Scorching Saturdays: The rising heat threat inside football stadiums

TUSCALOOSA — When Vanderbilt University football fan Douglas Dill set out with his son the morning of Oct. 4 to watch their team play rival University of Alabama, he didn’t expect his game-day experience to include a gurney ride to a medical facility inside Bryant-Denny Stadium.

But by the fourth quarter in Tuscaloosa, with the sun beating down on the upper decks, the 60-year-old needed medical help.

“It was smoking hot up there,” said Dill, who traveled from Nashville for the game. “The sun was burning me through my clothes. I needed to get up and get some fluids in me or I was going to go down big time. I was starting to get light headed.”

Dill, who operates a courier service with his wife, said he drank water throughout the day but he had none left by the middle of the fourth quarter. His son and a stadium paramedic helped him down the steep upper-deck stairs to where additional emergency medical personnel were waiting with the gurney.



https://alabamareflector.com/2025/11/22/scorching-saturdays-the-rising-heat-threat-inside-football-stadiums/