I agree hockey could survive the elimination of checking, and think it probably will happen eventually. It's not even introduced until 14U age and younger kids learn to play with body contact only.
It would be a different game but all the skilled puck handling, skating, passing, shooting and speed would remain.
This is offered as a solution a lot, but I am not sure if it would actually be effective. Football helmets were introduce early in the 20th century because dozens of people were dying every year playing football. Football helmets put an end to those deaths caused by acute trauma, but the physics of the game and those collisions haven't changed. Football is just a more violent game than Rugby due to various reasons like position specialization, more frequent stoppages of play, and the inherent directions of play for the offense and defense. It is rare to have two players in rugby running full speed at each other head on. That happens in football on nearly every play and often multiple times per play.
Source: https://medium.com/upstart-magazine/nfl-vs-afl-injury-compar...
Helmets enable players to weaponize their heads, like this recent hit (Vontaze Burfict's suspension earning HIT on Anthony Sherman): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7qQtadYqsI and many others demonstrate. I believe removing helmets would mitigate this behaviour and increase the long term health of football players. Looking for data on Aussie rules, this is not quite what I was hoping to find, but interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_rules_footb...
Without question Aussie rules has its share of devastating brain injuries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aU0hz5Tf8. Plenty of concussions and fencing responses in that clip.
At 33, I've stopped watching North American football altogether because the violence turned me off. 10 years ago it was my second fav sports (to Hockey).
WRs for example have a somewhat similar situation to AFL players since they are mostly being chased by the defense and they don't get nearly as many contact injuries as RBs for example. Not to mention they are protected by (frequently controversial) pass interference rules.
From what I gather, introduction of the helmets back in the day reduced injury rates.
You could bubble wrap the jar (helmet), but the ball will still collide with the inside of the jar.
When they run towards each other, due to the rules, they don't just try and collide and call it a "tackle". I agree football is a more violent game intentionally but it's purely how the game is played and if you change the rules you'd have teams finding ways to play differently, with different skillsets prioritised.
However, much as we aussies like to mock gridiron for the pads it requires, without the pads, players used to die relatively routinely. Take the pads away from gridiron and it would need to change and loosen up enough that it basically becomes rugby.
But I'm not sure American broadcasters could adjust to a game with only two halfs of 40min each, no stopping of the clock and nowhere to stuff their abundance of ads.
I wouldn't mock the Americans too much for their famous love of advertising. I haven't found a sport yet that is as much a slave to advertising as Aussie Rules. Try to find a square meter of space[1] at an AFL game without advertising - even the ball itself is adorned with the golden arches.
[1] Okay, some of the grass doesn't have advertising on it.....
The huge and essential difference is that in gridiron the players in the 'scrum' start ~2m appart and run towards each other head first at full speed. And while most players in rugby can go several plays without taking a hit, linemen take a significant hit basically every single play.
I'm curious, did Australian Rules Football go to padding and then remove it? Because I think that once padding is put in place, it's very tough to get people to remove it.
I'm not saying these changes would be a bad thing, only that I have doubts it'll ever happen.
If viewership continues to go down, and parent stop letting their kids play at lower levels because of health conserns, they will also lose money.
In fact, the most popular video on YouTube about the fencing response has a shocking amount of overlap with the "big hits" video you shared. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlXjwAlOflA
Frankly, your video was kind of hard to watch. It's basically 3 minutes of people getting their brains rattled in their skulls.
But still, obviously it certainly exists, and I'm sure there is a lot of head trauma every year.
Players are highly incentivized to "give it their all", and that's how people end up getting injured or receive massive head trauma.
Hockey can be just as violent, but it's a much more fluid sport, so the pressure isn't on as much for the extra exceptional effort.
I've thought this may be why American football has more of the full body collision, where two (very large and powerfully built) men collide at high velocity almost horizontal to the earth. They're trying to gain as little as a few inches in the collision.
I've heard complaints from Australian rules players who come to the US about tackling - that the way US players have learned to tackle doesn't have much strategic value and greatly increases the possibility of injury, buy they continue to tackle this way when they join Australian rules leagues.
That's what I've heard and thought about, I do want to be clear that I don't know too much about all this - what I've written is more of a question in case someone in the know could weigh in.
In American football you also may only tackle the ball carrier. You can initiate contact other guys (usually in the form of blocking), and that can be very violent at times...but I don't think there's a scenario where you can tackle someone without the ball (and it not be called for a penalty).
The main difference in tackling technique between American Football and both codes of Rugby is use of the arms. In Rugby the arms must be used to tackle the opposing player. A shoulder charge, with no arms used, is illegal and may result in expulsion from the game. In a recent New Zealand vs British and Irish Lions game, NZ player Sonny Bill Williams was given a red card and sent from the pitch for this exact offence.
The other main points to note are that the opposing player can only be tackled below shoulder level and, as you've pointed out, in open play only the ball carrying may be tackled (or blocked).
Tackling the ball itself and not the player.
I don't have stats to back this up, but my general impression over the last couple of seasons is that less scrums require resetting.
A few yards makes a huge difference in rugby, and players are certainly highly incentivised to give it their all, but even for the battering ram-type players, their ability to help the team actually get the ball across the gain line is a function of the stamina and mobility to get around the pitch for multiple phases of play, complex situational awareness and some degree of ball handling skills, not just the ability to block off the man directly in front of them for a few plays.
Not to mention rugby's increasingly strictly applied and penalised rules on what is and isn't a legal tackle which mean that a player who doesn't tackle in a relatively safe manner will be a liability to their teammates as well as themselves
There are just five men on the ice for a team in hockey, there's arguably more pressure for each individual player to "give it their all" at any one moment than in football where there's 11 men on the field.
As someone lucky to be from Pittsburgh where we have both the Penguins and Steelers consistently being the top teams in the NHL and NFL respectively, there is no shortage of serious brain trauma in the NHL. Just ask Sidney Crosby.
signed, this totally not still upset Seahawks fan.
(re: 2015 Superbowl)
And yet, rubgy and Australian football have just as much contact and do not suffer from an endemic injury problem.
Maybe something related to the padding?
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/one-seaso...
Most of the contact in aussie rules is tackling from behind, whereas in gridiron on every play you have around nine guys smashing into each other just as the quarterback receives the ball... and then all the additional contact depending on the play, including tackling like in aussie rules.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7tGY-VDx3o
Don't have much commentary on the subject and just wanted to share the vid. I'd only think that a difference like that can't really be resolved to padding.
A rugby union player has to run around the pitch for 2 bouts of 40 minutes [about 40 minutes of 'ball in play' time]. According to this article - https://qz.com/150577/an-average-nfl-game-more-than-100-comm... - the average NFL match is 11 minutes of action, in [average] 4s bursts, over a 3+ hour period. Many NFL positions can optimise for muscle mass without worrying about stamina and sustained speed.
FWIW the measured tackle and at least one footage tackle [8mins 26s] in your linked video - https://youtu.be/TSc_Gxq1two - look illegal to me, lifting a player and pushing them down with head/shoulders first towards the ground (spearing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_tackle) is a red-card offence.
Not just mass. What I often hear NFL athletes and trainers talk about maximizing "explosion" in their movements.
It may be harder to detect chronic brain trauma in that population.
Football is fundamentally flawed. Many positions exist entirely because it's rough and violent. Players who never touch the football in a well played game.
Indeed. Olympic hockey is a perfect example of a step in that direction, and one of the greatest versions of the game in existence.
If it ditched the requirement that the game always be played on ice, the skill level of hockey in the US could be comparable to its basketball. All those high school football stadiums could get some asphalt surface, chainlink fencing to stand in for the glass, and a few sets of sticks and inline skates, and we could all watch hockey on Friday nights instead of kids knocking their skulls together.
Even shirling (snake baiting) would be better. No-fly Quidditch would be better. Robot fighting league would be better. Two old barbershop guys telling shaggy dog stories would be better. A magnified view of an ant colony devouring a moth would be better. Just watching the grass on the field grow would be... worse. There is a line.
Could it? I wonder how many people would continue to watch hockey if fights weren't essentially sanctioned as a part of the game. I imagine only the diehards as it's not the most entertaining sport in the world...
I don't think it's the fights though. They're mostly just hugging. I think the checks are what do the damage.
There is certainly a growing awareness of head injuries in Union and League at all levels. Players which show any sign of head trauma are (should be) immediately removed from the field for a 10 minute evaluation. However, having played Union for nearly 20 years (from the age of 14), I can attest to the fact that there are many occasions where a head clash occurs which doesn't result in concussion, but still can't be very healthy.
Besides head injuries, I've required an ACL operation due to Rugby injury. My shoulders and back are also in pretty bad shape. I now have a young son and am really trying to steer him towards cricket rather than Rugby.
The period of constant scrums was an especially dull period, as was the rolling mauls period. I vaguely remember a period of constant punts from each side down the field. I haven't kept up to date with Rugby, but google seems to suggest boring rolling mauls are back.
As an Englishman, I still have to say cricket is one of the most boring sports to play, with only 3 players in a team of 22 doing anything even vaguely interesting at any one time (batter, bowler, wicket keeper, 9 other players are literally sitting doing nothing and 9 others are standing around).
It's less a sport and more an excuse to lounge around.
For all it's faults with prima-donnas, football is one of the most engaging team sports with much less risk of injury than rugby or ball-in-the-face field hockey.
It's heading the ball that's apparently the biggest source of concussive damage in football.
Regarding cricket, this too is an evolving sport. The emergence of T20 (20 overs per team) has a completely different appeal to 5 day Test matches. Try watching a game of Indian Premier League (IPL) or Australian Big Bash cricket. Batting is back in the ascendancy, with sixes and fours galore. Very much mass appeal, light sporting entertainment.
Do you mean Association Football there, ie "soccer"?
While there is a problem with concussions[1], it's nowhere near the scale of American Handball.
[1]https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25182-rugby-players-w...
Really? As opposed to what? Polo? Quidditch? Beer pong?
Football is such an intrinsically contact sport that I don't think a safer game would even be recognizable.
Actually, that might be worse... If hockey turns out to have as bad a concussion problem, the leadership of the sport is likely even more culpable because they had more options to fix the problem than football does.