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Comment by poulsbohemian | Hacker News Reader

I played organized American Football from the time I was a kid. Went to at the time the biggest high school in the state. I don't recall ever having any kind of head injuries despite getting hit a lot. Went out in college to try Rugby as a club sport. First practice, horrific concussion. I am a sample size of one, but I'd much rather my son play American Football than Rugby. If he gets to the college or pro level, then we can have a John Urshel type conversation about whether to continue.

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I am not sure that you need a frank concussion to rack up long term damage though. Soccer players can acquire CTE from repeated headers of the ball, which rarely cause the kind of concussions you're takling about. I think the take away from all the present research is that it's generally a bad idea to bonk your head into things repeatedly, whatever the sport.

Concussions are accumulative and most of them are not macro evident. Lots of micro concussions could be worse than a single big one.

So I do not think your data means what you believe it means. There is a reason they call NFL "Not For Long".

I would not let my children play either American football or rugby, existing options like basketball or tennis. Luckily most of the world plays soccer.

Why do you believe soccer is actually any safer?

> Ronksley examined the relative concussion risk for some of the most popular youth sports: American football, rugby, hockey, lacrosse, soccer, basketball, baseball, softball, wrestling, field hockey, track, taekwondo, volleyball and cheerleading. Altogether, they reviewed data from 23 previously published studies on concussions in these sports, and then did a pooled analysis of injury rates from 13 of the prior studies.

> For each of the sports, they looked at concussion rates based on minutes of athletic exposure (AE), which includes competitions or practices with the potential for injury. The overall concussion risk across all of the sports included in the analysis was 0.23 injuries per 1,000 AEs. By comparison, the concussion risk per 1,000 AEs for rugby was 4.18, while it was 1.2 for hockey and 0.53 for American football.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-concussion-youth-s...

So on the one hand: research.

On the other hand: soccer (especially with sense enough not to be hitting headers all the time), has stupendously less physical contact than rugby or "football"... how could it be more damaging/dangerous with less contact?

One thing to consider is the way you learned to tackle. Tackling technique is very different. If you used the same "Hit em hard" tackling that is common in American Football, I'm not surprised you had a concussion your first day of rugby practice. Your tackling technique didn't emphasize head protection.

Quite the opposite - I got tackled and hit my head on the ground. An injury that might have been prevented with a helmet.

I disagree that American Football tackling technique doesn't emphasize head protection. That is literally the first thing that every coach, every parent, every referee says to kids from the moment they start playing. It's ritual, IE: "low man wins," "keep your head up". An unsafe tackle is a pretty good way to get benched.

Have you considered the possibility that the difference is that you played American Football against smaller people?

When I graduated from high school I was 155 pounds - not exactly large. Which is part of my point here. For pro calibre players, significant physical growth often happens in those college and early pro years. If you've never stood next to a professional player - even the smaller ones - they are physical freaks, at least during their playing years. The typical pre-college player in this country is a much more normal-bodied person, thus assuming good technique, etc, they are no more at risk playing American Football than any other sport.

Oh you fine folks of HN crack me up. Speak from personal experience, get downvoted into oblivion.

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