this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Teddy Roosevelt loved the sport because he thought it was a good way to instill young men with imperialist values and keep them hyped for war during peace time. It was also a lot more deregulated back then. Helmets were leather and weren't mandatory, there were no face masks, tackling was a lot rougher, dogpiles were the rule rather than the exception, long distance passing almost never happened and every play was about ramming through the defensive line with full force, and deaths were a regular occurrence. They also played on real grass with sticks and rocks coming up out of the ground instead of on astroturf.
It could be made safer, perhaps even modified to make most head injuries and concussions rare enough to cease being an expectation, especially because it changed before...
But I don't think at this point
would allow such "wokeness" in their sacred The Big Game. 
I'm against contact sports in general because of TBIs. people think I'm a real stick in the mud, but it's like, look at the olympics. You have swimming, running, throwing javelins, curling, ice skating, etc. Those tend to have a much lower instance of TBIs and CTE specifically. Professional wrestling is the worst and it's not even a truly competitive sport. You got these performers on steroids slowly getting CTE from getting slammed on the mat in fixed kayfabe matches. They said Chris Benoit had the brain of an 80 year old in his autopsy (not to blame what he did entirely on the CTE, but you get my point).
I agree with you. It would be different if contact sports were only played by consenting adults who weren't economically coerced into playing. Professional contact sports drive the interest in high school sports where children are getting traumatic brain injuries to entertain a bunch of adults.
High school hockey is big where I live and it's crazy how violent it is. The size difference between players is more pronounced than it is in the NHL, so you have kids getting checked by someone a foot taller and 70 pounds heavier.
Kids getting permanent brain injuries so their fathers can relive their glory days.