Listen american football definitely has structural and safety related problems, i enjoy the games but i wish it was better structured
But
If a boxing fan says that football should be illegal because of the injury risk (a real actually type of guy i met once) you have every right to laugh in their face
Look intuitively, this sounds correct, but in reality… according to a 2017 study on brains of deceased football players that were donated to a brain bank, 99% of tested brains of NFL players, 88% of CFL players, 64% of semi-professional players, 91% of college football players, and 21% of high school football players had various stages of CTE. (1)
Meanwhile, according to a 2016 study on retired boxers, about 11% of all retired boxers examined had a mild case of CTE, and about 6% of the boxers had major neurological problems. And if you just looked at boxers who were over the age of 50 and fought in over 150 fights, the rate of CTE went up to 50%. (2)
I’m sorry, but it is absolutely reasonable for a boxing fan to say that American football should be illegal due to the injury risk, because American football is a much more dangerous sport than boxing in relation to the risk of traumatic brain injury.
And if you’re surprised to learn that American football is more dangerous than the sport where you literally punch each other. Well. I’d say that that’s part of the problem, actually.
(1) Mez J, Daneshvar DH, Kiernan PT, et al. (25 July 2017).
(2) Iverson GL (January 2016). "Suicide and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy". The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. 28 (1): 9–16.
Genuinely didn’t know that, but you are correct
I think that a lot of people don’t!
To be clear, I personally don’t think that it’s necessary to outright ban American football. There are a huge number of things that we could do to make the sport dramatically safer, short of just banning it altogether! But I think that part of the issue is precisely that people don’t know the relative risks of these things. Many fewer parents are comfortable letting their kids play the “hit each other in the head” sport than are comfortable letting their kids play American football, and that’s absolutely an issue of informed consent.
We need to start by acknowledging how dangerous American football truly is.
[Image ID: the Garfield "you are not immune to propaganda" meme /end]
I suspect part of why boxing is safer is that everyone knows hitting each other in the head is dangerous, so there are lots of safety regulations applied to boxing. Which happens less with American football, because throwing a ball and running into people sounds safer than getting punched on purpose.
The other reason is that boxers usually aren't allowed to build up speed and tackle other boxers.
















