Someone once explained to me that rugby is a contact sport, and American football is an impact sport. The padding allows players to hit each other harder without bruising or direct impact, while the brain still bangs around in the skull.
Boxers wear gloves to protect hands, not heads, and those big pillows mean harder hits mean more brain damage. Bareknuckle boxing is better for the brain.
No rugby player is lining up his skull and charging other players skulls like a ram or a goat, that would hurt, so they don't do it. Football players really need less protection for their heads so they stop doing things that are dumb for their brain.
The challenge with football is that the obvious corrections to the game would seem to be quite fan unfriendly... Touch football is hard to imagine on FOX SPORTS.
Turn it into rugby leage?