I would suspect they would change the sport if it started trending towards obsolescence, with things like removing helmets and padding to discourage hard hits (

I would suspect they would change the sport if it started trending towards obsolescence, with things like removing helmets and padding to discourage hard hits (i.e. slowly transform football into rugby). However, it sounds like the evidence is unclear at this point regarding CTE and rugby https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5926651/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5926651/