The snark is a bit unwarranted in my opinion because it isn't entirely that cut and dry. The pads provide the illusion of safety - the hits honestly don't feel,

The snark is a bit unwarranted in my opinion because it isn't entirely that cut and dry. The pads provide the illusion of safety - the hits honestly don't feel, or look, as bad. Well now we're starting to find out that the pads don't protect against this sort of long term damage, they only protect against visceral short term damage. It wasn't unreasonable to think that a contact sport like football could be played safely with pads because that's what appeared to be the case - on the outside.