There used to be jokes made about guys playing football without a helmet, famously so when LBJ was speaking of Gerald Ford ((Minority Leader of the House of Representatives at the time). “Playing without a helmet” was supposed to leave one with scrambled brains and poorly formed judgmental capability.
Not everybdy can, or should, get out on a football field and engage in high-body-contact sports. It is similar to being in a series of vehicle crashes, and the human body is really almost as vulnerable as an egg. Sure, there can be protective measures, like padding and head protection, but a really determined opponent can get through the partial protection provided by these means, and wreak havoc on the hardest of underlying bodies. Bones break, joints tear and dislocate, deep contusions rupture blood vessels and crush nerves in ways that are sometimes simply beyond the means of medical science to reduce or ameliorate.
But this very drive to test the limitations of the human body, as a means to prove something about the spirit within, is one of those testosterone-based truisms that originate in the limbic system, and predate most animal conciousness, going back to almost the single-cell organisms. This can no more be weeded out of the cellular structure of our physical bodies, than the dependence of oxygen to sustain life.
What is the answer? Prohibition is impossible, because small boys, denied access to toy guns, will point their fingers and say “Bang!”, or take up sticks and play “sword” until somebody gets a cut or an eye poked out, then everybody runs back home. And they are right out there doing the same thing next day. Bigger boys, with adult bodies and the same outlook, crawl into powerful vehicles and perform hair-raising stunts to demonstrate that they have, if not to conquer fear and dread, at least to struggle manfully in the face of it.
Football is just a smaller powerful vehicle in which to perform hair-raising stunts.
Interesting commentary.