the 1910 rule changes were a reaction to a raft of horrifying deaths on the field. A total of 26 players died in 1909, including 10 at the college level. Thirteen in 1908. Eighteen in 1905.
I've always had trouble with the "no pads is a natural limiter to the amount/intensity of the hits" argument.
That said - those hard plastic helmets are weapons. They can hurt a player a lot more than a skull. Not sure what to do with that conclusion.
I love watching NFL football but its obviously a form of killing people slowly for our entertainment. I don't see how it can sustain unless we all look the other way on the brain injuries.
The rugby players that I know tell me that their pain limits how hard they tackle an opponent. They would not like to see padding introduced because a player would trust their armour overmuch and increase the risk of injury.
In addition to the force of the impact, a significant difference is the form that you employ in making a tackle. In football a common technique is to put your head in the center of the opponent's body in order to help stop their force. In rugby, not wearing a helmet means you are _likely_ to receive a concussion if you do this (mostly from knees). As such, in rugby a proper tackle technique involves you putting your head to the side of your opponent, and using your shoulder as the primary point of contact with the opponent.
The upshot of this is that your head is involved in significantly less direct contact (though there's still some).
That makes sense to me, but then there's that "one guy" (not one guy) that is willing to push it too far and shifts the center of the sport towards the more violent end (e.g., Mike Tyson).
The OP mentions this, for example there are stern rules in the NFL against grabbing a player's facemask and cross blocks, but they still happen frequently. Furthermore, the games rules reward pushing the envelope (15 yards vs chance of serious injury to e.g., the quarterback is unequal).
You can make an effective argument that if you play football in the NFL you will sustain many serious injuries to your brain and body (as the OP does). I'd expand that to include college and high school football as well.
They would if they weren't wearing head to toe padded protection. It would actually hurt, and pain would limit the needless aggression. Works fine in Rugby (union and league) and Aussie rules, with players every bit as hard and aggressive.
Just look at the size of rugby players vs. NFL players. It is completely ridiculous to assert that taking the pads off players is the solution.
If you put some full backs from the NFL in a rugby game, players would literally die (and I mean literally, literally). They are massive. Seeing these guys in person blows your mind (figuratively).
[added] I don't know how good of a source it really is, but there are some infographics in this form that show a difference.
The article isn't about concussions. It's about hits that do not cause one to show visible mental effects, but are in fact a very mild form of concussion (TBI). And it's about players thousands upon thousands of those hits throughout their life.
I prefer this comparison to the GP's since it controls for the level of medical technology. There may have been a spate of deaths in the early 20th century, but they may not have happened today.
Not to mention that a single year could be an extreme outlier.
I hate when people complain about football injuries. It's the risk and conscious choice that athletes take in order to make an enormous amount of money. If I were able to make millions of dollars for 8-10 years and risk having concussions and other physical problems later on in life, I would probably take it, especially if I came from an underprivileged background.
The real tragedy is that 80% of pro athletes go bankrupt because they don't know how to handle their own money. They made a life-changing amount of money, and they waste it all because they don't have proper guidance in terms of how to retain most of it. THIS is something the NFL needs to concentrate on, that these young kids don't blow all their money away because of immaturity and arrogance.
Factor into that all of the players who don't make it to the NFL, but played all through high school and college. People start playing football before they understand the accumulated risk. I don't think that the accumulated risk is even well understood by most people at this point.
There are studies that show that the incidences of depressions are significantly higher in former NFL athletes, with contributing factors likely being brain trauma and chronic pain. You can find sources here: http://www.google.com/search?q=incidence+of+depression+in+nf...
I don't dispute any of that. My point is that it's a risk that everyone, to a great extent, knows about and are willing to take. Most of the NFL players don't care about the health effects until it gets extremely drastic, they are willing to risk their health to get the chance to make a life-changing amount of money. Some people, like Peyton Manning who suffered a grave neck injury, already have the money, but want to do it for the sheer competitive thrill.
To put it into context, it's similar to a couple of college grads spending all their time trying to make a startup. Their chance of success is extremely small, and yet they are still willing to go for it. And if they work 100 hrs a week, they could suffer health problems too, including physical and mental health issues, like depression. There are several stories of startup founders committing suicide because of their lack of success.
How would you feel if a bunch of non-practitioners were sitting around, and added regulations that limited your ability to form a startup because they feared the risks that you were willing to undertake for the chance to "make it rich"?
My point is that it's a risk that everyone, to a great extent, knows about
My point is the opposite. I don't think most people understand the risks, and we already know that 15-year-olds are not equipped to make long-term risk analysis.
I would agree that before, the risks from injuries like concussions were not known.
In this era, however, most people playing these contact sports like football and hockey know about them. And if they play at a high-enough level such that they can play in college, then the level of care and attention they get is even higher. If they don't play at a high enough level, their career effectively ends at high school.
And it's in the best interest of colleges to pay heed and educate the students on the risks as well. It's not just the NFL that is at risk to litigation, it's also the entire college system. Given the amount of litigation that colleges face, they also probably pay as much attention to things like concussions and career-ending injuries as the NFL does.
So I disagree that these days most people don't understand the risks. I believe the risks are well ingrained throughout the entire system. And people are willing to take those risks, which is their right.
> How would you feel if a bunch of non-practitioners were sitting around, and added regulations that limited your ability to form a startup because they feared the risks that you were willing to undertake for the chance to "make it rich"?
It's difficult to protect sole proprietors from their own insanity, but if you are talking regulations against excessive overtime I'm all up for it. Just because everyone else at my employer is young, single and naive does not mean I should be forced to join them in their 80-hour workweeks and risk my marriage.
My worry isn't so much for the ones who make it into the NFL and get paid millions with a pension afterward. My worry is for the 8 year old kids playing football and emulating the professional players. My worry is for the ones who almost make it into the NFL, and will suffer physical problems without the NFL benefits.
These kids and their parents have a choice, knowing the dangers more than ever in present day. I have suffered 8 concussions, 3 football related, and if I could I would go back and do it all over again. Who are you (i.e. anyone) to decide for these people (the hoards who love to play and the hoards that love to watch) whether or not it is socially acceptable? It is an individual choice.
Worrying about somebody's safety does not mean I want to take away their freedom. I want people to make an informed choice. I also recognize that we often use information to rationalize decisions we make largely because of our surrounding culture.
I have two uncles who played NFL football and their lives have been enriched greatly by their careers. They may have been lucky to not suffer any CTE. One had a 1 season career because of knee injury and the other's 5 year career as DB and special teams doesn't seem to have caused him any chronic health problems.
This. How about in college? Or High-school? Or earlier? When the brain is supposed to be developing at it's fastest pace. I presume most kids know that the odds of making money in football are tiny. I would wager none of them knows the trade-off is brain damage. Regardless of whether they make it.
Many kids make the decision to play a sport because they implicitly trust their parents and other elders to keep them safe.
I think the article is too optimistic by implying that a change of equipment can shed the problem. I doubt the human head is adapted to handle violence regularly and consistently.
On the contrary: players, teams and the whole league have hidden the extent of injuries before. They used to just load the players up with painkillers and send them back out. They had no idea how injured they were. The NFL has been criticized for lack of disclosure regarding brain injuries for a long time. "As of December 2012, thirty-three former National Football League (NFL) players have been diagnosed post-mortem with CTE." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat... These players had no idea how injured they were. "In 2012, some four thousand former NFL players have joined civil lawsuits against the League, seeking damages over the League’s failure to protect players from concussions".
You are mistaken in the fact that the majority of players have million dollar contracts. The actual truth is that the majority of football players don't make a million dollars gross in their short careers.
GP did not say anything about million dollar contracts. The statement "millions of dollars for 8 - 10 years" is correct for any and all NFL players who remain on a team roster that long, since per the 2014 minimum salary table[1] such a player will make no less than $5.175m. Using the conservative estimate for an average player's career given by the earlier link (3.5 years), the average player going forward will make approximately $1.8m. Thus, the majority of NFL players will gross over $1m in their careers.
League minimum is $390k (which can only be paid to rookies, it then goes up every year) and the average career is about 6 years, so really the vast majority are doing more than a million gross (and net) in their career.
Also the average salary is about $2m so you're looking at $12m gross. There's certainly a power law there, but still, an average salary of $12m careerwise is substantial.
You should use medians rather than averages for this analysis. The median salary for those who play an entire season before getting cut is around $800,000. The median career length is not reported anywhere I can find. Since all sources besides the NFL claim the average career is 3.5 years, I'll overestimate the median to be 3 years.
So, rather than $12M, we should be talking about $2.4M for a median career, and that's just those who play an entire year before getting cut. Since the NFLPA is toothless most NFL "contracts" allow a player to be cut at any time for any reason and then he doesn't get any more money.
Since the NFLPA is toothless most NFL "contracts" allow a player to be cut at any time for any reason and then he doesn't get any more money.
I don't think this is because the NFLPA is toothless. I think it's because the marginal value of the 53rd man on the roster over the first guy on the practice squad is not high, and it doesn't increase much as you move up. Because the NFL is such a team game, with a few major exceptions players are largely replaceable.
That's why you hear so often about guys who were sitting on the couch watching football one Sunday and playing the next. This effectively doesn't happen in, say, baseball, where the supply of guys who can hit major league pitching above the Mendoza line is quite limited. Even with a huge farm system, teams rarely have more than a few major league-caliber players who aren't actually on the roster.
Yeah, I agree, one of my interests growing up was martial arts and I went as far as competing as an amateur kickboxer.
When I eventually came to the crossroads of either turning pro or focusing on purely intellectual pursuits, I chose the latter for economic reasons -- my idols were decorated world champions who were also broken moneyless men in their 30s, so the decision was a no brainer (though a very difficult one because I loved the sport).
If there was a possibility of a comfortable retirement after a 10 year pro career, I would have gone pro for sure.
There's a pretty substantial amount of financial guidance available to pro athletes. I keep seeing this mentioned here but it's just wrong. They aren't broke because there's nobody telling them "hey don't blow all your money." Every team in every sport has an orientation for new players, and nearly every major sport athlete has an agent with an MBA.
They're broke because they spend it anyway. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Many of them come from the sorts of backgrounds where you spend the money when you've got it, so that's what they do. But they've all been advised differently.
I don't think it's just their backgrounds. Most people who make a lot of money also spend a lot of money. The difference is that most people who make a lot of money will do so for a lot longer than an average of 6 years.
I bet that if you fired someone from the financial industry who made $1 million a year for 6 years after college, and somehow took away all of their prospects for a professional salary, they would also have financial trouble.
> If I were able to make millions of dollars for 8-10 years and risk having concussions and other physical problems later on in life, I would probably take it, especially if I came from an underprivileged background.
throwing money at poor people to injure themselves for the entertainment of others is ethically problematic. writing it off as "conscious choice" ignores the fact that people can be pressured by economic incentives into doing things that are not in their overall best interest, but which they are incapable in their present circumstances of realising are a net loss.
It goes well beyond physical problems. Many former players have committed suicide, attributable to severe depression they often experience because of brain injury.
I agree that losing the hard equipment would make the game safer (take a look at rugby or Aussie rules: much safer similar sports), but I don't agree with the implication that the owners of the NFL ever had a nefarious plan to add equipment so that the game would become watchable (again, take a look at rugby or Aussie rules: very watchable similar sports).
Aussie rules is not very similar to American football, though. Rugby Union is pretty different, too. Rugby League is about the closest thing to American football without the pads and helmets.
They all feature teams of players throwing, kicking, carrying, and sometimes punching an oblong ball on a long field with goal posts at either end. The object of all games is to advance the ball in a direction opposite to that of the other team, and then to score a varying number of points depending on how one moves the ball into a scoring area or kicks it between goal posts. Rough play is encouraged, and body tackling is the basic means of defense, so these games are all (with the exception of rugby union: the entire game is spent listening to the referee holler "pause, engage!" while the scrum falls apart) more enjoyable to play and watch than the sport upon which they're allegedly based. They're all more similar to each other than any of them are to baseball or tennis.
Besides, the only similarity that counts for this analysis is the nature of the head trauma involved: men carrying a ball run while other men attempt to tackle them bodily to the ground.
The hits and tackles are very different in Aussie rules or League not only because of the equipment difference, but because of rule differences. Look at some of the hits NFL line-backers put on receivers over the middle 2+ years ago (there was a rule change to partly address this). There just aren't many situations where a rugby player would get that sort of look at someone who is blind to them.
I'm no Sports-Ball expert, but two things you can do to make Football more enjoyable is lose the padding and lessen the constant pauses of the game (which frustrate me to no end, as a casual observer). These two reasons are why I find Rugby infinitely more enjoyable to watch.
You don't see the problem with "I don't like sport A, I like sport B. Make sport A more like sport B"? The pauses lead to a more rigid tactical game (you can't really run set plays much in rugby as you do on most downs in football). And the physical violence padding allows is also part of the appeal of the game. Just google "Clowney hit" and you see thousands of people losing their minds in praise for a hit of the kind you'll never see without padding.
Of course, the second point is more what this article is about and I believe American football will eventually been seen like we view Roman gladiators. But for now, padding is a major reason why it is the biggest sport in America.
Eh, the hits are only a small part of why it's the biggest sport. There are a lot of things the NFL does better than other leagues.
I'd argue the biggest is the salary cap and the parity that results. But there are dozens more, and hits are probably low on the list since they're still nowhere near as exciting as the slam dunks you see on a SportsCenter highlight reel.
It's basically a combat sport. These days, the players know or ought to know that is the case. I feel bad for the guys who get hurt, but the ones playing at the college and professional level are being rewarded substantially for the risks they take.
That makes it basically "spectators pay players large amounts of money to injure themselves for our entertainment." I don't think that's the sign of a civilized society.
That's overly reductionistic. We're not paying to watch them strike eachother in the head with baseball bats. We're paying them for an intense display of athletic skill, which incidentally is also extremely risky and likely to cause long-term harm. The reality is bad enough without overstating your case or taking a naive view of what people are getting out of spectating.
By the time you were fighting in the amphitheatrum novum, you had already survived a bunch of other fights and proven your abilities. And of course the citizen of Rome came for the same "intense display of athletic skill". There isn't much enjoyment in just mindless slaughter, so you add animals and weapons and shields.
Again: the stupid, sensationalist comparison to bloodsport is not helping your case against anyone who doesn't already agree with you. Normal, rational people will read your comment and say, well, there are no swords or lions in football, nor any caesar giving the thumbs up or down, and almost no one dies on the field. Clearly this guy is off his rocker.
The point of the article is that even the "healthy" players are receiving regular head trauma that has devastating cumulative effects.
A typical one- or two-year pro isn't getting set for life. Much less the average college football player, who donates his time and health for the benefit of people and organizations who are already wealthier than anyone else he'll ever know.
> A typical one- or two-year pro isn't getting set for life
Do typical pros only play one to two years? Also, I thought the harm done was proportional to the duration of play.
Also, let's face it, how much they're rewarded versus the wealth of the promoters has only has a little bit to do with the question. MMA boxers mostly pay IN to the system, except the very best. What's far more important are that the risks are communicated fairly and that everyone be given a free choice to participate or not.
I've heard it described as ritualized warfare. Yes, it's violent. Every player knows that going into the game. That being said, I think the NFL needs to take additional steps to make it safer, because players at all levels look to the NFL on guidance for how the game should be played.
If you plot concussions over helmet size you'll see the problem. Bigger/stronger helmets means more concussions. Its fairly obvious, go back to leather helmets or some softer material and players will lead with their head less. Which will mean lesser concussions. I am not saying they should play with leatherhelmets but the bigger harder plastic helmets make no sense. players just become projectiles using their heads as weapons. The helmet should be a silicon jelly ish type of material.
Leading with the _crown_ of the helmet will get you a 15 yard penalty. The second infraction should get you ejected from the game. Leading with the front of the helmet (e.g. planting your facemask in the opponent's chest) is still perfectly legal.
If I recall correctly, this rule ("spearing") was introduced to avoid _neck_ injury, as leading with the crown of the helmet puts an incredible amount of strain on the vertebrae in the neck.
Good observation, bad conclusion. The solution is not mushier or poorer protection, but something very much along the lines of "you get one helmet per game and thats it". Made outta styrofoam or something.
Look, here's the big startup lesson. Say you've got a generic engineering challenge. Look at other industries. In the 50s they made car chassis that were so strong they could survive a 50 mph crash and look pretty much drivable afterward. Of course the passengers were dead jelly. Solution? Crumple zones, crush zones... Do the same with helmets. When that styrofoam cheesehead helmet is crushed or breaks off, you're done for the day. And everyone else has the same limitation, so hold back a little, else you get kicked out by everyone else, ok?
The NFL has made rule changes to reduce the incidence of head injuries, and IMO it's worth going a season or two to see if they improve things.
The nature of the rules in U.S. football creates situations that are inherently more dangerous than its overseas counterparts like rugby or Aussie rules. In those sports it is very rare for players on opposing teams to and run directly at each other from 10s of yards/meters away. Most tackles are chase-downs where the runner is pulled to the ground at low speed.
I disagree with Klein's assertion that the violence is at the heart of the NFL's appeal. There are numerous more violent or dangerous sports, like boxing, MMA, or even NHL hockey (which as straight-up fist fights) that are not nearly as popular.
The sport is far less dangerous or violent today than it was 20 years ago, but it's far more popular. The NFL has reigned in the violence with rules like illegal contact on receivers, hits on defenseless receivers, roughing the passer, spearing, chop-blocking, face mask, blow to the head, horsecollar tackle, etc.--and as they have done so the game has only gained in popularity. This disproves that the violence is the heart of the appeal.
Personally I think the appeal is that football is a) extremely athletic, b) extremely complex tactically and strategically, and c) perfect for TV because every single play has time for instant replay and analysis. In addition it involves a lot of ballistic trajectories, which are always popular:
Personally I think the appeal is that football is a) extremely athletic
How athletic is Football, when compared to other sports? I'm not too clued into the game (grew up in Britain) so I'm genuinely curious. My instinct is that the frequent pauses and switches between offensive and defensive players mean that an individual player gets a much larger break than in other sports (I'm primarily thinking of soccer and rugby here), and runs a much shorter distance. But on the other hand, a football game goes on far longer than both of those.
I'm not much of an athlete, but I have played soccer and football on occasion (pickup games, rec league and/or kids league). My perspective is that soccer is much more focused on endurance and smaller, measured bursts of energy. Football on the other hand is focused on explosive bunches of energy. The players all wait for the same moment before sprinting either as far as they can, or into another player. The linebackers (the players in the middle of the field, facing off a few feet from the opposing team) also must push against the opposing team as hard as they are against them. That might help explain why instead of a focus on endurance, there's more focus on strength and power (in the physics sense). As a little bit of interesting/illustrative media, here's a video of an American football player jumping out of a pool that I found on a Reddit discussion a few days ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXDSPbZ_OUw
Pure aerobic endurance aside, gridiron players are some of the most athletic people on the planet when ranked on things like quickness, strength, vertical leap, agility, and so forth. There is an event called the NFL Scouting Combine where college athletes are tested and ranked on these factors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Scouting_Combine
Perhaps the most interesting differentiator between american football and other sports is how much of it is about raw athleticism. It's a power, speed and size arms race. Most other sports are more about how good the players are with specific skills.
Interesting. It looks like those tests are heavily biased towards short-burst athleticism, which would make sense looking at the figures in that infographic. So football players excel at short-burst, but not endurance.
In those sports it is very rare for players on opposing teams to and run directly at each other from 10s of yards/meters away.
In the absence of padding and helmets this would be rare in American football as well. Oh sure players would run toward each other. But the results would be a rugby-style wrap-arms-and-pull-down tackle rather than an NFL-style airborne earhole clock-cleaning.
I agree with most of your other points; the NFL may well be safer now than at any time in the modern era. I doubt it will ever be safe, however.
Is this really true? Those videos of old minimally padded players still look like there is substantially more violent tackling going on than what we see in those other sports.
It's not true. The padding and helmets in U.S. football did not appear out of nowhere; they were added to the game to increase safety. The game was less safe without them.
This is a good example of "Chesterton's Fence." If you find a fence across a road, it might seem like a good idea to tear it down. But the fence did not appear there by itself--someone built it there on purpose. So maybe it would be smart to understand why it was built in the first place before proposing to tear it down.
A valid point, but I think we can also say that when helmets were added to football, they were thinking about preventing concussions and weren't aware of the potentially more lethal effects of chronic trauma. Now that we have seen both sides, we can make a more educated decision on the subject.
I like that "Chesterton's Fence" description. At the risk of turning the discussion political, I'll have to use it the next time someone asks why the FDA exists...
I would venture to guess that most NFLers that have made a career out of taking head trauma would be much more in favor of furthering post NFL support (jobs, financial guidance, mental health support), and better helmet technology then watching their game go the way of Boxing.
Whatever the risk/reward calculus younger players might make, the NFL will still be held responsible. They know this. Their army of lawyers know this.The rules they are a-changin'.
[added] Brain Sentry makes sensors for youth programs to detect big hits. Obviously this isn't exactly what the author was referring to, but is a great first step.
The whole point is to be able to keep playing the game, but make it safer. Tech can help identify the players who should be checked for a concussion and get those players off the field. Players don't report their symptoms so the technology enhances overall awareness of the topic (helping the social problem) while adding an extra set of eyes on the field (tech component).
Everyone knows what repeated concussions do to a fellow - boxer dementia is age-old - there are regulations against fielding concussed players, yet athletes play on, out of a sense of team spirit, or something. If players and coaches don't go by the information they already have, what will cause them to listen to an electronic box? This does not seem the way forward. Since it's impossible to fight team spirit the rules need changing.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that it is clear when people have concussions and that players simply disregard the advice of coaches and play anyway.
1)
"It is not always easy to know if someone has a concussion. You don't have to pass out (lose consciousness) to have a concussion."
"Since it's impossible to fight team spirit the rules need changing."
I agree, by using a G meter, we can make a specific rule that if a player's head experiences a set number of G's, the player can no longer play. That basically simplifies the entire situation because it removes the subjectivity of detecting the concussion.
If I had a kid, and they wanted to play football I would want him wearing a g meter to protect my kid.
At present you have the rules of the game and the helmets and padding, which encourage concussions, and they you put another device on top of that, in order to limit them. That doesn't sound as if it would lead anywhere, and past experience has shown that the evolutionary path the game has taken did nothing to improve safety, Better helmets have made the concussion problem worse.
I'm not comfortable with this approach, it would be better to discourage hard hits altogether instead of limiting them with a g-meter.
That's an interesting complicated technical solution to a simple problem with a simple solution. The simple solution is a can of spray paint. The other teams's helmet color shows up on you, and you get (insert appropriate penalty here).
I used to be a big fan of the game back in the 90s but I got bored because its not a very deep game. Oh, its got some interesting depth, just not much. Anyway most of the helmet smashing is pointless offensive / defensive line stuff, mutually assured destruction basically, and sacking the QB. Some simple rule changes wouldn't fundamentally change the overall game while eliminating 99% of the head smashing. For example, what if sacking the QB causes a penalty on the defense instead of (typically) a loss of offensive possession? Obviously you'll need to prevent hacks to the system like no forward progress is allowed by the QB. Also no forward progress is allowed by the center sneaking a yard or two. Ta da I think you've just eliminated probably around 90%+ of serious brain damage right there. Maybe more.
There are of course alternatives to my rule suggestions. Something like tag football can still be exciting if applied properly.
One interesting option is weight limits. Fine, smash into each other, but no 350 pound linemen anymore... we'll go with featherweights. Another interesting option is as any kid who played informally at a park knows, fewer players on the field makes it more of a running game than a brutal smashing game. What it you simply had no linemen at all and just had people running around like sprinters?
The fact that you have to wear armor to play a contact sport games shows the quality of the game. I watch only the superbowl every year and it tells me why I don't watch the rest of the year. Soccer is just such a nicer sport. The worst that can happen is a leg injury, not cumulative dementia.
"To the Editor: Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, with more than 250 million active players.1 It is the only sport in which the unprotected head is a primary point of contact when heading the ball. In other contact sports, the deleterious long-term effects of repetitive traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as impaired white matter integrity,2 are well recognized.3 However, whether frequent subconcussive blows to the head lead to TBI remains controversial,4- 5 although evidence suggests impaired neuropsychological function in soccer players.5 We evaluated concussion-naive soccer players using high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which is highly sensitive for detecting alterations in white matter architecture."
Heads can also hit each other or goalposts, for example when a keeper dives for the ball.
Of course it happens. The same way that people get hit by lighting everyday, or that someone wins the lottery every day. But to pretend that in soccer you can get the same kind of dangerous injuries as in American Football is disingenuous.
Oh really? http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/14/science/la-sci-socce... flinging your head around, then into a ball which rapidly changes the speed of your head (but not your brain) isn't the healthiest thing to do. Not that this is conclusive by any means, but it's still cumulative brain damage.
I don't think lack of injury is a great measure of a sport's quality. Otherwise, speed walking would have to be one of the greatest sports out there. Compared to speed walking, those soccer players are savages.
I watch a lot of soccer. Concussions still happen. They're less frequent, but by the same token they're not spotted and treated as quickly as in the NFL.
Thats a strawman to the real question, and of course the top comment has already picked up on it, now claiming that "but back then it was just as unsafe".
So now unsafe, back then unsafe. Seems like we should not be promoting a game that works only on brunt violence.
the 1910 rule changes were a reaction to a raft of horrifying deaths on the field. A total of 26 players died in 1909, including 10 at the college level. Thirteen in 1908. Eighteen in 1905.