[pipio21]

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.

[poulsbohemian]

Why do you believe soccer is actually any safer?

[bonesss]

> 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?