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Comment by switchbak | Hacker News Reader

I played a bunch of football myself. While others may deny it, there really exists an intentional tactic of crashing into opponents with your helmet. Especially on the line. I did it a lot myself.

The additional protection from armor very much does lead to an increase in the velocity of hits. This results in very high forces, and while you might not see broken bones, there's often injuries still happening.

I had about three months of foggy brain after I stopped playing. Now there's just no way I'd let a child of mine play that sport. I had a great time and learned a lot, but it's just not worth it, even just at the high school level.

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We had that (leading with the head) in the 90s as an old school training for o-line in Missouri. However at the time they had switched the good players on the line to just using their hands as they had started allowing grabbing "inside the numbers". Still took a while for the transition to trickle down.

All of the higher end camps and college camps taught using hands. Then I played in college, the people who hit with their heads on the line were hopelessly outclassed. We had a senior who was a physical monster but just loved using his shoulder/head to block, he never was put on the field (dude got a PHD in high energy lasers at the same time). It massively limits visibility and frankly, you can't HOLD with your head, which is, again, legal. Your hands are massively better. And the right amount of work in the weight-room you get your chest and triceps as big as most people's arms, you end up being able to double hit people. First hit is coming in with the arms and stopping their momentum by bending your arms. Second hit is that you can literally bench press them so you then shove them very quickly off balance or to the ground.

Even when we did less than savory tactics, often out of desperation, like a leg whip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHdPcaRAkeg watch the running back in the first 5 seconds come in from the left) they taught us to have our heads up looking for the next person to block.

The coaches we had in high school were not very smart and were doing it as a part time job based on what they remembered from high school. The coaches in college were professionals and did constant training and improvement.

Football helmets also used to be really heavy and hard.

In my time, we were unaware of the negative effects, so we used our helmets as a weapon. This was normal. It worked.

For example, if you are a running back with sufficient mass, come in low with high speed and manage to place your helmet on the helmet of the defender (who is often moving laterally) you could literally knock them out.

During kick off, you could have two players running into each other full speed from 50 yards out. Of course the person who is willing to go fully into contact will win. The person going for a Rugby style tackle might land on his behind.

The force of such impacts was immense. I have had my metal face shield broken out of the helmet. I have seen broken jaws from the impact, people getting knocked out, having concussions.

I am horrified about the things they let us do in the 90‘s. Even in practice, these contact drills that were designed to take away your fear of contact, teach you to use your body as a weapon.

I just hope it is different today, but if I have kids, they will not play Football

I grew up playing rugby, but that ends with me. My kids aren’t playing either

In the 00's we may not have had the scientific backing yet, but the common knowledge was that football was scrambling the players' brains. As we were still in the last stages of the transition away from a manufacturing economy into a knowledge economy, there was still a popular perception that intellectual capacity was not really needed in men who would be much better off learning self-sacrifice, physical endurance, pain tolerance and willingness to abuse their bodies for the good of the group, all great skills for blue collar workers but not much needed in white collar jobs.

> During kick off, you could have two players running into each other full speed from 50 yards out. Of course the person who is willing to go fully into contact will win. The person going for a Rugby style tackle might land on his behind.

Kickoffs in the 90s were terrifying. Targeting rules get a lot of focus but moving the kickoff spot up to the 35 and touchbacks up to the 25 were probably the most consequential safety changes in modern football.

I played rugby and there is no way I'll let my children play. Spinal injuries from scrum collapses are way too common, and there is a view of scrum being a fundamental part of the sport so they only mitigate it by not pushing in scrum until a certain age, doing 3 against 3 scrums and so on. By the time the boys are 15 they like the game and start playing hard and getting hurt. I'd rather have them row, run, play soccer, surf, and so many other options

I'd rather have them row, run, play soccer, surf, and so many other options

This. While all sports can lead to injuries, there are so many enjoyable sports with lower injury risks out there. I'd rather teach my kids activities they can enjoy their entire lives -- well past their youth vs something high impact.

> I'd rather have them row, run, play soccer, surf, and so many other options

Soccer is not a safe option: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=brain+damage+from+headers+in+socce...

Perhaps it varies from area to area?

Where I grew up, the pee wee football league (9 and up), there was an unwritten rule of “no head hunting” (purposeful helmet to helmet contact).

If you suspected the other team of doing so, or vice versa there would certainly be a fight amongst the teams: either after the game or even mid-game.

Now I’m speculating here but maybe it had to do with inner city culture where sports was seen as a way out rather than simply as an extracurricular so cheap shots and other intentional injuries were very much frowned upon.

This is an increasingly common sentiment among hockey players too, that softer shoulder pads could be a way to decrease head trauma

I can’t find it now, but there’s a Bobby Clarke quote about modern protective equipment being like armor. This gives players a false sense of invulnerability and the tools to hit other players harder with less damage to themselves.

Well, olympic boxing concluded that not wearing helmets is safer for the athletes.

Alas, I have no citations, but I have heard on the grapevine, as it were, that there are multiple studies showing that glove-less boxing is safer than boxing with the normal gloves.

This makes a lot of sense because, as I said in another comment this this article, bareknuckle completely changes the gameplan. The hand is very easy to break and the gloves do a great job at protecting them. When you don't have gloves you can't just go throwing haymakers since it's very likely you're going break your hands doing it. Heck, even "defending with your forehead" becomes a viable strategy against a gloveless opponent. I bet in these scenarios the fighters get exposed to much weaker shots in average. The goal here is to land that one precise punch right in the off switch.

In boxing, it is argued that not wearing gloves would decrease head trauma, too.

Hitting a skull with your bare fist is more likely to break your hand than to knock out your opponent, so bare-knuckle fighters won’t go for head punches as much as boxers do.

Knuckles also cut an opponent's face to shreds which prevents a fight dragging on.

To be clear, there are unspoken concussion issues with many sports. It was only recently that soccer began to take concussions seriously from headers by banning them from some youth leagues.

That said, I would also never allow my children to play gridiron football. Even if concussions weren't a thing, people leave that sports with lifelong injuries.

I played a lot of football. Beyond poorly trained teenagers, I’ve never heard a coach or a player advise leading with the helmet. Body, arms, shoulders, pads yes. head? Nope. Too dangerous to the neck and head. When you play at the college/pro level, that kind of behavior will get you (literally) killed.

Keep in mind this was in the 90's. For sure we never had a coach say "nail that guy with your helmet", but every game had dozens of these kind of impacts, the worst typically on special teams.

It was less disciplined in high school for sure, but there was still lots of high speed helmet-first crashing going on in university.

Yup, knew a guy who played in the Rose Bowl, had a bunch of NFL offers.

He passed and went to a corporate job.

While his concern was constant knee injuries, his key statement was "I want to be able to walk when I'm 45".

Wise choice.

Edit: This was before the knowledge about TBI became widespread, so in some ways, his ability to look forward to the results of his older peers was even more prescient.

dude i dont remember my junior and senior year of highschool due to football. I turned down college scolarships due to how dangerous it is. sophomore year i fractured my distal femur.

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