re: #108 Kragar

Its worse considering that the decades of research into safety equipment to prevent direct injuries like broken bones and such have allowed athletes to actually hit each other with a lot more force than their predecessors, meaning the kind of long term trauma we see now is much worse than in previous generations.

More players used to actually die very quickly from football injuries. But that was in the first decade of the 20th century when the numbskulls played without helmets, often cracking their skulls wide open and dying on the field. Pres. Roosevelt threatened to ban the sport (which was really only popular at the collegiate level back then) when 18 players died from head and spine injuries in 1906. Safety reforms and rule changes saved the sport at the time, but that only made it marginally safer in the sense that horrifying deaths on the field became less common.

Over 100 years later, deaths on the field are rare, but that’s hardly a great accomplishment considering the current number of traumatic brain injuries, shortened life spans, players carrying insane amount of weight that makes even walking difficult later in life, steroid use, and early onset dementia and other psych problems.