughout fall, and we need to think about, ‘Why do we need to have a noon start time? Why do we need to have a 1 p.m. start time?’” Todd said.
Kickoff time for the game that ended in a tie was switched twice in the days before the game, from noon to 7 p.m. and then to 9 a.m. But the warming hit the danger threshold by the time overtime arrived.
Changing game times is easier for smaller schools like Washburn University, which is part of the NCAA Division II in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association.
“Division I’s, they have contracts, they have TV times, and it makes it harder. So if you can’t change the time, what are we going to do to help our athletes get through those games?” Todd said.
Although heat waves and heat illness have long been a threat, more of the attention has been on the risk of overexertion at practices rather than at the games themselves, Todd said. But she is concerned games could become more deadly.
At least two football players living in the Midwest died early in the 2026 football season, when temperatures were scorching, according to reporting by KCUR.
MicahJo Barnett was a William Jewell College junior running back who collapsed on the sidelines not long after scoring a touchdown at a game in Liberty, Missouri. Barnett died Aug. 29. Rylan Reece was a 16-year-old high school junior who died on Aug. 18, 2026 — the first day of practice at Pawnee Heights High School in Rozel, Kansas, according to reporting by KCUR.
The exact role that heat might have played in their deaths has not been released publicly.
Vecellio, the University of Nebraska at Omaha professor, said there are two significant factors that have made the heat issue more intense for football in recent years: First, regular periods of high heat and high humidity both happen into late August and September. The second factor, he said, is that college football seasons have been starting earlier.
“We used to think of this first week in a college football season meaning fall was here — and now we have to get to like week five or six to actually feel like fall outside,” Vecellio said.
The scorching Sept. 5 game was the University of Iowa’s 2026 season opener. For 2027, the season opener against North Dakota is scheduled for Aug. 28 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. Other universities in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska are also scheduled to play earlier in the season next fall.
The calendar is changing
One prediction of climate scientists is that extreme events — including hot and humid days — will be more likely. But the football calendar itself is a major factor in higher risks in college football, experts told The Midwest Newsroom. For decades, most teams have started their seasons two to four days before Labor Day (which can fall from Sept. 1 to Sept. 7).
But beginning in 2027, the NCAA is allowing all schools to start the weekend before that, in what was informally called Week 0. Through this year, that weekend had been reserved mostly for games involving special circumstances, such as playing overseas. That means dozens of “normal” Saturday games will be played as early as Aug. 23 in some years. Schools and conferences set up schedules.
Not so long ago, Labor Day wasn’t the signpost, either. Take Nebraska. Fifty years ago, the Huskers’ season usually started on the second or even third Saturday in September. As regular season schedules for the top division of teams grew from 10 to 11 and now 12 games, the season moved earlier. Nebraska never played a home game in August until 1995.
For teams in what’s called the Power 4 conferences, about 65 teams that tend to draw the biggest television audiences, determining the time of kickoff on a particular day is driven primarily by the attractiveness of each game to television viewers. Weather-related considerations are rare.
Television networks negotiate their selections for the season’s first few weeks in the spring. Those networks are focused on getting matchups for (in the Central time zone) morning, mid-afternoon and evening windows that will maximize their ratings. If that’s a 3:15 p.m. kickoff in Iowa City on what turns out to be a scorcher, that’s what happens. In fact, for Sept. 5, the University of Iowa moved three competitions (in cross country, field hockey and soccer) to earlier in the day. “Iowa’s football game against Northern Illinois remains unchanged,” the news release announcing the rescheduling said.
Policies, solutions
There are several factors unique to the Midwest and the southeastern United States that increase the risks for everyone inside a football stadium. The chief one: heat combined with high humidity.
Vecellio, the University of Nebraska at Omaha professor, researches the impact of humidity on heat stress. Humidity is a major factor because the main way humans cool down is via the evaporation of sweat off our bodies, Vecellio said.
“If it’s so humid outside that sweat just drips off to the ground and doesn’t get evaporated, we don’t get any of the cooling benefits out of it, which puts us at more risk of our core temperature starting to rise,” Vecellio said.
Todd, the Washburn athletic trainer, said it would be wise to look at severe heat through the same lens as lightning delays and concussions. Both are risks that officials take seriously, although that was not always the case.
“We pause games that are nationally televised for lightning. So why can we not pause games that are nationally televised, or here that aren’t, for heat? Because it is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than lightning,” Todd said.
Moving games into the evening is another solution, experts told The Midwest Newsroom.
“It’d be great if we could move all the games to 7 p.m. when the sun’s starting to go down and heat risk starts to decrease for everyone,” Vecellio said.
Even night games can occasionally be stifling in the Midwest.
Leasor, the Missouri state climatologist, said the temperature was 96 degrees when the University of Missouri kicked off against Arkansas-Pine Bluff at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Columbia. It only cooled into the upper 80s by the end of the game, Leasor said.
“That’s some pretty intense heat for the Midwest at a night game,” Leasor said.
Design choices could help lower temperatures inside football stadiums, Leasor said.
Painting with lighter colors to reflect more inclement solar radiation could help, Leasor said. So could using black pellets on turf fields.
Best practices for safety
Dylan Reed, the field supervisor with the Johnson County Ambulance Service in eastern Iowa, said that before going into next season, there is a lot of work that has to be done.
“A lot of this stuff is finding resources — reaching out to other programs to kind of figure out, you know, best practices in how they navigated certain certain scenarios and what they did to help mitigate the potential patient load,” he said.
Some possible solutions: adding multiple cooling areas in various parts of the stadium, having air-conditioned city buses parked outside the stadium to serve as cooling areas, and working with the Johnson County Emergency Management Agency to get more cooling tents.
Fans who plan to attend football games early in the season should try to acclimatize themselves in advance, experts said.
“If you know you are going to a football game in August, you need to start taking some walks throughout the middle of the day. You need to kind of treat yourself like an athlete,” said Todd, the Washburn University athletic trainer.
She recommended being hydrated well in advance of the game, zeroing in on electrolytes and bringing a cold towel and a large umbrella, if they’re allowed inside the stadium.
Older fans might be tempted to brush off heat concerns, remembering “back in the day” when no one worried about wet-bulb globe temperatures.
“It’s a different generation. We aren’t outside as much as we used to be,” Todd said. “We are caught up more inside — electronics, that type of stuff. And so, if you’re going to be in the climate, you have to acclimatize yourself to it.”
Another scorcher in Topeka
At a different Washburn University football game, this one on Oct. 10, giant umbrellas in primary colors shaded fans who were sitting in the stands. The day, again, was unseasonably warm, with a high of 87 degrees.
Some fans came prepared. Others took a more casual approach.
Doni King from Liberty, Missouri, went to the game to support her son and his teammates. Her son, Drew Nelson, is a redshirt freshman tight end for Washburn who played high school football for Kearney High School just northeast of Kansas City.
“I always look at the temperature since he played for Kearney High School, and we won state. We played from when school began in the fall all the way through December. So I know to look at the weather before and plan and prepare accordingly,” King said.
King packed a large umbrella, sunblock and water.
“I brought all those, knowing it was going to be 84 degrees, sitting in the sun. Definitely hydrate. Definitely try to get whatever shade I can, because this is not something expected on October 10th,” King said.
John Higgins from Olathe, Kansas, attended the same game.
He didn’t bring water but purchased some at the game. He wore a hat. There isn’t much more a person can do to stay cool, Higgins said.
“We sweat. That’s all there is to it. Come out here, you’re gonna sweat,” he said.
Higgins said he wished the game was at 3 p.m., because by then, some of the stadium is shaded.
He said he isn’t worried about how climate change and severe heat waves could affect football in the future.
As far as advice to other football fans?
“If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen,” Higgins said. “That’s the best I can tell you.”
The Midwest Newsroom is an enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here. The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODOLOGY
For this story, Nicole Grundmeier attended a Washburn University football game Oct. 10, 2026, in Topeka, Kansas. She interviewed Kristan Todd, the head athletic trainer at Washburn University, as well as fans who attended the game. Grundmeier emailed the NCAA, the University of Iowa and the University of Iowa marching band. She interviewed other experts including Daniel Vecellio, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who studies climate change and health, biometeorology and extreme weather; Zachary Leasor, Missouri state climatologist and the director of the Missouri Climate Center; Jessica Murfree, an assistant professor in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Dylan Reed, a field supervisor with the Johnson County Ambulance Service in eastern Iowa; and Alex Gibbs, lead meteorologist for the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities. Grundmeier reviewed other media coverage and data from the National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
REFERENCES
Monitoring the U.S. temperature and precipitation in September 2026 (National Centers for Environmental Information | Oct. 8, 2026)
Kinnick, public safety layout high-temperature procedure from season opener (The Daily Iowan | Sept. 15, 2026)
Iowa band member taken off life support, dies after collapsing in heat at Kinnick Stadium (The Athletic/The New York Times | Sept. 8, 2026; updated Sept. 14, 2026)
i9 Investigation: Heat conditions exceeded recommended level at Iowa game where band member collapsed, later died (KCRG | Sept. 9, 2026)
Football still top U.S. sport, soccer inching up (Gallup | Sept. 9, 2026)
College football game ends in tie after 108-degree heat index makes overtime untenable(The Athletic | Sept. 5, 2026)
Aug. 31st to Sept. 5th, 2026 Heatwave(The National Weather Service | September 2026)
Saturday’s plan to beat the heat (University of Iowa | Sept. 2, 2026)
A William Jewell College running back died during a game. He’s the second in 2 weeks(KCUR | Aug. 29, 2026)
Missouri’s William Jewell College running back dies after experiencing medical emergency during game (The Associated Press | Aug. 29, 2026)
Why college football’s Week 0 exists – and why it’s about to change (The Athletic | Aug. 29, 2026)
Kansas town mourns teen football player who died during practice: ‘An old soul’ (KCUR | Aug. 29, 2026)
Exploring tangible health impact from heat (CDC/National Syndromic Surveillance Program | Jan. 12, 2026)
Excessive heat makes sports in the Midwest more dangerous. Can a key weather metric help? (KCUR | Oct. 6, 2025)
Nebraska Historical Scores (jhowell.net)
Iowa athletics announces event time changes (hawkeyesports.com | Sept. 3, 2026)
Breaking down the CFB TV selection process (Sports Media Watch | November 2024)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
Investigative or enterprise — An in-depth examination of a single subject requiring extensive research and resources.
