Football has managed to dodge the CTE issue so far because the injury is both hard to diagnose (basically requiring a brain autopsy), it's symptoms appear decades after the initial injury and involves a lot of mental issues that people often develop without CTE.
But as evidence mounts, its clearly becoming harder and harder for the public to ignore. So I think we'll see football drastically change to solve the issue, or die off as public discomfort with the cost to players manifests itself in shrinking audiences.
I disagree, at least in part.
Pretty much all of the rules of boxing make it unsafe, and it seems to have evolved to be increasingly so. Boxers have to ignore every instinct that their body has to protect them, from continuous clinching to grabbing to taking the fight to the ground.
If a boxer falls to the ground, dizzy with head trauma, the referee will literally count to 10, and if that boxer can stand up, they can stand in front of their opponent and be hit in the head some more. Like they're a piece of meat.
MMA is much, much better in this regard, but still has some bad parts, and many of the changes have made things worse and not better.
The original UFC rules banned hand wraps, which allow fighters to throw wide, fastball-style overhand punches that would otherwise be impossible without breaking hands.
The original rules also did not provide for referee stand-ups, which have nothing to do with the sport and are instead a purely subjective move to make the fight more exciting. Leaving the fight on the ground is always safer (and, IMO, almost always more exciting, but that's a different topic).
The system of weight-determination in MMA (typically a single weigh-in, 24-40 hours before the fight) absolutely incentivizes deep weight cuts, and that's disgusting. Changes to these rules have often made things worse instead of better (options for an early weigh-in, a ban on IV rehydration, etc). Although OneFC is doing brilliant work in this field I will say; they are an exception.
MMA is a great sport and almost certainly much safer than Football or Boxing, but it's up to fans to stand up and demand re-examination of some of the rules that have gone in the wrong direction.
The analogy goes deeper. We exempt the NFL from antitrust law [1]. We let it keep its feedstock players, i.e. college athletes, people who come from disproportionately low-income backgrounds, so poorly they go hungry [2]. For many, a sports scholarship seems like the only chance they have at a better life.
A minority reach semi-stardom, with a vanishing fraction of those achieving fame and wealth. But for all, the cost society charges is literally their minds.
[1] https://sportslaw.uslegal.com/antitrust-and-labor-law-issues...
[2] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/04/21/304196202/hun...
As more understanding of the eventualities (not "risk") of brain damage become ingrained in how people view football, perceptions may change. I think people may start to view football more as say, smoking. More parents may not sign up their kids for football, or discourage them from playing in high school. Kids may make the decision themselves, as they will grow up with the eventualities as background information. With less players in the pipeline, football programs may shrink.
I know the standard objection is still "some players, particularly poorer players, will still play." And that may be true, but the NFL and college teams power is that football is culturally significant. And it's culturally significant because so many people see it as the main American sport. It's quite possible more people will not see it as the main American sport, which will decrease its cultural significance, which can decrease the power and influence of the NFL, college and even high school teams.
I'm not saying this will happen, but that it may happen. I do think it's likely.
So yeah blame the owners for knowing about football's lifelong consequences before and after the discovery of CTE, but that it persists is squarely on the spectators who keep paying for it.
The short answer is almost certainly yes but the patterns of injury are different. Rugby also has issues with concussions, although less so than American football. The bigger problem is generally considered to be spinal injuries in scrums.
Unfortunately it's hard to catch much rugby on TV in the US. (I assume there are special packages you can subscribe to but I don't care that much.)
I see no reason why ESPN/NFL/et al., can't provide comprehensive health insurance to every current & former player for life - as reducing the violence of the sport doesn't really seem to be on the table, broadly speaking.
College football (and even high school football) account for a very large slice of all football revenue. NCAA football is a multi-billion-dollar business.
Those athletes are spending 50% or even more than 50% of their entire productive football careers playing college ball, they are incurring a very high risk for permanent brain injury, and they are NOT getting paid. (Do these figures sound off? Go look up the average career length of NFL running backs.)
Yes, yes, they get a "free education", but many or most of these guys aren't actually well-suited to college-level academic work anyway, and a college degree isn't of as much use if you die at 40 (or commit suicide in your late 20s) from horrific brain injuries.
They should be getting paid. Bigtime. Paid a lot. Everyone else involved with college football is getting paid; just not the players, the ones who are taking all the risk and doing all the real work.
There is no possible rational conversation you can have with a fan of college football about the disproportionate blood sucking they're responsible for. These spectators are parasites. Conversing with them rationally is just as likely as conversing with a tick. They're ignorant. They don't care, they don't want to care.
Addition: And paying them big time doesn't make it right. That's just more gladiator mentality. The idea of affixing them with more glory makes their sacrifice, and lifelong injuries OK, because they're being fairly compensated for it. Don't fix the sport, don't become less violent, no one change anything except pay the gladiators better.
I agree that paying them would not make this right, but it'd be better than cynically killing them all at age 40, disabling their brains in their mid 20s if not earlier, and never paying them anything at all. Paying them their real market value would at least help.
And yet we can't stop. Football is practically an addiction in this country, and I don't think there is one serious proposal that could reduce the size and scope of injuries and brain trauma in particular, and allows the game to continue in its current familiar form. So we tuck the problem under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist until moments of faux anguish pierce our veil of doped-up depravity.
Sorry if this post comes across as depressing and masochistic. After all, I am a Bills fan.