There is a link and a problem between Rugby and CTE, but nothing like football because heavy head-first hits aren't a feature of rugby. One feature that makes

There is a link and a problem between Rugby and CTE, but nothing like football because heavy head-first hits aren't a feature of rugby. One feature that makes a difference is the American football system of downs: the next play begins where the last play ended, to the inch, and on many plays there is a nonlinear point. One inch short of a first down is vastly better for the defenders than just making it. In rugby someone taking another foot or two to go down isn't going to hurt the outcome the way it can in football. The goal in football is to stop the person in as little space as possible, which means maximizing the deceleration and thus the impact to the brain. With the NFL, they also spent a decade and a half purposefully covering the link up and publishing biased science trying to obscure the link, so there is scandal on top of the horrors of the physical consequences.