[catchmilk]

It's interesting to see that this issue is rather controversial within the Rugby/NFL world, whereas other sports it's almost a given?

Boxing, for example, has pretty damaging long-term side-effects with notable legends dying prematurely. But nobody is really making Hollywood movies about it (like Concussions starring Will Smith). I wonder whether Rugby/NFL is just headed towards the direction of these sort of consequences becoming accepted as being 'part of the sport'.

[Retric]

Boxing is somewhat popular to watch, but we don’t have high school boxing with large numbers of participants at most schools. I am fine with adults taking such risks with their own bodies knowing the risks, but it’s another thing when public school teams enter the equation.

Replacing full contact high school football with say flag football or soccer would be unpopular, but continuing is an ethically dubious proposition.

[navbaker]

Saying it would be "unpopular" is an understatement. If someone has never spent time around football fans or lived in an area of the country where football is king, it's hard to explain exactly how ingrained it is in American culture. Trying to offramp a large amount of the population into a less violent sport would likely immediately be highly politicized and, I would assume, an almost impossible task without a significant, voluntary change in peoples' willingness to sacrifice their thrilling weekend of violence for the good of all these kids that grow up trying to be the next NFL pro.

[richk449]

Solution: require a surgical mask to be worn under football helmet.

You would have football boycotts in no time.

[christophilus]

College football required all players to mask in 2020 except when on the field of play. The only boycotts that happened were due to the national anthem situation.

[sangnoir]

Seems like that's a better "solution": mandate that all players and spectators kneel for the anthem

[alistairSH]

Hopefully, more ex-NFLers will follow in Favre's steps and come out against youth tackle football...

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/17/1028547803/brett-favre-kids-f...

[mcbuilder]

That's great that Favre came out to say that; he's considered one of the toughest players to ever play the game.

[catchmilk]

Boxing training starts at a very young age, especially because parents/kids know the kind of money and fame a professional boxer can achieve. That being said, I take your point on it being part of the high school programs. Begs the question on whether parents should be allowed to put their children into sports with long-term effects at all. As other threads mention, this would be hugely unpopular.

[spywaregorilla]

> especially because parents/kids know the kind of money and fame a professional boxer can achieve.

Oh come on. Even among professional sports boxing seems incredibly unlikely to pay off as a career move.

[pessimizer]

But since probably 100x times as many kids play basketball or football than box, your odds are probably similar.

Also, I'd counter-intuitively bet that careers in boxing (when found) are longer lasting than in pro football. Pro football players get very moderate money for what tends to be extremely short careers that leave a lot of damage. My grandfather couldn't walk for the last 10 years of his life from football damage to his knees he picked up 60 years before.

[JakeTheAndroid]

My only issue with this is that Boxing isn't as dominate of a combat sport as it once was. MMA/UFC has split the market share and by most accounts is more popular than Boxing. This reduces the total number of professional boxers that actually "make it" since most paid boxers rarely get a fight card that is worth significant cash.

But if you combine MMA/UFC with Boxing I would bet you're math is reasonable.

[diehunde]

True. Olympic medallist Tony Jeffries made a video about this a couple of days ago[1]. Even if you become pro, chances are you won't be making any significant money.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiqJh0oG9dM

[FredPret]

There are a lot of dreamers out there

[antasvara]

My theory is that boxing's effects are clear and obvious, whereas football and rugby have portrayed themselves as more safe in the past. The NFL spent years keeping CTE research down to prevent people seeing their concussion issues, where boxing literally has people getting knocked out in the ring.

People tend to be more accepting of sports when they own their issues and cater to their specific viewers. People who have a problem with concussions and violence just don't watch boxing, so boxing doesn't have to pretend that head injuries aren't an issue. They may not publicize the CTE aspect of the sport, but I don't think they're hiding from it to the same extent as rugby and the NFL.

As an aside, I will point out that MMA has mandatory medical suspensions in place after fights that are usually longer than the average football player's stay in the concussion protocol. That's not to say that MMA is better for your head (because it most likely isn't), just that the sport recognizes that concussions are an issue, and that the only thing that fixes them is time.

[hirvi74]

CTE is a complex disorder. It started off being linked to concussions, then linked to untold amounts "sub-concussive" blows over many years (even without a diagnosed concussion)[1], to to now being debated as to whether it's a real, distinct disease[2][3].

We're talking about a disease that is somewhat similar to many other diseases of the brain, that much like Alzheimers, cannot even be diagnosed in living people yet. Not playing sports doesn't guarantee one safety from whatever CTE is either [4].

I'm no medical professional, but this is a topic near and dear to me. I've done quite a bit of research and talked with medical professionals about it. It's really an "up in the air" kind of thing, in my opinion. I will say that the average person and the media seem to think it's a much bigger deal than the medical professionals I have spoken with (all of which do research in this area at one of the top 20 hospitals in the US (Vanderbilt)). Who is right? I fear only time will only tell.

I do think more steps need to be taken to make sports safer. Whether or not CTE, concussions, head trauma, etc. is as bad the media claims is debatable, but I cannot see any of it being a "good" thing either.

[1] https://www.bu.edu/cte/about/frequently-asked-questions/

[2] https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/Fulltext/2014/01000/Is_Ch...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30169776/

[4] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190620153548.h...

[wil421]

Years go UFC advocates would state it was much safer than boxing because you’d get knocked out easier and wouldn’t go round after round getting repeatedly knocked in the head. Not sure if the argument was valid but time will tell.

[Igelau]

> you’d get knocked out easier

A knockout in MMA includes a much wider category of ways to lose, e.g. tapping out from an arm-bar and conceding to your opponent counts as a knockout.

Also, boxing has the big gloves that let you all but punch someone's head off, and "below the belt" is set way too high, effectively eliminating body punches from the sport.

[nradov]

UFC/MMA fights often involve a lot of grappling and kicks to the lower body, which aren't allowed in boxing. All else being equal a boxing match tends to contain a lot more head strikes. But obviously neither sport is particularly "safe".

[dyingkneepad]

The early Vale Tudo/MMA/UFC legends are just now starting to get at the age they can show the symptoms. I guess the next decade will be interesting in terms of showing the results.

You already have people like Wanderlei Silva openly talking about their symptoms, and it's clearly this guy has got something (he admits so!). On the other hand, the type of crazy stuff Wand did is not what people do these days. Wand believed being knocked out would make you more resistant to knockouts! If you have a few spare years to learn Portuguese I highly recommend watching the many interviews he has on Youtube where he talks about this.

[blunte]

What did they say about being kicked in the head multiple times?

Being hit by a car is not so bad as being hit by a bus. You still want neither.

[mastazi]

The difference between boxing and MMA is not just punches vs kicks.

For example, the two rulesets are different with regards to how a fight ends. In MMA there is no count if you get knocked down, you either show that you can defend yourself immediately after being dropped, or the referee will end the fight declaring a TKO. In boxing this doesn't normally happen, after a knock down the referee starts counting so you have a few seconds to "recover", and often you have to be knocked down more than once before the referee declares a TKO.

There is also a difference with regards to punches specifically, due to 4oz gloves being used in MMA (they allow grappling but they have less padding than the gloves used in boxing). Is it more damaging being punched once with little padding, or a few times with more padding? I've seen arguments one way or the other and since I'm not a doctor I don't know which ones are correct.

Anecdotally, Olympic boxing removed head protection gear a few years ago because they conducted a study where they observed that not wearing headgear, counter intuitively, resulted in fewer injuries[1].

I know nothing about medical topics but I'm curious and would like to read more studies about brain damage in combat sports.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent-wearing-h...

[spywaregorilla]

I suspect being kicked in the head once is going to do a lot more damage than being punched 20 times personally.

[yonaguska]

It's also a lot less likely that you'll get kicked in the head though. Successfully getting a head kick off on someone is hard, especially when they are allowed to tackle and grapple.

Doubly so since you can't do various strikes against someone's head once they have three points of contact with the ground. No knees or kicks to the head when down like the early UFC days.

[mastazi]

My intuition is that many less powerful strikes are worse for your health than one very powerful one. But I'm not a doctor and that's just a wild guess. I would like to see some studies about this.

[pessimizer]

I think the ratio of kicks to the head in the mean MMA bout and punches to the head in the mean boxing match is a lot more than 1:20; probably closer to 1:500.

[diehunde]

There were similar arguments in boxing regarding the use of headgear[1].

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent-wearing-h...

[pessimizer]

And in cigarette smoking regarding the use of filters.

[sp332]

I think no one made a movie about it because we already know. The Will Smith movie was all about people resisting and denying the idea in football.

[Igelau]

Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) takes a pretty good look at that. It has a neat POV segment at the beginning that shows a fight with Cassius Clay through the eyes of the main character.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056406/

And well... there's also Rocky V...

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Yes, the perceived risk profiles regarding head injury are different between the two sports of "grab the ball and run" and "punch him in the head".

[rapsey]

Because boxing is a minor sport in comparison. Way to many billions at stake in football and rugby.

[dmurray]

Boxing is one of the biggest sports in the world. Rugby is pretty niche.

[phaemon]

That's completely wrong I'm afraid. In terms of popularity (number of fans) Rugby is about as popular as American Football, at around 9th most popular sport.

The top two are 1. Association Football (aka soccer), 2. Cricket

Boxing doesn't make the top 10.

[pessimizer]

The rise of MMA severely damaged the popularity of boxing.