7 ms·

I think the rules could get reworked to make it less dangerous for brain injury. Take a cue from Australian Rules Football: remove all padding and make high tac

I think the rules could get reworked to make it less dangerous for brain injury. Take a cue from Australian Rules Football: remove all padding and make high tackles that endanger the head illegal.

mrspeaker 9y ago
Great idea! Less head injuries, but still a hard-hittin' sport https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8
- bglazer 9y ago
  Virtually every example of a "big hit" in that video ends with the person who got hit showing the fencing response (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response). That body pose indicates a pretty severe concussion. In fact, the most popular video on YouTube about the fencing response has a shocking amount of overlap with the "big hits" video you shared. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlXjwAlOflA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlXjwAlOflA Frankly, your video was kind of hard to watch. It's basically 3 minutes of people getting their brains rattled in their skulls.
  - mrspeaker 9y ago
    That's true! I didn't think about it because it was a collection of "rare" events - hitting above the shoulders is not a valid tackle. Usually won't get these hits in a game. But still, obviously it certainly exists, and I'm sure there is a lot of head trauma every year.
- kenjackson 9y ago
  I have never seen this video. I always had heard that without the gear that rugby was less brutal than football -- but seriously I don't know. Those hits looked devastating... I could not watch that sport.
  - majani 9y ago
    That's not rugby, it's Aussie Rules, but those are illegal tackles in both sports. I don't know why the poster chose a video of vicious fouls to make his point about safety.
    - bonzini 9y ago
      What % of players are going to get such a tackle once in their careers? How many are going to get five?
lostlogin 9y ago
Rugby and league have no padding and those rules. It doesn't appear to anywhere close to enough.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  It's still a risky and violent sport, but the issue of hard-to-identify-and-track accumulated damage is lessened.
- slg 9y ago
  >no padding This is offered as a solution a lot, but I am not sure if it would actually be effective. Football helmets were introduce early in the 20th century because dozens of people were dying every year playing football. Football helmets put an end to those deaths caused by acute trauma, but the physics of the game and those collisions haven't changed. Football is just a more violent game than Rugby due to various reasons like position specialization, more frequent stoppages of play, and the inherent directions of play for the offense and defense. It is rare to have two players in rugby running full speed at each other head on. That happens in football on nearly every play and often multiple times per play.
  - DeBraid 9y ago
    > In the NFL 18.8% of injuries occur at or above the shoulders, the area where athletes wear the most protective equipment. In the AFL 11.5% of AFL injuries occur in this area, where they wear virtually no protection. Source: https://medium.com/upstart-magazine/nfl-vs-afl-injury-comparison-3e21042975ff https://medium.com/upstart-magazine/nfl-vs-afl-injury-compar... Helmets enable players to weaponize their heads, like this recent hit (Vontaze Burfict's suspension earning HIT on Anthony Sherman): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7qQtadYqsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7qQtadYqsI and many others demonstrate. I believe removing helmets would mitigate this behaviour and increase the long term health of football players. Looking for data on Aussie rules, this is not quite what I was hoping to find, but interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_rules_footballers_who_died_during_their_careers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_rules_footb... Without question Aussie rules has its share of devastating brain injuries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8. Plenty of concussions and fencing responses in that clip. At 33, I've stopped watching North American football altogether because the violence turned me off. 10 years ago it was my second fav sports (to Hockey).
ams6110 9y ago
Head contact, boarding, and checking from behind are already illegal. I agree hockey could survive the elimination of checking, and think it probably will happen eventually. It's not even introduced until 14U age and younger kids learn to play with body contact only. It would be a different game but all the skilled puck handling, skating, passing, shooting and speed would remain.
lojack 9y ago
The rules could get reworked, but I seriously doubt if they ever will. Maybe its possible to slowly change the game over time, but completely changing the rules overnight would be too dramatic and risky for any league to really get behind. The best chance is probably for the NFL to come up with a long term plan to fix things, but that'd require them to admit the problem, which I don't think will ever happen.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  Go back to leather helmets and cotton pads and it's a different game. No reason we need to turn their heads into sledgehammers. We do that because then they feel more comfortable with the big unsafe hits and the flying around but we could get back to the real game with the ruck style running game and wideouts with hand fighting all the way down the sideline and half the commercials and I bet ratings would start going up.
  - lojack 9y ago
    Ratings may go up, but with half as many commercials the profits would also go down. The league only cares about ratings insofar as it helps their bottom line. I'm not saying these changes would be a bad thing, only that I have doubts it'll ever happen.
    - jethro_tell 9y ago
      meh if they sold it for $2 or $4 per game directly to the customer they would get the money anyway. They need to look at new ways to monitize and it probably involves cutting the commercials and the middle men and putting the money directly in their pockets. The only reason they need cable is for 1. distribution which is not an issue since the internet. 2. to splice the commercials in which could easily be done. Sell the games directly and get 100% of your add revenue and you'd probably make more. If viewership continues to go down, and parent stop letting their kids play at lower levels because of health conserns, they will also lose money.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mattm 9y ago
As a big hockey fan, I completely agree with this. The pads players wore 30+ years ago were pretty much nothing so if you tried to hit someone hard it hurt you as well. My theory is that the NHL would see less concussions if they reduced the padding but such a counter-intuitive process is never going to happen. I'm curious, did Australian Rules Football go to padding and then remove it? Because I think that once padding is put in place, it's very tough to get people to remove it.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  AFL has never had padding.
- takk309 9y ago
  One big reason for padding that is not directly related to player-on-player contact is getting hit with the puck. I play in beer league hockey (non-check) as a defense man and I wear full shoulder and chest pads to protect from the puck, not hits from other players. At the pro level, taking a hit from a puck without padding could easily cause very severe injury.

I think the rules could get reworked to make it less dangerous for brain injury. Take a cue from Australian Rules Football: remove all padding and make high tackles that endanger the head illegal.

mrspeaker 9y ago

Great idea! Less head injuries, but still a hard-hittin' sport https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8

bglazer 9y ago
Virtually every example of a "big hit" in that video ends with the person who got hit showing the fencing response (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response). That body pose indicates a pretty severe concussion. In fact, the most popular video on YouTube about the fencing response has a shocking amount of overlap with the "big hits" video you shared. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlXjwAlOflA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlXjwAlOflA Frankly, your video was kind of hard to watch. It's basically 3 minutes of people getting their brains rattled in their skulls.
- mrspeaker 9y ago
  That's true! I didn't think about it because it was a collection of "rare" events - hitting above the shoulders is not a valid tackle. Usually won't get these hits in a game. But still, obviously it certainly exists, and I'm sure there is a lot of head trauma every year.
kenjackson 9y ago
I have never seen this video. I always had heard that without the gear that rugby was less brutal than football -- but seriously I don't know. Those hits looked devastating... I could not watch that sport.
- majani 9y ago
  That's not rugby, it's Aussie Rules, but those are illegal tackles in both sports. I don't know why the poster chose a video of vicious fouls to make his point about safety.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    What % of players are going to get such a tackle once in their careers? How many are going to get five?

lostlogin 9y ago

Rugby and league have no padding and those rules. It doesn't appear to anywhere close to enough.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
It's still a risky and violent sport, but the issue of hard-to-identify-and-track accumulated damage is lessened.
slg 9y ago
>no padding This is offered as a solution a lot, but I am not sure if it would actually be effective. Football helmets were introduce early in the 20th century because dozens of people were dying every year playing football. Football helmets put an end to those deaths caused by acute trauma, but the physics of the game and those collisions haven't changed. Football is just a more violent game than Rugby due to various reasons like position specialization, more frequent stoppages of play, and the inherent directions of play for the offense and defense. It is rare to have two players in rugby running full speed at each other head on. That happens in football on nearly every play and often multiple times per play.
- DeBraid 9y ago
  > In the NFL 18.8% of injuries occur at or above the shoulders, the area where athletes wear the most protective equipment. In the AFL 11.5% of AFL injuries occur in this area, where they wear virtually no protection. Source: https://medium.com/upstart-magazine/nfl-vs-afl-injury-comparison-3e21042975ff https://medium.com/upstart-magazine/nfl-vs-afl-injury-compar... Helmets enable players to weaponize their heads, like this recent hit (Vontaze Burfict's suspension earning HIT on Anthony Sherman): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7qQtadYqsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7qQtadYqsI and many others demonstrate. I believe removing helmets would mitigate this behaviour and increase the long term health of football players. Looking for data on Aussie rules, this is not quite what I was hoping to find, but interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_rules_footballers_who_died_during_their_careers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_rules_footb... Without question Aussie rules has its share of devastating brain injuries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8. Plenty of concussions and fencing responses in that clip. At 33, I've stopped watching North American football altogether because the violence turned me off. 10 years ago it was my second fav sports (to Hockey).

ams6110 9y ago

Head contact, boarding, and checking from behind are already illegal. I agree hockey could survive the elimination of checking, and think it probably will happen eventually. It's not even introduced until 14U age and younger kids learn to play with body contact only. It would be a different game but all the skilled puck handling, skating, passing, shooting and speed would remain.

lojack 9y ago

The rules could get reworked, but I seriously doubt if they ever will. Maybe its possible to slowly change the game over time, but completely changing the rules overnight would be too dramatic and risky for any league to really get behind. The best chance is probably for the NFL to come up with a long term plan to fix things, but that'd require them to admit the problem, which I don't think will ever happen.

jethro_tell 9y ago
Go back to leather helmets and cotton pads and it's a different game. No reason we need to turn their heads into sledgehammers. We do that because then they feel more comfortable with the big unsafe hits and the flying around but we could get back to the real game with the ruck style running game and wideouts with hand fighting all the way down the sideline and half the commercials and I bet ratings would start going up.
- lojack 9y ago
  Ratings may go up, but with half as many commercials the profits would also go down. The league only cares about ratings insofar as it helps their bottom line. I'm not saying these changes would be a bad thing, only that I have doubts it'll ever happen.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    meh if they sold it for $2 or $4 per game directly to the customer they would get the money anyway. They need to look at new ways to monitize and it probably involves cutting the commercials and the middle men and putting the money directly in their pockets. The only reason they need cable is for 1. distribution which is not an issue since the internet. 2. to splice the commercials in which could easily be done. Sell the games directly and get 100% of your add revenue and you'd probably make more. If viewership continues to go down, and parent stop letting their kids play at lower levels because of health conserns, they will also lose money.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mattm 9y ago

As a big hockey fan, I completely agree with this. The pads players wore 30+ years ago were pretty much nothing so if you tried to hit someone hard it hurt you as well. My theory is that the NHL would see less concussions if they reduced the padding but such a counter-intuitive process is never going to happen. I'm curious, did Australian Rules Football go to padding and then remove it? Because I think that once padding is put in place, it's very tough to get people to remove it.

jackvalentine 9y ago
AFL has never had padding.
takk309 9y ago
One big reason for padding that is not directly related to player-on-player contact is getting hit with the puck. I play in beer league hockey (non-check) as a defense man and I wear full shoulder and chest pads to protect from the puck, not hits from other players. At the pro level, taking a hit from a puck without padding could easily cause very severe injury.